A reminder that Ala Mhigo ise still useless

[DamianFatale]

- Four zones in the teleport menu despite having an entire section devoted to Gyr Albania as a country. One hub, but its not a main city state. Its a ruined monk headquarters, with again almost no monks active, or returning except for side quests, and job quests. :/

- Ala Mhigo is blocked off completely. You cannot enter the city, and please don't tell me the quarter, or the dungeon counts. It barely does, because its not in the city proper.

- Most of the towns don't let you in any of the buildings unless its ruined, or really special. Can't go inside shops, can't get to know the culture. Even Thavnair despite having a lot of blocked off locations is better than this. You don't feel like you don't really have any way of exploring the culture there, but Ala Mhigo is a poor example of country for the player to visit, because its so blocked off. I get that it's war, and people may be hesitant to let warring strangers in, but to me this is just an excuse that could of easily been slowly worked on through the story a lot better. How hard is it to plop an inn, a few indoor shops, and slowly show the NPCs getting friendlier with you.

- So heavy in the story, so essential to the end plot of the first arc, but still no city state. Despite Little Ala Mhiigo existing, and such a huge impact of its crisis being seen in 2.0 city states. They have been hyping this place up, but still nope. Nothing.

Ala Mhigo is a waste, and its a sad one, because it really is beautiful, and has a charm going for it. :/ There is just no reason to visit there. It's time for some new Ala Mhigo content. I definitely want to see a variant/criterion dungeon or two from this place, the actual city open up, and maybe even a residential district. We NEED more content to make this place active. With all the heavy presence of the state in the story, it is a complete disservice to leave it so closed off, despite being able to tread through it. It's the same mistake FFXV made with the other cities. They just serve as backdrops for you to walk through as you go merry on your way to insert empire of numbered Final Fantasy game you are playing. SO BORING. They really need to write out that formula, and show MORE. Even other Final Fantasy games that did this like FFIX, and VI at least let you explore them a bit, and didn't completely make them empty. Even CLEYRA that was destroyed in FFIX has more going for it than the entirety of Ala Mhigo and the Quarter, AND IT WAS DESTROYED.

Square Enix has no excuse for this one. It was completely mishandled.

[Carin-Eri]

Have to admit, the story does fall down a bit here. It's like "let's liberate this ever-so important city... so we can forget about it once we have!"

[RitsukoSonoda]

Have to admit, the story does fall down a bit here. It's like "let's liberate this ever-so important city... so we can forget about it once we have!"

Is that any different than the "lets build this fabled weapon of legend... so we can discard it for a generic weapon once we find out there is a thing happening at this new place."

Games have always had their varying degrees of nonsense lol.

[Larirawiel]

They could make a new housing zone in Ala Mhigo.


Cheers

[SturmChurro]

Ala what now?

[Carin-Eri]

Is that any different than the "lets build this fabled weapon of legend... so we can discard it for a generic weapon once we find out there is a thing happening at this new place."

Games have always had their varying degrees of nonsense lol.

Well, that IS true....

Although I do still see where the OP is coming from. I mean, once Stormblood is done, it feels as if Ala Mhigo is too. There are no tribal quests based there, few side-quests, it doesn't seem like the higher-level job quests use the area (though haven't played all that many of those to be honest, so not 100% on that)

I don't know - it just feels as if, moreso than anywhere else, they've given us no reason to go back there.

[Jeeqbit]

One hub, but its not a main city state.

That was disappointing, but...

Ala Mhigo is blocked off completely. You cannot enter the city, and please don't tell me the quarter, or the dungeon counts. It barely does, because its not in the city proper.

Yes they do count. The dungeon is the bulk of the city, but the quarter is a major part of it. This is all clear if you fly high up and view it from above, or view it all from a distance from the other side.

But this is not the only situation SE does this. They do it all the time. It would be nice to be able to travel between The Lochs and Garlemald, but instead we have to enter the Ghimlyt Dark dungeon.

It would be nice to be able to travel up into the mountains beyond Azim Steppe, but you actually do this in Bardam's Mettle. It would be nice to be able to travel out of Azim Steppe's southwestern corner to The Burn, but it's actually a dungeon.

It would be nice to travel to some of the Islands or in the buildings in Azys Lla but some of these are actually dungeons. It would be nice to enter Saint Mociane's Arboretum but it's a dungeon. You see quite a pattern here...

I wish it were different and all the dungeons were also static zones that reflected events after the dungeon and were updated with quests, not just specifically Ala Mhigo.

Most of the towns don't let you in any of the buildings unless its ruined, or really special. Can't go inside shops, can't get to know the culture.

This is pretty common really in all places. Actually in most games even. For as many buildings as game developers account for, they usually don't account for all of them although there are some that go this extra mile. Usually pretty empty and boring if they do though. And pulling off a city that actually looks alive as if thousands of people live there has always been rare in games but maybe this will be better with Unreal 5.

Ala Mhigo is a waste, and its a sad one, because it really is beautiful, and has a charm going for it. :/ There is just no reason to visit there.

MSQ revisits there frequently for meetings long after Stormblood. But the real reason people still go there is to spawn Salt and Light and fight Ixion.

I definitely want to see a variant/criterion dungeon

Now that you mention it we probably will. But it is worth noting the entire history we got about it in various sidequests including the Shadowbringers trial series and the Endwalker role quests.

maybe even a residential district.

Now I'd love a residential district in so many places. Crystarium housing! Il Mheg housing! Sharlayan housing! There are a lot of ideas here. What about a housing district undersea in the Ruby Sea? But these ideas are too fast for SE to catch up with when it took them so long to do Ishgard housing, so we'll have to see which one they do next when they get round to one.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

I wished it got more of a highlight, but I did like the rebellion concept and I still like Lyse. Shame she isn't a Scion anymore.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

Would not be hard at all to put in a restoration questline there and have it change the further you get, like every single beast tribe, but as that requires the devs to do more than they already don’t want to, I see why it’s never going to happen.

[Ivtrix]

It’s great because we were able to dump lyse off and she never came back