Gyr Abania - The Poorest Designed Country in XIV

[DamianFatale]

I believe Gyr Abania is a disappointing mess of many proportions, and here is why. I will be separating each section of flaws by categories of lore, and design.

Lore:

- Several characters feel like they’ve been swept over, and forgotten.

- We hardly ever go there for anything. Most quests lead us to the east, and not various Ala Mhigan zones.

- Monks are apparently still around in smaller numbers, but have almost no part in the story at all. Did they even matter to Ala Mhigo? They built it up from 2.0 onward, and even announced it as the main job of Stormblood, but I’m not seeing it. Unlike Dragoon, there seems to be no correlation to them.

- No Ala Mhigan primals/trials past 4.0. We are overdo for more content of that type in the area.

Design:

- You can’t enter most of the buildings in any of the zones. No one even bothers to walk around, or hang out there. There’s no immersion, or incentive to. Ala Ghiri is one of the first towns we liberate, but there’s nothing there that ever draws us back to stay, or even visit again. Ala Gannha has beautiful cliff side houses, but we can’t even go inside a few of them. The Ala Mhigan residential area is mostly closed off. All I can do is stand outside.

- The city of Ala Mhigo itself is closed off. It was resorted to just being a dungeon. This was supposed to be the last major city in Eorzea hyped up for like ever, and it’s a collossal disappointment.

Gyr Abania is poorly designed. I feel bad for all the Highlanders. It needs a little bit more added to its design in future patches. Not just dungeons, and instances areas. The developers need to address this, or it will just become forgotten overtime.

Suggestions for improvements:

- Ala Mhigan Recontruction as a means to return to Ala Mhigo again. They could go for a storyline that helps us repair, and lift Ala Mhigo up as a city state. It would be a different angle than Doma, which was raised to the ground.

- Functional buildings for each of Gyr Albania’s settlements. They don’t have to all be accessible. Just a few in each would go a long way in restoring it to 2.0/3.0 quality.

- Add new quest lines in the future, which is a given because we still have patches left before 5.0

- Add new monk npcs, and relevance of them in the story line. I would make it so that we build a monk temple in an Ala Mhigan recontruction questline.

- Ala Mhigan items in the Mog station. We have enough eastern things.

Let’s restore Ala Mhigo, and make the game better devs. There’s so much potential in optional content that could benefit the story.

[Iscah]

- Monks are apparently still around in smaller numbers, but have almost no part in the story at all. Did they even matter to Ala Mhigo? They built it up from 2.0 onward, and even announced it as the main job of Stormblood, but I’m not seeing it. Unlike Dragoon, there seems to be no correlation to them.

Have you played the Monk questline? They were prettymuch entirely wiped out by the mad king prior to the fall of Ala Mhigo. The Lv60-70 quests involve your tutor trying to revive the order.

- No Ala Mhigan primals/trials past 4.0. We are overdo for more content of that type in the area.

Apparently the Qiqirn were supposed to be a beast tribe. I don't know why they changed it, or if there's any chance of still getting them in 4.5.

- You can’t enter most of the buildings in any of the zones. No one even bothers to walk around, or hang out there. There’s no immersion, or incentive to. Ala Ghiri is one of the first towns we liberate, but there’s nothing there that ever draws us back to stay, or even visit again. Ala Gannha has beautiful cliff side houses, but we can’t even go inside a few of them. The Ala Mhigan residential area is mostly closed off. All I can do is stand outside.

The exact same argument can be had for Namai or Isari or any of the towns we visit in Othard, too. Or Falcon's Nest or Camp Cloudtop or the Sharlayan ruins in the Hinterlands that have no residents left to lock us out.

(Honestly it's always seemed strange to me that most RPGs let you freely wander in and out of houses. Public buildings, fine. But not walking into people's homes and rummaging through their stuff for potions and money.)

[Nalien]

I definitely agree that Ala Mhigo got kind of forgotten... We basically came back from Asia and made a mad dash to Ala Mhigo, then had very little reason to go back there (one salty questline was it). There are so many areas of the Lochs that just aren't used... I imagine 4.5 will make much more use of the area, given we seem to have secured Doma for the time being, but even then... I can't see that tomb you have to swim/fly to being used for anything ever... Reminds me a lot of all the unused caves and ruins in Dravania Forelands, dammit SE, you give me a cave with a massive door in it and I want to explore it ffs! At least it saw more use the Azys Lla...

Apparently the Qiqirn were supposed to be a beast tribe. I don't know why they changed it, or if there's any chance of still getting them in 4.5.

I believe Yoshida has said that they were intended to be the craft/gather beast tribe quests initially (which seems odd given there's a hostile tribe in the Peaks, but I guess they'd be similar to the Ixali quests rather than the Moogle ones), but they changed to the Namazu because they ended up being so popular early on. It's a shame, Namazu got enough love in Uznair IMO, while Qiqirn have been around since 2.0 and not once explored in any depth (at least the Mamool Ja got Wanderer's Palace (Hard), but they've also kinda been forgotten). I think it would have been better for them to have fleshed out the Namazu with the Doman Enclave stuff tbh, 4.0 quests made that seem apparent. Instead we abandon all that and go to the Steppe, not that I don't enjoy the extra Steppe lore those quests provided.

My hope is, since 5.0 is probably going into Garlemald-proper and there is unlikely to be much in the way of beast tribes there, next expansion might have us going backwards for beast tribe content and fleshing out some of the forgotten tribes... We'll probably get Bangaa and Viera daily quests though... RIP Mamool Ja and Qiqirn I guess...

[Iscah]

Mamool Ja are primarily from the "New World" continent to the west, so it's possible we'll go there at some point and they'll be expanded on as a proper society, not just the small bands of mercenaries that have travelled over to Eorzea.

There's also the one "friendly" Qiqirn that we help in a sidequest, and then he (or someone else from his tribe) is among the leaders at the meeting in 4.1. So there's presumably a tribe out there somewhere, other than the rabid ones at the Ziggurat, we just never got to meet them.

[SannaR]

I want to say we have to catch a fish for one in an early fishing guild quest. I like that there's two different looks to them. It must be a japanese thing with the namazu as I think a lot of NA players thought they were ugly and just wanted to drop kick them. It doesn't help when your introduction to them happens to be one that tries to server you up to the Garleans.

[Bright-Flower]

To be fair, dragoons had little to do with HW. SUre Estinien was a major player in the msq but the dragoons themselves, no, and being a dragoon just got you a few offhand references to the events of the ARR quests. People really oversell HW being the 'dragoon expansion.'

I agree in general though. I'm very disapointed. I love all three zones but it feels like Yoshi REALLY cared about the Doma/Othard side of things but HAD to get ala mhigo out of the way because it was set up already.

Instead of being a city it's just a dungeon. There's no ala mhigo reconstruction effort to flesh out the ala mhigan quarter the same way they did to the doman enclave. The Lochs was barely utilized at all and most of the patch content story has been more concerned with Othard than Gyr Abania.

Maybe 4.5 will surprise me and give Ala Mhigo some love but I feel like Yoshi P is done with it.

[SannaR]

Dragoons were shown in some of the side quests though. There were I want to say two whole chains that had them doing searches. Then there was the camp in Western Coerthas, sure they weren't dragoons but they were the ones dealing with the smaller dragon attacks. I haven't done all of the Stormblood side quests but the only person connected to monks that I did run into was Erik and that was part of a non monk job quest.

[legg]

i do think they already say about patch 4.1 is gonna be the Closing part for Ala mhigo's Arc
while 4.2 and 4.3 gonna be the Epilogue/Closing for Doma's Arc.


im gonna hitting this thread with opinions

- Several characters feel like they’ve been swept over, and forgotten.

i've no comment about this, Arenvald deserve more screentime on msq ;_;

- We hardly ever go there for anything. Most quests lead us to the east, and not various Ala Mhigan zones.

again, its already their plan to 'forget' Ala mhigo after patch 4.1 , they really missed the opportunities to expand the World building on Gyr abania.
but also because this, we got a bunch NEW world building aspect from the Far eastern side (HoH, Auspices, Geomancy, the burn, etc).

Monks

Their story mainly told inside the lvl 60~70 Job quest, their background story revolves about the Ala mhigan mad kings do massacres the Monks inside the Rhalrg's reach. only few Monks survived.

- No Ala Mhigan primals/trials past 4.0. We are overdo for more content of that type in the area.

eh if you count Omega raid, altho its not a 'primal' nor 'trial'. but, the entire Omega raid happened in Gyr abania.
well, a zone inside Gyr abania.

Ala Mhigan Recontruction

btw if you notice some small detail, the Saltery changed everytime a new patch hit.
ik its not the Ala mhigo itself but hey at least you could feel some "recontruction"

- The city of Ala Mhigo itself is closed off. It was resorted to just being a dungeon

IMO, the dungeon itself is pretty much intense.
exploring the city as the dungeon is enough for me to appreciate its beauty. and duh, liberate it.

[Bright-Flower]

I don't really count the Omega story as 'ala mhigo/gyr abania' content. It has nothing to do with the region, it's just where the rift to Omega's domain happens to be. It doesn't tie into the lore, worldbuilding or story of the region in the slightest.

It sadly really does feel like Ala Mhigo was just something they 'had' to get out of the way and the real interest and passion from the team was in the far east stuff. Which is a shame for me because I wanted ala mhigo to get fleshed out properly like Ishgard and be an actual city.

As for monks, as of the end of HW's story there were like, exactly four monks left including the player character. While dragoons were intact as an order, even if it isn't a very large order compared to the temple knights, so it makes more sense to run into dragoons doing things. The new fist of rhalgr doesn't really get established until the SB monk quests.

[MetalSnakeXI1]

While I do agree Ala Mhigo needed more fleshing out considering all the build up from ARR up until SB,I didn't mind Doma getting more attention for the simple fact that all of our previous missions were situated in Eorzea and we never saw how big Garlemald's grip on the world was until we visited Doma/Othard.And if I remember correctly,Doma is closer to Garlemald geographically which makes it a more ripe confrontation front with the empire later rather than waiting for Imperial airships to drop at the Castrums around Eorzea