Anyone else concerned Stormblood will be splitting its attention too much?

[Lukha]

While Heavensward did see a massive improvement in story quality (at least, this seems to be the prevailing opinion), there's also been some dissatisfaction with how some of the trailing plot threads left over from ARR were wrapped up. A lot of people feel that certain things were concluded hastily, and not given the attention they really deserved to be satisfying.

Now, given that Stormblood will be splitting our attention between two totally new areas, I'm concerned that the same thing will happen, with one area or the other getting less attention than it needs to really shine. Even worse, what if the split ends up causing both Ala Mhigo and Kugane to be underdeveloped?

I realize people are impatient to visit both areas, but I'd have preferred it if they'd waited until at least the next expansion to shift focus to Doman areas. Even though I understand why they might not want to do that narratively (two areas requiring liberation from Garlemald one after the other would be awfully repetitive), I feel like it would have been a better choice in the long run.

[Miyha]

It's something I'm actually a bit worried about, I'll admit. Some of those worries have been settled a bit with Yoshi's comments in a recent interview about the Stormblood MSQ (what's released immediately upon the expansion launch) being longer than Heavensward's was, which I would figure would be kind of required with having to focus on two different areas. I'm curious to see how they're going to go about focusing on two different regions and addressing them both sufficiently. I guess for now we'll just have to trust that the dev team knows what they're doing and see where it goes.

[Zojha]

Well, they also did say that the MSQ will have more quests - Relatively speaking at least. What was Yoshi's comparison again? 100 MSQ 100 sidequest -> 150 MSQ 50 sidequest or something like that.

I could imagine that this is part of the reason.

Personally, I'd wish they would be two separate MSQ branches akin to zone specific questlines, but... I bet we'll just keep backtracking left and right instead >_>

[Azper]

Nope. I'm so incredibly uninterested in either of these locations, that quite frankly, the sooner this expansion is over with the better.

That's just me, though.

[Nixxe]

No. One of the things I like about FFXIV's story, as opposed to games like WoW, is that it's much less focused. It often advances multiple plots simultaneously and doesn't compulsively force itself to take place entirely in whatever the latest and greatest content is. It makes the story feel more realistic (at least in the ways it should) and less obviously contrived. They probably could have gotten two expansions out of Ala Mhigo and Doma, but since we actually revisit old locations and old stories in this game, I'm not bothered by it.

[Rymm]

I would say that it's entirely too early to worry about that yet as we only have the broadest idea of what the plot is going to entail, and no idea how they intend to fold both regions into the storyline. It's one of those things that I feel is silly to get worked up about before we have a clearer picture of what the finished product is going to be.

Then again, I tend to be the kind of person who doesn't usually worry for worrying's sake; someone with a more anxious personality might have trouble sitting around and waiting for things to unfold.

[Myrian]

The way it's shaping up, it probably won't be too much to worry about. Aside from the aforementioned reasons, it seems like we may have a lot of forces at work here, and there is likely to be downtime in the campaigns on either side of the sea. While the armies/scouts/etc do their work, we're pushing forward in the other area, probably joining the stories together in the end.

[Alacran]

I feel like Ala Mhigo will be an after thought to Othard and Doma. Much of the Empires machinations, aswell as reintegration of Ala Mihgan culture may have to vye for for limited spotlight to push the "fresh new and oh so exotic east". Worse i feel an overwhelming amount will champion it wholeheartedly.

[Ririta]

To me it's really obvious that Ala Mhigo will be lacking despite its story going back as far as 1.0. If it were any other city/region, I could believe that they could be evenly split, but being a japanese one, it's just hopeless. I mean, after the Doman hijack in 2.2 and recent interviews where Yoshida only talks about whatevergane, I don't have much reason to expect good things from the Ala Mhigan side in Stormblood.

I hope that I'm wrong though, since knowing that Ala Mhigo would be the next city was the reason that I came back to this game.

[Kerwin]

Ala Mhigo has been with FFXIV ever since the version 1.0 launch. It's story also was covered frequently both in version 1.0 and ARR, and even more so now in Heavensward. So the devs have a lot of backstory to help get us really involved in liberating Ala Mhigo from the Garleans.
As for Doma, that story is still realitivly fresh when Yoshi-P and the devs introduced Yugiri & Ninja in ARR. Doma was only mentioned slightly via the MSQ and referenced in the Ninja Job quests. But because of the new job demand for the expansion, they figured they would mesh the two together, Samurai and Doma.

Also would you really purchase an expansion with only just Ala Mhigo involved? It seems lack-luster on it's own.

Trust in Yoshi-P, they have done a lot since version 1.0, ARR, and Heavensward, and are still learning as well. Sit back and Enjoy the ride.