Do the writers dislike Ala mhigo?

[SpiralMask]

For all the hype of liberating ala mhigo and ousting the garleans in stormblood, we seem to have spent more time fixing the domans' problems than anything else--going so far as to personally oversee brokering for their conscripted citizens (something the AM's missed the train on as well) and literally rehabilitating their economy ourselves complete with tangible results of how successful it is--while ala mhigo seems to have just been left floundering.

The garleans are ousted from government to be sure, but nobody's actually leading it (sure there's lyse and raubahn as acting heads of the resistance and military/militia, but those are specifically temporary roles) with a council still trying to decide what their government will even BE, let alone who or how it will be lead, as well as zero impact from any related plotlines (such as the MNK story quests receiving not so much as a single mention) where even heavensward had a blurb if you'd completed the DRG story. oh wait, the DRK has a small side thing about the sick refugees who you aided in the twelveswood: every single one of them died horribly, either possibly by your own hand at baelsar's wall, or from the elementals' disease.

The people still live blasted-out lives from the garlean occupation, the only means of trade so far has been left in the hands (by us personally no less) of the actual canon money-grubbiest man (well, lalafel) in possibly the entire world, on promises that he totally won't exploit this massive trade monopoly he's been presented with.

The resistance efforts (via M'naago's custom deliveries for the widows and orphans fund) lead to little more than more apologies to dead people and everyone still being destitute, and the ananta beast tribe quests still regularly has us going around dealing with rampant swarms of killer bees, and soul-devouring banshees and other vengeful spirits tormenting the commonfolk on the daily. as well as (via the SMN 80) having to contend with fairly regular primal summonings that they've had to call in ul'dah's aid for.
And while we've been off on the first, the country has continued being used as the personal battlefield between the garleans and the eorzean alliance, causing yet more destruction and loss of life.

Is someone on the writing team really angry at ala mhigo for some reason, or is there some other explanation for how lopsided the aid we've been giving out has been/how generally terrible their lives are and have been left at?

[MistakeNot]

It is not a case of the writers disliking Ala Mhigo so much as them simply not having written much about what happens to Ala Mhigo after the Garleans left.
Of course, in-game it has probably just been a few weeks or a couple of months at most since the garlean occupation ended. Not much will change to a country in that short a time.

[ObsidianFire]

Ala Mhigo is a bit of a relic of 1.0. There is a lot of... awkward lore info presented about Ala Mhigo that was put in the game long before Yoshida ever took over that the story team really had to design around. Doma and all of Othard really was developed much, much later then Ala Mhigo was and it shows in how... balanced... it's lore is.

Probably the best example of this is the Ala Mhigan Resistance's introduction into the plot of 1.0. It is really the last arc of the very, very first MSQ of FFXIV 1.0, the very same arc that introduces the character who would later be revealed to be Gaius van Balesaur. In that arc, the Ala Mhigan Resistance is asking the Path of the Twelve (precursor to the Scions) to help them commandeer a Garlean airship that they can then use to assault the Garleans station in Ala Mhigo itself. Minfilia says the Scions can't help the resistance do that to their face on the basis that that kind of thing had been tried several times before and had always ended in failure and with a large loss of life. However, you decide to go and help them out anyway. The operation turns out to be a disaster though, as Gaius van Balsaur (he didn't even have a name then) has turned up in Silvertear where the operation takes place unknown to anyone. He subsequently kills just about everyone involved except you as the Archons show up and go 4v1 against him.

You can find the cut-scenes of those events here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7gC...3M-hy&index=12

Long story short... even in 1.0, the Ala Mhigans (Resistance especially) were portrayed as being very short-sighted in their goals and very impotent in their fight against the Garlean occupation of Ala Mhigo. Also going back to 1.0 would be the Ala Mhigan Refugees in Ul'dah and how bad that situation was at both ends as well as how much of an inhospitable wasteland Ala Mhigo was before the Garleans even took the country over. Stormblood had to kinda figure out a way to get around all that and and the way it decided to do so was get rid of the person who had successfully fought off the Ala Mhigan Resistance for fifteen years (Gaius) and put someone what wanted the WoL (and the Resistance and the Alliance as a result) to get to Ala Mhigo itself (Zenos). Even then, Stormblood was still stuck with a country that didn't have a lot of industries other then mercenaries and a land trade route to Othard. All of which makes for a rather boring three zones.

Do I think Ala Mhigo was nowhere near as interesting as Othard was? Oh yeah. Do I think it was intentional on the writers part? Not really. The further the game goes, the less 1.0 material has to be included, and Ala Mhigo is really the last setting introduced in 1.0 that had to fleshed out somehow. It's just too bad 1.0 didn't give the writers a lot of interesting lore to work with.

[SpiralMask]

It is not a case of the writers disliking Ala Mhigo so much as them simply not having written much about what happens to Ala Mhigo after the Garleans left.
Of course, in-game it has probably just been a few weeks or a couple of months at most since the garlean occupation ended. Not much will change to a country in that short a time.

bolded for emphasis - doma has pulled a near 180 in that same amount of time, which is kind of my point. rightful ruler installed, economy kickstarted, POWs returned, and well on their way to getting back their cultural identity.

@ObsidianFire: that it had previous grounding and troubles (and lore) that seem to have been completely abandoned is again, kinda my point.

[Wyssahtyn]

bolded for emphasis - doma has pulled a near 180 in that same amount of time, which is kind of my point. rightful ruler installed, economy kickstarted, POWs returned, and well on their way to getting back their cultural identity.

@ObsidianFire: that it had previous grounding and troubles (and lore) that seem to have been completely abandoned is again, kinda my point.

Ala Mhigo is changing its form of government, also had its economy kickstarted via the Saltery, and did not have the opportunity to negotiate with the Empire for the return of people conscripted from Gyr Abania. As for their cultural identity, I expect such a thing would take a back seat in the face of the Garleans encroaching upon them via the Ghimlyt Dark.

[Zohar_Lahar]

Once things in Norvrandt settle down, we'll probably return to Ala Mhigo to deal with Garlean matters.

[ObsidianFire]

@ObsidianFire: that it had previous grounding and troubles (and lore) that seem to have been completely abandoned is again, kinda my point.

How was the lore of Ala Mhigo abandoned? The lore of Ala Mhigo has always been what we see it as.

If anything I think the devs could have gotten a better story out of Ala Mhigo if they had decided to retcon how Ala Mhigans were portrayed in 1.0 instead of sticking with it. But they decided not to take that approach to 1.0 material and here we are with a city-state that really isn't all that likable even though it had be subjugated for years.

[MrThinker]

Ala Mhigo is changing its form of government, also had its economy kickstarted via the Saltery, and did not have the opportunity to negotiate with the Empire for the return of people conscripted from Gyr Abania. As for their cultural identity, I expect such a thing would take a back seat in the face of the Garleans encroaching upon them via the Ghimlyt Dark.

The Fist of Rhalgr formed a great part of the culture of Ala Mhigo before the mad king destroyed it. The lvl50+ MNK quests are all about re-establishing the Fist and re-introducing it to the peoples of Gyr Abania. So yes, that cultural identity is covered a bit, just not in the main story.

[MistakeNot]

bolded for emphasis - doma has pulled a near 180 in that same amount of time, which is kind of my point. rightful ruler installed, economy kickstarted, POWs returned, and well on their way to getting back their cultural identity.

The rightful ruler of Doma was installed before the garlean occupation ended. In contrast Ala Mhigo doesn't have a rightful ruler, so setting up a government there is a bit more complicated, but we certainly have been shown a fair bit of the work on doing so.
The returned POWs happened only because Asahi tried to be tricky and failed, and happened just at the end of the garlean occupation. As for kickstarted economy, we have only seen that in the Doman enclave - the rest of Doma looks much the same as before. Also, it is unrealistic that all the work in the Doman Enclave could have happened in the short amount of time which has passed in the MSQ, so I suspect it is in a bit of a time bubble and by the end is actually a bit further into the future than the rest of the world.
In short, not much has happened in Doma either after the garlean occupation ended.
For that matter, Ala Mhigo has also got a kickstart in its economy by the reopening of the Saltery - we just haven't seen the results of that.

[FJerome]

There's also the 60-70 Goldsmith questline, which is about training skilled craftsmen so that Ala Mhigo can have some industries of its own.