Gyr Abania - The Poorest Designed Country in XIV

[Nalien]

Kugane is there for lore reasons, plus there is no reason why it can't see more usage in the future. If we get a Thavnarian based job (Blue Mage or Dancer perhaps), then I could see that embassy getting used for the lv51-60 quests at least, assuming Thavnaria doesn't become a place in 5.0. Various 5.0 job quests could also either return there, or visit it for the first time (Miner and Botanist reused Idyllshire a lot iirc), that also goes for Gyr Abania zones now that I think about it.

As far as the narrative went though, we needed neutral territory in the East to launch off from. I don't think the story would have made much sense if we just got on a boat and went straight to Doma. Same deal for various side quests in that region, does it make sense for a Garlean Theatre ship to visit Doma? While reconstructing, would Doma really care about the Eureka Expedition? Plus it's just world building. While we obviously visit the port city, the rest of Hingashi is very much the same as Meracydia, the New World, Sharlayan (one could view Idyllshire as an abandoned port of sorts to that culture), Thavnaria. Obviously we're not going to these places at the moment, but we might one day, so it's useful to build up the lore surrounding them early like this.

The real reason we got Kugane though, is Housing. Ishgard Housing was abandoned for some reason (here me out Yoshida, Dawn Vigil is still hasn't been brought over from 1.0, how about making it the Ishgard Housing zone?), and it simply wouldn't make much sense to have a Gyr Abanian/Doma Housing zone just on a practical level; New player joins your FC and can travel to your home in Gyr Abania? Pretty big lore-break there. I suppose one could make the same argument for Ishgard Housing though. Shirogane is still a bit of a lore-break I guess, but it's certainly minimised by the fact that there isn't a war going on in the region for much of the MSQ.

[Bright-Flower]

Kugane's role in the story could have been served with just a normal sized town, or even making it the Idylshire of SB. Its role in the story as a pit stop between Gyr Abania and Doma IMO doesn't necessitate it being the full city.

Considering you can just teleport to Shirogane for FC houseing even if you're level 1 as is I don't see it being any worse if you did it for other regions.

There also isn't really a need for all housing wards to even be directly tied to a big city. They could theoretically add housing wards anywhere, so long as the housing ward is suitably close to an etheryte.

[ObsidianFire]

Kugane has a lot of potential going forward. It's the only hub city that I can see being used as a hub city past the expansion that introduced it. I mean, we still havn't unlocked airships going from it to the other hub cities! If SE is going to do anything with Hingashi or the rest of Othard in coming expansions, they're going to need a Hub City in Othard.

The story going forward presents a two-front conflict with Garleamld. In the East, there's Othard with it's stable economic hub of Kugane. In the West, there's the Eorzean Alliance and all their Hub cities, well behind the Eorzean/Garlean border. Where the next hub city will be is in the air. I don't think we'll know how we're getting into Garlemald (or if we are getting all the way into Garleamld) until 4.5 hits. I'm quite willing to wait that long to find out though!

[Nalien]

Considering you can just teleport to Shirogane for FC houseing even if you're level 1 as is I don't see it being any worse if you did it for other regions.

I think there's a pretty big difference between just magically ending up in a peaceful area on the other side of the world a bit early, and entering a Housing Ward in a location that's either meant to be occupied by Garleans, or is meant to be in the middle of a war with dragons. Although I could still see Dawn Vigil working under a sort of "it was semi-abandoned by Ishgard during the Calamity and someone like Rowena swooped in to develop the area for adventurers" premise.

I agree though, there's no reason they need to tie Housing to cities as they have, but I doubt SE thought of that and thus we have Kugane. Certainly they could at least put Apartments anywhere... Although given those are just fairly similar rooms it wouldn't do much, hopefully they expand them eventually to at least include Gardens, but given that fake door still taunts Mansion owners with the prospect of a balcony, I've given up hope of them doing any major adjustments to Housing.

Doman Enclave and Peregrine Quarter Apartments would be pretty awesome though, only thing they'd need to work in is Market Boards (thinking about it, that is probably why they need to tie Housing to Cities).

[Theodric]

Kugane is wonderful. I get that a lot of people here don't role-play - but there is no small amount of role-players who have been waiting years for a neutral city to play around in.

It's also a Japanese game. It's not unreasonable for the developers to focus heavily on the in-game equivalent of Japan. Could more have been done with Ala Mhigo? Perhaps - but at the end of the day its story was always tied very heavily to Ul'dah which already received a significant amount of attention compared to Gridania and Limsa.

[Remedi]

(here me out Yoshida, Dawn Vigil is still hasn't been brought over from 1.0, how about making it the Ishgard Housing zone?),

There! that is exactly what I was thinking about housing for ishgard
An unused zone from 1.0 would serve well for them

[Cilia]

I still don't think Fordola's character arc was conclusively resolved, and feel a lot of Gyr Abania was underutilized.

I'm happy with how its story played out, though... I guess.

[Eloah]

I don't consider 'something that a handful of players might do' to be an adequate answer to this. Uld'ah may outshine the other two starting cities in the grand scheme of things but all three were important in ARR. Ishgard was the center of HW's msq. Then Kugane has...almost nothing to do with the actual story. What I mentioned was a tiny benefit for a small minority of players in the game who RP garleans. Hardly a reason to make the expansion's flagship city irrelevant to the story.

The RP aspect has nothing to do with it, it's about its neutrality, which is the main reason why many players think a city in Thavnair will be the next town added. The aspects of Kugane you claim worked but then were left behind, are the same aspects that each city has; Gridania, Limsa Lominsa, Ul'dah, and Ishgard.

Also you know Kugane is Hingan, not Othardian, or whatever that term is. it's basically Thavnair in theme.

Snip

He gets it

[Lubu_Mykono]

the way the game is going, around 4.5 Garlemald will probably nuke Ala Mhigo and destroy it anyway.
Makes sense
1) there is no hub there
2) Doma will probably continue to grow into 5.0

[Ardox]

The real reason we got Kugane though, is Housing. Ishgard Housing was abandoned for some reason

The reason was snow. Ishgard is covered in snow so they would have to either fin a spot without snow or recreate every assets to take that into account