Gyr Abania - The Poorest Designed Country in XIV

[ObsidianFire]

There's two main reasons Gyr Abania feels like it didn't get developed as much as Doma did.

The first one is that Gyr Abania had a lot of it's history explained to us all the way back in 2.0 (and 1.0 even). We've known about it's history and the type of problems it has with the Empire for a good two expansions by the time 4.0 comes around. So we don't really learn a lot of new things about Gyr Abania in 4.0. Instead, we mainly see how bad the Empire treated them and saw for the first time how bad it really was. In comparison, we didn't know anything about Othard. We knew certain cultures and races came from there, but we knew very little else about it. So most of the new information of 4.0 is all about Othard. None of the Gyr Abanian information felt new. If you look at the total information we have on Gyr Abania and the total information we have on each country/culture in Othard, it's a lot more even. But that can be hard to remember when most of the Gyr Abanian information doesn't have the "newness" to it that Othard's does.

The second is the Gyr Abania only has one culture in it while Othard/Hingashi has three. All the previous expansions have focused on three cultures at a time (2.0 is La Nosca, Thanalan, Twelveswood; 3.0 is mainly Ishgard, Dravania, Allag). It would have been really hard (and boring) for an entire expansion to revolve around one culture we already know a lot about already. So the Dev team included three new cultures for us to learn about so we could get more new information (Doma, Hingashi, Xaela). So you've got the three new cultures and the one culture that has always been around, but never had anything done with it. This makes the lore of 4.0 feel lopsided.

Also, we can get to parts of Ala Mhigo, the city. The Peregrine Quarter is part of the Lochs and is an entire district of Ala Mhigo. If anything, it makes Ala Mhigo feel like one of the biggest cities we can get into as the rest of the city we can't get into isn't constrained by video-game scaling. All the other cities we can get into (Limsa Lominsa, Ul'dah, Gridania, Ishgard, Hingash) feel too small for their function. They should easily be five times bigger. Ala Mhigo actually feels like the capital of a region.

[Nalien]

Ala Mhigo actually feels like the capital of a region.

Sadly it feels dead though. Partly because there is no player activity there, Limsa/Gridania/Ul'dah/Ishgard/Kugane have the usual market board/retainer stuff, Doman Enclave has the rebuilding effort (granted, this will die down eventually). Ala Mhigo has nothing aside from brief returns for the MSQ. Even Idyllshire and Revenent's Toll had more going on, the Saltery in the Lochs was upgrading, but there's no reason to visit it to really notice that going on... I feel like perhaps they should have put the tomestone vendors/omega ventors/etc in the Peregrine Quarter instead, it would have made the area feel a lot more lively and I can't think of a reason not to, considering you need to finish the MSQ for them to even spawn in... Only issue I can imagine is that it would create lag, specifically when Ixion is about... Honestly though, not sure why we only ever get one set of these vendors, why not split players across various areas, Rhalgr's Reach can be fairly laggy depending on the time of day as is...

[Eloah]

I wanna say more but don't have a lot of time at the moment, but I will just say this about Monk in the SB expansion and how it compares to Dragoon in HW. First off SB has two focused jobs, Monk and Samurai. Second, the job isn't focused on as a whole, but is focused on through a character. In HW we had Estinien, and for SB we have Lyse and Hien. Whether this continues in 5.0 remains to be seen however, but it might be a safe bet.

[KageTokage]

I still feel like Gyr Abania and Othard should've gotten expansions to themselves.

Having an entire continent get only three zones is pretty disappointing when considering the sheer variety in landscapes and cultures they could've explored more (And hopefully still will in future expansions).

[Bright-Flower]

I still feel like Gyr Abania and Othard should've gotten expansions to themselves.

Having an entire continent get only three zones is pretty disappointing when considering the sheer variety in landscapes and cultures they could've explored more (And hopefully still will in future expansions).

I can get why they did the split thing, not wanting to do TWO 'liberate country from the empire' stories. And I suspect they also just didn't care much about Ala Mhigo considering that despite the even zone split, the far east is getting more actual content. I'd be fine if ala mhigo was getting something like the doman reconstruction thing in the ala mhigan quarter to flesh the area out, but even the 'homecoming' quest line for ala mhigo felt underwhelming compared to the doma one. Plus Heaven on High, Kugane the main big city, more dungeons in the far east than gyr abania, a LOT more crafting class quests focus on far east over just gsm for gyr abania. 3/4 patches focus on it over gyr abania in the msq.

On paper it seems pretty even. Three zones for each, gyr abania gets the Idylshire and far east gets the main city, but when everything stacks up Gyr Abania feels like an afterthought. Where as if things were a bit more evenly distributed I think I'd be fine with the split expansion.

[Remedi]

I think that the content feeling less is a symptom of what obsidian said, since ala mhigo had already plenty of story and lore from the past SE felt the need to flesh out more of the far east which we knew nearly nothing, as such the world building effort went there more. Not to mention that they took their time to actually flesh out au'ra more since they kinda came out of nowhere in HW and had nothing really to do with that story aside some few mentions.
Was that a good choice? I dunno there's to say that ala mhigo was higly anticipated since a good while so perhaps getting a fair treatment would've been better.

That said I don't like that Kugane is essentially a big tease.
Look at the thavnairian consulate, look at the Garlean consulate, Look at this gate to this land that you can't see yet!.
Seems to me that as a city is a big tease to things to come rather than a capital

[Bright-Flower]

I think that the content feeling less is a symptom of what obsidian said, since ala mhigo had already plenty of story and lore from the past SE felt the need to flesh out more of the far east which we knew nearly nothing, as such the world building effort went there more. Not to mention that they took their time to actually flesh out au'ra more since they kinda came out of nowhere in HW and had nothing really to do with that story aside some few mentions.
Was that a good choice? I dunno there's to say that ala mhigo was higly anticipated since a good while so perhaps getting a fair treatment would've been better.

That said I don't like that Kugane is essentially a big tease.
Look at the thavnairian consulate, look at the Garlean consulate, Look at this gate to this land that you can't see yet!.
Seems to me that as a city is a big tease to things to come rather than a capital

Kugane being the capital city in SB always baffled me. It's not connected to Doma or Ala Mhigo. It has little role in the msq, mostly just a place we stop by when going between the two main regions. They didn't use it as a nuetral meeting ground to discuss the prisoner exchange. It'd be like if HW made Thavinair or something like that its main city instead of Ishgard. I don't suspect it's going to play into 4.5 or beyond either but we'll see.

On the bright side, at least it has RP potential. It's perhaps the only place where garlean and eorzean characters could meet without the threat of one or the other being killed for RP, even if the msq doesn't really take advantage of its neutrality.

[Remedi]

It is an entry into hingashi since it's not their capital but just a merchant city, perhaps they want to make it the main HUB of the zone in a similar way that Ul'dah is for the West (since honestly Ul'dah is used more often than the rest of the main city)

[Eloah]

On the bright side, at least it has RP potential. It's perhaps the only place where garlean and eorzean characters could meet without the threat of one or the other being killed for RP, even if the msq doesn't really take advantage of its neutrality.

You realize you just answered your own question with this statement right? I mean what purpose do any of the cities hold anymore anyway.

[Bright-Flower]

You realize you just answered your own question with this statement right? I mean what purpose do any of the cities hold anymore anyway.

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.