Five years after the Calamity...

[LilaAquillina]

Hello!

Apologies if this has been posted/answered before.

I just finished The Rising event and one thing stuck out a bit.. the npcs mention it being 'Five years after the Calamity'. Is it still Five Years Later in game time? Even though it's the 3rd Anniversary and a lot has happened?

I understand that the event is available to newbies who haven't completed the main story line, but, it feels a bit wonky for it to forever be five years. Will the time ever change?

I also wished Momodi, Baderon, and Miounne would recognize me a bit more. After all we've gone through, it feels a bit off that they do not - the dialogue is the same even if you are a newbie.

That is all.

[Anonymoose]

Time in XIV is measured no less than three different ways, and not one is compatible with any other. Each time we try to explain it, it gets a little more precise, and though it's confusing at first, the dev. decisions are pretty logical.

The In-Game Clock
One year in clock-time is 18 days and 16 hours earth time. Forget "What year is it?", we should all be dead by now. Think of this as time relative to game mechanics. It keeps the world feeling alive, and semi-accurately reflects, say, how it takes "all day" to clear out a dungeon or "a hard day's work" to gather up some timber or "hours" of travel time.

The Lore-Time Bubble (aka The Simpsons Bubble)
Lore time passes, but it does not move. Even if you can prove that 5,000 days passed, the year does not change. It is, and will always be, 5 Seventh Umbral Era [into/also known as] 1 Seventh Astral Era.

This is a dilemma faced by a lot of MMOs. To allow everyone that joins the game, regardless of when they do, to experience the full story, there simply has to be a stoppage of time. Okay, not really a stoppage, but more of a time bubble in which a span of about a year is contained. This is why that for the duration of 1.0, Eorzea was in a perpetual 1572. Think of it as the same thing that’s happening in the Simpsons. 23 seasons gone and Lisa’s still 8, Maggie’s still a baby, and the gummy Venus still tastes oh, so sacrelicious. Pushing time along would also mean changing 1000s of lines of NPC dialogue, updating quests, webpages, etc. with every patch. Meaning it would take more than double the time to release updates, and I’m sure most people wouldn’t want to wait. In a book, movie, offline game, a strict timeline can be set without too many complications. In an online title, there are just too many variables, so we ask that you bear with our bending of space-time. It’s for the greater good!

The lore-time bubble expands ever outward, infinitely approaching but never actually reaching a new year. It's up to you how you wish to interpret that for your character. Perhaps, by the time the servers go dark, it's been one hells of a year for you. Perhaps your character "actually" spent decades walking around. It just can't be enforced upon anyone else. This is the canon time, and it keeps things working smoothly internally (less math, less mistakes, less time spent changing "It's been X years." every patch) and for players (who have a consistent understanding).

Real-World Time (aka Meta Time / aka Player Time)
Holidays take place within their own unique bubbles that are within but without Eorzean "hard-canon". Everything that happened in Eorzea happened within the sub-bubble, but not everything that happens within the sub-bubble has to happen in Eorzea.

Think Hildiband (which I joke as having taken place in The Manderville Bubble); Eorzean history is still true within the bubble, but could Hildibrand survive point-blank explosions to the face and multistory falls with nothing but a silly change of expression in a world where people are regularly devoured by raptors while picking pumpkins? Probably not. (Not to mention the primal Enkidu, who is technically a primal but not at all how primals work.) But that's an example of a sub-bubble being used for comedy, not for chronology.

Every year you step (back) into a holiday event's bubble, where real-world time is referred to as if true for everyone in Eorzea. This is the dev. team communicating with you, the player, and celebrating a holiday in-character. And it's especially true for The Rising, as the Wandering Minstrel is literally in-character Naoki Yoshida. Holiday events aren't the only place you'll find player time in motion; Gerolt frequently uses it to mock you for how much time you've put into your relic. In Kettle to the Mettle he even refers to the player time between the patch in which Jalzahn first appeared and the patch in which the quest takes place.

[LilaAquillina]

A thorough explanation! Thank you.

I suppose it would be a tall order to change it for everyone.

[Shadotterdan]

I still count the Hildibrand stories as canon and not in their own bubble. It's just Hildy is made of some strong stuff, I mean look at his parents. Yes most normal people would not be able to survive such events but haven't we done similar things? How many boss attacks should by all means render a whole platoon dead and yet there we stand none the worse for wear, maybe even using the /doze emote to show how little we care.

[TinyRedLeaf]

It feels a bit wonky for it to forever be five years. Will the time ever change?

So, as Anonymoose said, we Warriors of Light live in a time bubble. But a better way to imagine it is not as one big bubble, but rather a stream of bubbles instead, as nexas506 once described:

I love the time bubble concept, however, I feel like every patch/expansion exists within its own bubble. And each of those bubbles line up to make a bubble stream.

(1) (2.0)(2.1)(2.2)....(3.1)(3.2)

The amount of time you spent playing exists in a "patch bubble" and they like up to make a smoothly flowing time line.

Back to the original question, I like to think the main games (ARR and hw) span 6 months and every patch exists over the span of 1 month.
Calamity- ARR =5 years. Arr=6 months. 5 arr patches =5 months. Hw=6 months. 3 hw patches=3 months.

So you've been traveling around for 1 year 8 months. So the calamity would be 6 years 8 months ago.

P.S. I'm probably completely wrong about this. I just like theory crafting.

In short, we are, each and every one of us, caught in a different time bubble, relative to our individual progress through the content. It's up to each player to hand-wave away in-game text that's not consistent with the way he or she experienced the passage of time.

In other words, it's your own story. Make it up along the way, if you have to, so that it makes sense to you.

[Anonymoose]

I still count the Hildibrand stories as canon and not in their own bubble.

And that's completely fair! Oda-san himself has said that Hildibrand is as canon as each individual wants it to be, much like the one-year game-span, lol. I only prefer to "bubble things off" because it's easier to keep them separate from the rest of the game (because you wouldn't want to use things from an "exceptional" arc to understand the "hard canon"). For example, using Enkidu to understand primals in general is probably a bad idea.

a better way to imagine it is not as one big bubble, but rather a stream of bubbles instead

I actually agree with a good chunk of nexas506 refinements. Patches do take place in order. For example, in the Second Coil, Alisaie knows revelations from the first Crystal Tower installment (from Rammbroes, I suppose) regardless of whether or not you've actually done it. The only hiccup is when you attach cumulative time to it. Even in that quote, "one year and eight months later", the Battle of Silvertear Skies, when referred to in the present day, was not yet "sixteen years ago", for all the reasons stated above.

In other words, it's your own story. Make it up along the way, if you have to, so that it makes sense to you.

But that part is far more important. Far more.