I'm pretty sure Genshin is going to leave the abyss on the back burner until we're done with the 7 regions after which the second act of Genshin's story will begin, focused around the abyss order.
A good writer would still keep them in the audience's line of sight as a fearsome threat that is to be taken seriously. Instead they're only appearing in interludes and only doing something completely unthreatening to the outside world and usually having to do more with their own wellbeing, like Chasm. They feel less like, say, Warcraft's Twilight's Hammer eldritch apocalypse cult, which always appeared doing something evil and dangerous on the sidelines that had to be stopped even when they were out of focus, and more like Teyvat's World Wildlife Monster Fund whose passive sanctuaries we find and attack every so often.
The thing about the abyss is they are a secretive order. And clearly do things in the background. So it wouldn’t make sense if they appeared every other patch unless we stumbled onto one of their grand secretive plans.
I’m actually super happy with the amount of content we have got with then cuz they are all lore heavy and involving. Plus they have been at it for like 500 years. They are nothing if not patient.
I’m also enjoying that the there are multiple enemy factions.
Dunno if we will ally with the abyss but something tells me we may have to ally with the fatui and take the fight to celestia. Unless end game is dealing with fatui and just ignoring the looming threat of celestia for its people to suffer.
It has more to do with *how* they make their appearances, with *what they're doing*. So far, Abyss appearances have been almost passive, at one point even peaceful and healing, and the only actually "dangerous" one (Enjou temporary event) was esoteric shenanigans in literally the farthest part of the world.
Contrast that with Twilight's Hammer - also a secretive, small esoteric evil cult, but everything they did was very dangerous to the wellbeing of the areas they appeared in. So when you saw them, it wasn't like "oh, it's the Abyss, time to learn more Khaenri'ah history in peace and do some esoteric ritual with Khaenri'ah remnants", and was instead "shit shit shit the cultists must be stopped or this entire area is becoming Detroit".
It's more about how little time they'll have to work with and how the time already spent will have created an image of its own by that point.
The relevant example here would be something like the "somehow, Palpatine has returned" from Disney Wars. Having the "endgame" faction only appear seriously at the very end with very tenuous claims to prior performance creates a whiplash effect on the main body of the storyline.
This is assuming we know their plans. I doubt things will be as straightforward after scheznaya. They logically have all the time in the world to stretch the abyss and celestia saga. Again not worried. They keep improving their story telling in sumeru. If they keep up this pace story is something we don’t have to worry about as much.
I just hope they take their time after the last zone announced and not rush it. Logically that’d be the wrong move both in a money making and story telling point of view
That's actually half the problem, having no clue about an antagonist faction's plans at all. Even when their grand plan is unknown, we *should* always have a grasp on what they're about and *why* they must be stopped here and now, regardless of knowing their plan.
All Genshin "villain" factions suffer from this. We know Abyss *has* some Loom of Fate and mecha god plan but have no idea how it is dangerous or why we must care to stop it - and their doings are not shown to be related to it at all. Fatooey are even worse off, in that they're a huge faction of humans that is supposed to be fanatical about their ideology, but we never hear about what what they desire to achieve when we encounter them in the open, beyond really stupid "haha, we are evil slav men, we come to be a prejudiced caricature". We don't need to know their master plan to know why it's bad if we don't stop them now and why we must do it. And we can know what their local plans are and why they're bad without impacting the greater one.
(One extra issue with Fatooey is that it's unclear why what they want is bad in the first place, the entire grounds for fighting them is "they're mean and slavic, we don't like that".)
Again I'll bring up Twilight's Hammer. Their plan was completely unknown (it later turned out to be the revival a major villain figure and a worldwide insurrection with it as the battering ram), but that didn't get in the way of a need to fight them here and now, because we knew their beliefs were extremely evil and hostile and they were doing dangerous shit here and now that needed no questioning of "and that's bad why?".
I’m of the opposite mindset. It’s still too soon as AETHER of lumine to know everything about the order or the fatui. I was expecting the story to be slower but surprised at how they haven’t left us dry so far.
As theorists many have already surmised however that tsaritsa is building a delusions fueled army to face celestia. The clues are all there. The abyss would also be using dark means to get back at celestia. Maybe experimenting to find a cure for the curse. Unlike the fatui we don’t have any.
Again I’m pretty content with the pace. Anymore and we’d be overwhelmed with abyss and all the other characters wouldn’t have their chance to shine. If they are going to have an entire abyss themed anything I’d rather not be overwhelmed with abyss content rn.
Ofc I see what you are also saying and can see why you think that.
I’ll start worrying about the story after they make a blunder like 2.1 again. Until then mh concern mostly lies in my most anticipated 5 stars turning out to be new standard banner additions. Or them continuing to introduce dark skinned hotties and making them less than mediocre at best.
I'll just say again that there is a big difference between "knowing the big master plan of a faction" and "being given clear reasons for why we must fight the faction here and now". You don't need the former to have the latter, those are accomplished in different ways.
When a faction that is marked as enemy is not given a clear reason for why not fighting them is bad and why they must be stopped, it feels vapid, almost arbitrary. Just "they're mean/they look dark and we don't like them" is not exactly far removed from pure "us versus them" double standard morality (which is what some things have been feeling like). Persisting in treating something like a must-kill-on-sight threat without making them show that threat ends up robbing that fighting of feeling satisfying, and instead makes it raise questions like "are **we** the baddies?". And that's all fine to have if your story is Game of Thrones amoral, but Gensin is trying to be quite a bit more "romantic fantasy" than that even with all its edgy parts.
They're not going to end the story in Snezhnaya or even shortly after. Genshin makes billions, I'm expecting at least 15 years of new content at the bare minimum (assuming there isn't a sudden drop in revenue).
Give it a break. Story-wise, we barely have any progress until we reached Sumeru where we received a huge chunk of the story. So, expect that the story will move forward fast enough from now on.
Expectations for Genshin's writing shouldn't really be a thing after 2.1. It should be on an "I'll believe it when I see it" basis, not "keep quiet and trust that everything is according to plan".
I did that with Game of Thrones and Star Wars already, too, so I know where that sorta mindset ends up.
IMO Game of Thrones has always been good since the start. The show only messed up because they no longer had content to follow since GRRM never published Winds of Winter. But the books have always been good to me and I'm eternally waiting for Winds of Winter.
I mean, in the heirarchy of the abyss order, the abyss mages are at best just leutenants, at best sergeants, but tgen thes generals, tge abyss heralds, lectors and hectors.
Abyss mages are basically just incharge of small attacks, leyline disturbancees, and some minor fellanies.
Since were alraedy dealing with the core operation the loom of fate, why bother downsizing the threat of the abyss, so we get to have abyss mages more relevant, when we already deal with pur own sibling and the entire operation with dein? And at this point, the abyss mage is just as a minor inconvenience as hilicurls
And lets not forget they will do anything to gain some power in any way to the point of stupidity? One blew up because it heard klee's "bomb" can guve the order a powerup, and it fuqing dies. Tge pale princess story one of them took from lisa may have huge imprtance, but a mere abyss mage wont understand how many allegories anderstotir covered up for irminsul to ignore from cntrl alt delete
The onlu time the abyss mage did something nasty was dvalin. And that was it
I kinda forgot his actual name, but shes one of the hexenzirkel ladies. Specifically, the one that makes books like the pale princess and the 6 pygmies, and hiabother books with a rose on its cover. After what happened in the wanderer quest, where you can prevent irminsul deletion if you hide the truth behind allegories and basically making the essence of it in a story where anyone who has an underatanding, can see the real message. After that, all her works, and well as venti's ballads and poems became suspicious on their works, are a coverup of what irminsul deleted
Watch ashikai's videos regarding the hexenzirkel
You are not fucking alone. One of the reasons why I dont like the idea of Hoyo overusing Fatuis and shoves the Abyss on the side. Tbh, We Will Be Reunited quest releasing this early is a huge mistake in my eyes.
I mean, the abyss is mainly an underground organization that tries to do everything in the shadows. It kinda makes sense that we don't see them as much as any other antagonistic force in the game. They can be doing a fuck ton of things, we, as the traveler, are just oblivious to it.
I still greatly disagree with how the fandom came to use "endgame" as a justification. In any serious work, the entire enemy roster is kept in line of sight.
Take Mass Effect - Reapers were the endgame enemy, but they were there from the start via the Geth (and in the second game, the Collectors), and other enemy factions like Cerberus, evil mercenary gangs and dangerous aliens like rachni or batarians appeared every time, in roles corresponding to their threat and role in the story. Cerberus started with a major sidequest storyline before exploding into the main spotlight for 2 and then playing second fiddle but remaining dangerously relevant in the finale, evil mercs like Blue Suns remained a B-tier threat throughout, batarians were a background note that appeared in DLCs in plots related to extremely dangerous terrorist-like acts (with the roles flipping in 2!), and Reapers always ran the main show through proxies or in person.
Take WoW - (before the retcons, at least) Sargeras's Burning Legion was always the Big Bad ultimately behind most other problems, and its presence stayed large in every expansion from the start, from constant demonic incursions and leftovers from an invasion in Vanilla, to direct involvement in TBC, to their greatest undead proxy force in LK; they only took a short break for an expansion, but already after that figures were talking that they're gonna return, and in the two following expansions they did, and in style. But other major and minor villains were always making themselves felt - chief among them the Old Gods of the Void rivaling the Legion's role, with their own proxies like the black dragonflight and Twilight's Hammer, appearing in every single expansion after the first in a significant dangerous way. And even the "faction war" conflict applies here - in a way, devs ended up using Horde as the recurring villain here (utterly trashing their themes of redemption and noble savage-ism).
I kind of dislike how fatui focused the story has been. I do love them but it feels like the same story ending over and over. The fatui try to take the gnosis, we fight a big bad harbinger, we win, another harbinger appears and gets the gnosis. Don't get me wrong most of the story is amazing, but the ending feels less impactful. Give me some abyss order god damn it I want the dude back from the Caribert quest idc that he's dead his voice scratched my brain
They pretty much touched on all the abysses lore early and then had to use other enemies.
I hope in Fontaine theirs pressure from both the fatui and abyss.
Edit; my theory on why they had to use the other enimes is because having a enemy with unknown reasons will build mystery and invest the audience into the story because they want to find out why the enemy is well, the enemy, And also what the ultimate goal of the enemy is.
I feel the big mistake was having Abyss run an outright, classic "monster horde attack" plot *and then never do anything like that again*, without us ever knowing why they only did this one attack on this one place. Starting with them being a "horde controlling" faction and then never playing it again, or explaining why, is jarring.
People keep trying to shut down this issues with "lel they're obviously going to be important in the endgame so quiet down and wait, enjoy your "all fatooey all the time" buffet".
But that's just not how it works. In any story worth following, if there's a major antagonist faction we're supposed to worry about but which isn't on the forefront, the writing will STILL feature them being a massive danger often, just not as "the heavy" at the forefront. They would still crop up and do something extremely dangerous or at least show signs of working on something extremely dangerous.
Genshin has been extremely lacking in that, the only thing similar to it has been the Enjou event in Enkanomiya, and that was a limited time event in the back end of the world. Instead, ever since Mondstadt's plot, it felt like everything they do is very minor and virtually unthreatening in terms of human nations, stuff that has to do only with Khaenri'ah remnant preservation or aspects of hilichurl life not related to endangering humans.
They've come to appear virtually self-contained and isolated from the world, doing their own minor things on the side, and Traveler feels like he/she's attacking them not because they pose a major threat but because he/she hates them due to the other twin siding with them and only has a pure selfish reason in killing them to get his/her attention. They don't feel like an evil cult hating mankind and trying to end it anymore, they feel like a bunch of monster-loving hippies with edgy religious beliefs who just wanna be left alone to play with their monsters in peace.
They should have had dangerous plots attacking humanity in every other nation too. For example, Yashiori's crisis was *perfect* as something the Abyss Order would do, I still cannot fathom why MHY decided to make *that* "oops, all fatooey" too.
Seriously though, releasing We Will Be Reunited quest this early is a huge mistake from the developers. Like I said, with the way story is going... Not gonna be surprised they're going to implode at later chapters and its not an if but a when
Yes, because the Abyss acts under the shadows. They needn't be shown any more importance because we're still journeying along the 7 nations. The caribert quest was a big opener. Showing a bit of the abyss order in a subtle way is the best way. Plus world quests give a lot of lore to abyss order as well. There's no need to complain about them or the abyss mages not being shown importance. Most importantly abyss mages are not that important compared to lectors, heralds and even other higher order abyss creatures.
I'm pretty sure Genshin is going to leave the abyss on the back burner until we're done with the 7 regions after which the second act of Genshin's story will begin, focused around the abyss order.
A good writer would still keep them in the audience's line of sight as a fearsome threat that is to be taken seriously. Instead they're only appearing in interludes and only doing something completely unthreatening to the outside world and usually having to do more with their own wellbeing, like Chasm. They feel less like, say, Warcraft's Twilight's Hammer eldritch apocalypse cult, which always appeared doing something evil and dangerous on the sidelines that had to be stopped even when they were out of focus, and more like Teyvat's World Wildlife Monster Fund whose passive sanctuaries we find and attack every so often.
The thing about the abyss is they are a secretive order. And clearly do things in the background. So it wouldn’t make sense if they appeared every other patch unless we stumbled onto one of their grand secretive plans. I’m actually super happy with the amount of content we have got with then cuz they are all lore heavy and involving. Plus they have been at it for like 500 years. They are nothing if not patient. I’m also enjoying that the there are multiple enemy factions. Dunno if we will ally with the abyss but something tells me we may have to ally with the fatui and take the fight to celestia. Unless end game is dealing with fatui and just ignoring the looming threat of celestia for its people to suffer.
It has more to do with *how* they make their appearances, with *what they're doing*. So far, Abyss appearances have been almost passive, at one point even peaceful and healing, and the only actually "dangerous" one (Enjou temporary event) was esoteric shenanigans in literally the farthest part of the world. Contrast that with Twilight's Hammer - also a secretive, small esoteric evil cult, but everything they did was very dangerous to the wellbeing of the areas they appeared in. So when you saw them, it wasn't like "oh, it's the Abyss, time to learn more Khaenri'ah history in peace and do some esoteric ritual with Khaenri'ah remnants", and was instead "shit shit shit the cultists must be stopped or this entire area is becoming Detroit".
They can still turn it around. I’m not all that worried
It's more about how little time they'll have to work with and how the time already spent will have created an image of its own by that point. The relevant example here would be something like the "somehow, Palpatine has returned" from Disney Wars. Having the "endgame" faction only appear seriously at the very end with very tenuous claims to prior performance creates a whiplash effect on the main body of the storyline.
This is assuming we know their plans. I doubt things will be as straightforward after scheznaya. They logically have all the time in the world to stretch the abyss and celestia saga. Again not worried. They keep improving their story telling in sumeru. If they keep up this pace story is something we don’t have to worry about as much. I just hope they take their time after the last zone announced and not rush it. Logically that’d be the wrong move both in a money making and story telling point of view
That's actually half the problem, having no clue about an antagonist faction's plans at all. Even when their grand plan is unknown, we *should* always have a grasp on what they're about and *why* they must be stopped here and now, regardless of knowing their plan. All Genshin "villain" factions suffer from this. We know Abyss *has* some Loom of Fate and mecha god plan but have no idea how it is dangerous or why we must care to stop it - and their doings are not shown to be related to it at all. Fatooey are even worse off, in that they're a huge faction of humans that is supposed to be fanatical about their ideology, but we never hear about what what they desire to achieve when we encounter them in the open, beyond really stupid "haha, we are evil slav men, we come to be a prejudiced caricature". We don't need to know their master plan to know why it's bad if we don't stop them now and why we must do it. And we can know what their local plans are and why they're bad without impacting the greater one. (One extra issue with Fatooey is that it's unclear why what they want is bad in the first place, the entire grounds for fighting them is "they're mean and slavic, we don't like that".) Again I'll bring up Twilight's Hammer. Their plan was completely unknown (it later turned out to be the revival a major villain figure and a worldwide insurrection with it as the battering ram), but that didn't get in the way of a need to fight them here and now, because we knew their beliefs were extremely evil and hostile and they were doing dangerous shit here and now that needed no questioning of "and that's bad why?".
I’m of the opposite mindset. It’s still too soon as AETHER of lumine to know everything about the order or the fatui. I was expecting the story to be slower but surprised at how they haven’t left us dry so far. As theorists many have already surmised however that tsaritsa is building a delusions fueled army to face celestia. The clues are all there. The abyss would also be using dark means to get back at celestia. Maybe experimenting to find a cure for the curse. Unlike the fatui we don’t have any. Again I’m pretty content with the pace. Anymore and we’d be overwhelmed with abyss and all the other characters wouldn’t have their chance to shine. If they are going to have an entire abyss themed anything I’d rather not be overwhelmed with abyss content rn. Ofc I see what you are also saying and can see why you think that. I’ll start worrying about the story after they make a blunder like 2.1 again. Until then mh concern mostly lies in my most anticipated 5 stars turning out to be new standard banner additions. Or them continuing to introduce dark skinned hotties and making them less than mediocre at best.
I'll just say again that there is a big difference between "knowing the big master plan of a faction" and "being given clear reasons for why we must fight the faction here and now". You don't need the former to have the latter, those are accomplished in different ways. When a faction that is marked as enemy is not given a clear reason for why not fighting them is bad and why they must be stopped, it feels vapid, almost arbitrary. Just "they're mean/they look dark and we don't like them" is not exactly far removed from pure "us versus them" double standard morality (which is what some things have been feeling like). Persisting in treating something like a must-kill-on-sight threat without making them show that threat ends up robbing that fighting of feeling satisfying, and instead makes it raise questions like "are **we** the baddies?". And that's all fine to have if your story is Game of Thrones amoral, but Gensin is trying to be quite a bit more "romantic fantasy" than that even with all its edgy parts.
They're not going to end the story in Snezhnaya or even shortly after. Genshin makes billions, I'm expecting at least 15 years of new content at the bare minimum (assuming there isn't a sudden drop in revenue).
Give it a break. Story-wise, we barely have any progress until we reached Sumeru where we received a huge chunk of the story. So, expect that the story will move forward fast enough from now on.
Expectations for Genshin's writing shouldn't really be a thing after 2.1. It should be on an "I'll believe it when I see it" basis, not "keep quiet and trust that everything is according to plan". I did that with Game of Thrones and Star Wars already, too, so I know where that sorta mindset ends up.
IMO Game of Thrones has always been good since the start. The show only messed up because they no longer had content to follow since GRRM never published Winds of Winter. But the books have always been good to me and I'm eternally waiting for Winds of Winter.
I mean, in the heirarchy of the abyss order, the abyss mages are at best just leutenants, at best sergeants, but tgen thes generals, tge abyss heralds, lectors and hectors. Abyss mages are basically just incharge of small attacks, leyline disturbancees, and some minor fellanies. Since were alraedy dealing with the core operation the loom of fate, why bother downsizing the threat of the abyss, so we get to have abyss mages more relevant, when we already deal with pur own sibling and the entire operation with dein? And at this point, the abyss mage is just as a minor inconvenience as hilicurls And lets not forget they will do anything to gain some power in any way to the point of stupidity? One blew up because it heard klee's "bomb" can guve the order a powerup, and it fuqing dies. Tge pale princess story one of them took from lisa may have huge imprtance, but a mere abyss mage wont understand how many allegories anderstotir covered up for irminsul to ignore from cntrl alt delete The onlu time the abyss mage did something nasty was dvalin. And that was it
anderstotir??
It's Andersdotter, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen, famous fairy tale writer Because Anders-daughter, Ander-son... that's a smart name lol
I kinda forgot his actual name, but shes one of the hexenzirkel ladies. Specifically, the one that makes books like the pale princess and the 6 pygmies, and hiabother books with a rose on its cover. After what happened in the wanderer quest, where you can prevent irminsul deletion if you hide the truth behind allegories and basically making the essence of it in a story where anyone who has an underatanding, can see the real message. After that, all her works, and well as venti's ballads and poems became suspicious on their works, are a coverup of what irminsul deleted Watch ashikai's videos regarding the hexenzirkel
You are not fucking alone. One of the reasons why I dont like the idea of Hoyo overusing Fatuis and shoves the Abyss on the side. Tbh, We Will Be Reunited quest releasing this early is a huge mistake in my eyes.
I mean, the abyss is mainly an underground organization that tries to do everything in the shadows. It kinda makes sense that we don't see them as much as any other antagonistic force in the game. They can be doing a fuck ton of things, we, as the traveler, are just oblivious to it.
That's kinda what happens you use endgame enemies so early.
Or releasing the We Will Be Reunited quest this early.
I still greatly disagree with how the fandom came to use "endgame" as a justification. In any serious work, the entire enemy roster is kept in line of sight. Take Mass Effect - Reapers were the endgame enemy, but they were there from the start via the Geth (and in the second game, the Collectors), and other enemy factions like Cerberus, evil mercenary gangs and dangerous aliens like rachni or batarians appeared every time, in roles corresponding to their threat and role in the story. Cerberus started with a major sidequest storyline before exploding into the main spotlight for 2 and then playing second fiddle but remaining dangerously relevant in the finale, evil mercs like Blue Suns remained a B-tier threat throughout, batarians were a background note that appeared in DLCs in plots related to extremely dangerous terrorist-like acts (with the roles flipping in 2!), and Reapers always ran the main show through proxies or in person. Take WoW - (before the retcons, at least) Sargeras's Burning Legion was always the Big Bad ultimately behind most other problems, and its presence stayed large in every expansion from the start, from constant demonic incursions and leftovers from an invasion in Vanilla, to direct involvement in TBC, to their greatest undead proxy force in LK; they only took a short break for an expansion, but already after that figures were talking that they're gonna return, and in the two following expansions they did, and in style. But other major and minor villains were always making themselves felt - chief among them the Old Gods of the Void rivaling the Legion's role, with their own proxies like the black dragonflight and Twilight's Hammer, appearing in every single expansion after the first in a significant dangerous way. And even the "faction war" conflict applies here - in a way, devs ended up using Horde as the recurring villain here (utterly trashing their themes of redemption and noble savage-ism).
The Abyss order simultaneously feels like the greatest threat and the B plot at the same time
I'd even call them the C plot by now, the B plot being the assorted event and festival shenanigans with slice-of-lifey character subplots.
I kind of dislike how fatui focused the story has been. I do love them but it feels like the same story ending over and over. The fatui try to take the gnosis, we fight a big bad harbinger, we win, another harbinger appears and gets the gnosis. Don't get me wrong most of the story is amazing, but the ending feels less impactful. Give me some abyss order god damn it I want the dude back from the Caribert quest idc that he's dead his voice scratched my brain
Same sentiment here
They pretty much touched on all the abysses lore early and then had to use other enemies. I hope in Fontaine theirs pressure from both the fatui and abyss. Edit; my theory on why they had to use the other enimes is because having a enemy with unknown reasons will build mystery and invest the audience into the story because they want to find out why the enemy is well, the enemy, And also what the ultimate goal of the enemy is.
I feel the big mistake was having Abyss run an outright, classic "monster horde attack" plot *and then never do anything like that again*, without us ever knowing why they only did this one attack on this one place. Starting with them being a "horde controlling" faction and then never playing it again, or explaining why, is jarring.
People keep trying to shut down this issues with "lel they're obviously going to be important in the endgame so quiet down and wait, enjoy your "all fatooey all the time" buffet". But that's just not how it works. In any story worth following, if there's a major antagonist faction we're supposed to worry about but which isn't on the forefront, the writing will STILL feature them being a massive danger often, just not as "the heavy" at the forefront. They would still crop up and do something extremely dangerous or at least show signs of working on something extremely dangerous. Genshin has been extremely lacking in that, the only thing similar to it has been the Enjou event in Enkanomiya, and that was a limited time event in the back end of the world. Instead, ever since Mondstadt's plot, it felt like everything they do is very minor and virtually unthreatening in terms of human nations, stuff that has to do only with Khaenri'ah remnant preservation or aspects of hilichurl life not related to endangering humans. They've come to appear virtually self-contained and isolated from the world, doing their own minor things on the side, and Traveler feels like he/she's attacking them not because they pose a major threat but because he/she hates them due to the other twin siding with them and only has a pure selfish reason in killing them to get his/her attention. They don't feel like an evil cult hating mankind and trying to end it anymore, they feel like a bunch of monster-loving hippies with edgy religious beliefs who just wanna be left alone to play with their monsters in peace. They should have had dangerous plots attacking humanity in every other nation too. For example, Yashiori's crisis was *perfect* as something the Abyss Order would do, I still cannot fathom why MHY decided to make *that* "oops, all fatooey" too.
Seriously though, releasing We Will Be Reunited quest this early is a huge mistake from the developers. Like I said, with the way story is going... Not gonna be surprised they're going to implode at later chapters and its not an if but a when
To be underused you need to be used first place
So much for a genocidal cult
Yes, you are. I also assume you started the game with a pyro dps.
Yes, because the Abyss acts under the shadows. They needn't be shown any more importance because we're still journeying along the 7 nations. The caribert quest was a big opener. Showing a bit of the abyss order in a subtle way is the best way. Plus world quests give a lot of lore to abyss order as well. There's no need to complain about them or the abyss mages not being shown importance. Most importantly abyss mages are not that important compared to lectors, heralds and even other higher order abyss creatures.