Shisui and Sui-no-Sato [4.0 Spoilers]

So something has been bugging me since going through the quest lines in the Ruby Sea. Through the main quest, we make our way to Sui-no-Sato, an underwater village of Raen. Then there is Shisui, a palace far away in the depths where the Ruby Princess lives and rules over Sui-no-Sato.

But that is where I was a bit confused. Is Sui-no-Sato the only Raen settlement in the Ruby Sea? It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that there’s a whole palace dedicated to ruling over one little village. But through the quest line, Shiosai talks about needing to save Sui-no-Sato as if it’s the only other place that exists. Yet he also mentions escaping Shisui with other people. But where would they go if they’re not in the village and no one is mentioning them?

Am I reading too much into things and this is just gameplay and story segregation combined with hasty writing for a dead-end dungeon questline? Or is there some lore I’m missing about there being a whole civilization under the waves?

We are only in a small fraction of the Ruby Sea. There could be more Raen establishments that are not on the map. You also have to remember that whole areas like this (Sui-no-Sato) only show the town, but not in its entirety. Take the Pokémon games for example. The cities look very small to us players, but they are only scaled for our viewing of the important sites in the city. Especially a building that looks small on the outside, but is massive on the inside like Gyms. Sui-no-Sato is probably much bigger in actuality, but it is scaled in size for our viewing. Same with the other city-states and cities, plus areas. There's still so much other territory that we can only access; they are just scaled in a fraction of the size.

We don't know. The Raen don't have a lot of lore, and what they do have really just consists of them being a diaspora, that the majority of Raen settlements are in Othard's mountains, and what we see in the Ruby Sea. Just about everything beyond that is speculation.

Doma is apparently one province with one active village and one ruined village which seem to be collectively smaller than the castle. Those gates are overkill all things considered. >_>

Basically, SB was rubbish when it comes to giving anything a proper sense of scale. Steppe fared better than most, but even that seems way too abbreviated for the number of tribes mentioned.

I suspect a lot of it is a consequence of the expansion being split across two regions - Gyr Abania and the Far East. Luckily some settlements fare better than others but I would very much have liked the ability to enter more of the buildings strewn around the likes of Yanxia. I actually visited Aleport for the first time in ages due to the RDM quests taking me there and I was surprised by just how many of the buildings I could enter. Some of the settlements that have arrived as of 3.0 and 4.0 feel a lot more clinical and restrictive, unfortunately. For me it's not a matter about scale - because it'd be too much work to make the zones super large and with proper cities in each territory. It's a matter of accessibility.

I'm kind of hoping that we'll get some standalone zones in the future that aren't tied to the MSQ and are present strictly to offer more lore and areas to explore.

Othard feels like a hollow shell of what it should've been to me, and I'm afraid it might simply be ignored in future.

From what we've seen on the overworld maps, a massive chunk of Othard is yet to be covered. Particularly "The Burn," a desert off to the west of the Steppe, that we see the Dotharl tribe have settled near. Kugane is the only part of Hingashi we've touched upon, but the island is massive. We've barely scratched Othard, much like how much of Eorzea was blocked off to us until we entered Ishgard.

The complete disregard of scale for SB areas is a glaring issue for us lore hungry players.... But while HW was great on conveying scale in the new zones, the zones themselves were mostly barren. It's an unfortunate trade-off from ARR zones.

But, yes, I do think there are more Raen settlements, and that Sui-no-Sato and Shisui are intended to be much larger settlements than we physically seen them be.

There's also the fact to remember that a lot of the Raen, rather than forming their own cities and homelands, chose to live among other cultures. That's part of why they have a more Japan-influenced culture compared to their Malaysian themed Xaela counterparts. Indeed, we can see a great number of Raen in Kugane, and it's no dobut that there are many more in cities dotted around Doma and Hingashi. Either way, the scale of regions is something of a consistent issue for FFXIV, albeit a mostly necessary one. Pretty much every region of Eorzea has large areas we can't explore. If you look in the Sagoli desert or the steppes, for example, you can find giant swathes of territory we can't go to. This even extends somewhat to the player cities...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CaesarCV

Malaysian themed Xaela counterparts

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I think you mean "Mongolian".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by YianKutku

I think you mean "Mongolian".

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How did my phone's autocorrect even do that!?