A MSQ timeline/calendar is needed.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

That's nonsense and everybody knows it. You could make a case for 4-5 years, but 1 is nonsense and no writer worth their salt will ever accept that time frame, especially when in HW there was a woman who ran off to Idyllshire with a man and ended up getting pregnant before eventually giving birth (I believe that was over the span of 3.0 to 3.3). That alone implies the end of 3.0 to 3.3 is at least a year.

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There's a line, and I'm trying to find it again, in a Stormblood quests that references an event in ARR and states it happened 1 year prior. So the real timeline from 2.0 till now is probably 2 years at most.

Dunno what's going on with the pregnancy, except none of the races are human, so maybe pregnancy lasts less than 9 months? Or it's also possible that she was already pregnant when she left with him? Or even just time is all Jeremy Beremy in this game.

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Originally Posted by Wanzzo

Oh, and another thing to add about what I said before, at some point, they made clear that the only ones that care about the precise amount in the passage of time is the Garleans. Eorzea kinda lack the necessity of count each second or mark exactly the dates for their milestone points in their History. Even when they chose you to be the envoy to invite the other countries to the ceremony about Carteneau "five years ago" they never said a specific date that mark the 5 years. It's all an aproximate thing.

At some point, I think in ARR, a garlean boy creates a "device to measure the passage of time" in a flashback. Do you know who is it? :) Our beloved young boy Cid (I think it's in the Praetorium netflix series cutscene).

So, clocks and precision in time is not a common thing for eorzeans anyways. If you want to play considering lore, just take this into consideration ;)

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Everyday Eorzeans certainly use calendars at the very least. You can see it when you start up a new character and we know the years when almost every event happened throughout the 6th Astral Era. The days themselves were revealed in an interview to be named after the FFXI names of the week - one day for every element, 8 days a week, 32 days a month, 12 months a year.

We also have plenty of different types of clock furnishings so they’re at least around. Certain NPCs like the skywatchers and the GATE attendants also know the time by the hour. I think that extends to the ocean fishing NPCs too. In 1.0 that extended to the boats and airships which left on a schedule.

Considering the long voyages some of these ships take across the world, they would also need clocks in order to accurately gauge their longitude, so sailors should be very familiar.

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

I cannot for the life of me recall the source, but I recall that ARR - EW all takes place in about a year. Some of the expansions no more than two weeks apart.

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Whatever source that was, it was no official source. The developers take great pains to not nail down exact times. We know time passes, but it is deliberately very vague just how much time has passed.

My personal guesstimate is that not less than one year has passed from the start of ARR to the (current) end of EW, and not more than six years.
Probably around three years from start to now - but that could easily be a year off in either direction.

Just gonna leave this here

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post4975658

I do remember hearing somewhere they are intentionally vague about the passage of time because they don't want to commit to ages and calendars for these kinds of things. I understand it but also feel that it does leave us to kind of feel like everything is happening in rapid succession and that the relationships we are supposed to have with a lot of these characters feels rushed as a result.

I would like an official time line, but I get why they don't do it. Personally I just wish they stopped specifying "Five years since the Calamity" Stop putting that as a hard number, it breaks my brain every time. Just say in the years since the Calamity and everyone can just fill in there own headcanon on how long its actually been.

I hope eventually post whatever they decide is the real endpoint and nothing up coming could get in the way, then they sit down and put to paper an offical timeline for the story.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Let me put it in a way you can understand. If we go under the assumption that ARR happened in around a month or two, that you trust these people enough to throw your life away for them? That one of their deaths (Moenbryda) badly effects you when you've barely known them a week or two? Realism or not, you're not going to do something like that for somebody you barely know, that isn't long enough for bonds to set in.

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Not everyone needs to know someone for "long enough" before they're willing to help them – it's pretty clear that we're the sort who will leap to anyone's aid at a moment's notice, and in any case, we're caught up in a threat to our homeland if not the entire world.

Also, the potency of Moenbryda's death has never been about how much it affects our own character, but how much it clearly affects those who have known her longer.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

It was stated by Urianger at one point that he didn't get his growth spurt until he was 20. Could be possible that the twins are late bloomers on the growth spurt.

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20 is normal for Elezen according to the lorebook, long before it was mentioned in-game. They're slightly longer-lived than the other races who have a human lifespan, apparently by ageing slower overall rather than reaching a greater physical age.

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

I cannot for the life of me recall the source, but I recall that ARR - EW all takes place in about a year. Some of the expansions no more than two weeks apart.

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If it was an official source, then it was probably the devs being flippant about the time bubble logic, and either (if direct) you misunderstood or (if secondhand) somebody else did and relayed it as fact.

Everything allegedly takes place inside the one calendar year, but there are unquestionably a few years' worth of time squeezed into that year, and more will continue to pile in for as long as the game continues.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Considering the twins' ages has been brought up a few times in ShB and EW, that might be hinting at something. My pet theory is that they'll be aged up a little to go with the graphics updates promised for 7.0, but I have no evidence for that, just speculation.

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The graphics update isn't going to exclusively affect new content though – it's not going to form some kind of dividing line where the characters shift from one state to another.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

GW2 uses years for this exact reason. You don't need to know "Oh this happened in X month of this year," just that it happened in that year. Example, they could have ARR's starting year mentioned, then mention certain important story things that happened that year, such as how 1577 is when the Warrior of Light comes to Eorzea, have the year mentioned for when Crystal Tower storyline happens in, when the Domans fled to Eorzea, etc. Not months, years they happened.

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Measuring in years is exactly what the FFXIV team are trying to avoid doing.

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Originally Posted by Wanzzo

At some point, I think in ARR, a garlean boy creates a "device to measure the passage of time" in a flashback. Do you know who is it? :) Our beloved young boy Cid (I think it's in the Praetorium netflix series cutscene).

So, clocks and precision in time is not a common thing for eorzeans anyways. If you want to play considering lore, just take this into consideration ;)

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The basic suggestion of clocks being more common in Garlemald is there, but you're misremembering the rest, to my memory at least.

I believe you're thinking of this quest, where Cid (still amnesiac) repairs a broken timepiece:
http://garlandtools.org/db/#quest/66408

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ELUNED
Never before have I seen such a queer device. You say that it measures the passing of time?
Mayhap they are more common in Garlemald. I am given to understand that its cities are filled with all manner of amazing technologies.

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Still, that's concept-of-Garlemald versus Drybone, not necessarily the major cities. The Ul'dahn goldsmiths might be rather more familiar with the concept.

It does seem on reading a lot of these sources/interviews the devs are very much against having time measured. Fear of actually having to do work and keep track of the story in a logical manner. Who wants to do that? Just fun nonsensical adventures with no attempt at a cohesive timeline!

What in the hell happened to good writing?

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

It does seem on reading a lot of these sources/interviews the devs are very much against having time measured. Fear of actually having to do work and keep track of the story in a logical manner. Who wants to do that? Just fun nonsensical adventures with no attempt at a cohesive timeline!

What in the hell happened to good writing?

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Avoiding tangible dates on events is not the same thing as avoiding having the story logically progress from event A to B to C.

MSQ is linear; side events clearly happen at designated points in the story, usually corresponding to MSQ of the same level.

That's really all you need to know to keep the plot in sensical order.

If there was a timeline. They would not only have to age the twins. But also every character in the game. That seems a lot of work. But that’s just my opinion.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Everyday Eorzeans certainly use calendars at the very least. You can see it when you start up a new character and we know the years when almost every event happened throughout the 6th Astral Era. The days themselves were revealed in an interview to be named after the FFXI names of the week - one day for every element, 8 days a week, 32 days a month, 12 months a year.

We also have plenty of different types of clock furnishings so they’re at least around. Certain NPCs like the skywatchers and the GATE attendants also know the time by the hour. I think that extends to the ocean fishing NPCs too. In 1.0 that extended to the boats and airships which left on a schedule.

Considering the long voyages some of these ships take across the world, they would also need clocks in order to accurately gauge their longitude, so sailors should be very familiar.

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Yep, you are true here!

For scheduled stuff, there is a precision for things to happen in Eorzea. But that doesn't mean they will stick to the same precision when talking about specific dates of events. Day x, month y, year z for every event. It's more like "in the year z..." or "it's now almost z years since..." Maybe, in some old books we can see more precision in this. Like the Aetherostronomic thing the Ishgardians have at Coerthas. maybe there, all things are very very precise! But, out of there, not so much...

All what I meant was: eaorzean people are not controled by the clock (like we are in real life). Beside all the use of clocks for scheduled stuff (like transportations, ships, GATES, etc), for the regular track for especific dates of events, they use aproximated times, not a very precise one. That's all that I've said. I never said they don't use clocks, just not that often for everything in their lives (like we do irl).

They have a calendar, yep. But they not stick to it for every single thing (as we do in real life). The precision of time is like a "new stuff" for them like if they are living in a transition or a mix of cultures. The garleans, on the other hand, seems to use this precision more often, more daily. Maybe because they lack the connection with the aether and need to control more their own time using transportations to be a more efficient society.

In a way, the use of the clock is like real life transition: as we relate more to technological progress we depend more on the control of our time. And when we don't need that much technology, we could stick to a more wider view of the passage of time, marking "the older days" of our culture since progress is related to technological evolutions. Eorzea seems to be in between moments having some advances, but a culture not so related to the precision of their passage of time... yet.

They have track of their time in a daily basis, sure. But this track is not as precise as the garlean ones for historical events outside their books.

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

I think it's best not to think more about these things than the writers themselves are, but that's just me.

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You see it in almost every area of the game, I agree. No point over analysing anything when they'll just take a sledgehammer to it when the next patch drops anyway.

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Originally Posted by fmonkey13

If there was a timeline. They would not only have to age the twins. But also every character in the game. That seems a lot of work. But that’s just my opinion.

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GW2 also deals with that. Characters have the costume changes, but do not age much, as the vast majority of them are either other races that aren't human (and thus don't follow human aging rules much) or are between the ages of 20 and 40, so any aging is miniscule in the looks department. For here, that can work for the majority of the Scions save for the twins...which is why I hope they give them a growth spurt the next time we see them.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

There needs to be some way of telling how much time has passed in game from first entering the starter cities to killing titan, to killing despair itself.

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I kind of would like an official timeline, the best you will ever get is a fan created unofficial one on a wiki: https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki...y_XIV_timeline

The past, and 1.0 to 2.0 all very well documented. the Period of time from your first trip to a city until the end of Endwalker 6.0 is unclear but no more than 2 years. The main reason for them not wanting an official timeline is the Twins. They start the Game between 15 and 16, they are currently between 16 and 17. The dev team has made it clear they don't want to age the twins any time soon. They have also hinted a few times that Elezen don't fully mature as adults untin their early twenty somethings, but that is not officially in game, but might be in the encyclopedia.

so the timeline is basically how long would a playthrough be IRL and apply it to the game world, with a couple continent spanning trips that might take a week or two.


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Quick Edit: This is how I see the Timeline and events. 2.0 to where we are 1 year.

WOL Timeline

FFXIV 1.0 Events take place over a couple of weeks Ends in the 7th Calamity

Sponge Bob voice " Five Years Later"

FFXIV ARR 2.0

Month 1, week 1

Arrive in City, Become adventurer, get noticed by a Scion of the 7th dawn

Month 1, week 2

Visit the three cities, Dungeons, and first Primal

Month 1, week 3

More Primals and dungeons, and stuff, become reconnized as someone special

Month 1, week 4

MSQ Dungeons (Now made better)

Month 2

Raids, side quests, crafting etc

Month 3

2.1 to the gates of Ishgard

Month 4

FFSIV Heavensward 3.0

Month 5

3.1 to the end of Heavensward content

Month 6, week 1

FFXIV Stormblood, Ala Mhigo

Month 6, week 2

Travel time, Eorzea to the East

Month 6, week 3

Events in the East

Month 6, week 4

The rest of 4.0 content

Month 7

4.1 to the event that starts Shadowbringer

Month 8

All of 5.0 to the start of Endwalker (Yes the entire expansion fits in a one month span easily)

Month 9 ((Endwalker is probably a 3 month event))

Endawalker Opening Act

Month 10

Middle part of Endwalker

Month 11

Final Act of Endwalker

Month 12

Endawlker Patch Content

Just wanted to add an update, because I really prefer sticking to canon timelines when writing fanfic lol.
That when Tataru talks to you to give you your Island (I'm pretty sure this is when she says it) she says it's been a little under a decade since you've met.
Also, during the newer Hildy quest when you're in Radz-at-Han again after EW, Hildy's assistant (cant remember her name atm) says it's been a year since you last saw each other in Kugane.
From what I've read on these forums and seen in game, I'm thinking ARR is prob the biggest chunk of time (3-4 yrs?) and then the rest are prob like 1 yr to 1.5 except for SHB oc.

Other notes, that I havent confirmed yet but;
In ARR I swear Minfilia or someone said that the banquet would be in "3 moons time" or something when u finish helping Ishgard with something.
And in HW I swore someone said there was another 3 moons time, or a few moons time thing for the MSQ. Like the Peace Conference or something?

The timeline is really weird and makes no functional sense.

I think most of the expansion's stories (3.0, 4.0, 5.0 and 6.) take place over about a week each...

Not likely considering in Stormblood the boat trip to Kugane takes at least 3 weeks.

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But then they wouldn't be able to justify why the twins never grew up.

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They have grown up. What YOU fail to realise is that Elezen have an extended lifespan, close to 110 years..or longer. Yes they still look young, thats to be expected of a race that doesnt necessarily LOOK their age.

I am 61 this year...I have been mistaken for a man of 35.

Its even funnier you say this when, if you apply that to Viera, they dont look like they "grow up", yet that young looking Viera you say doesnt "grow up".................can be 130 years old.

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

They have grown up. What YOU fail to realise is that Elezen have an extended lifespan, close to 110 years..or longer. Yes they still look young, thats to be expected of a race that doesnt necessarily LOOK their age.

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Hilda's half-brother is full-blooded Elezen and is 20-years-old, using an adult Elezen model. There's a bunch of 21-23-year-old Elezen using the adult model as well. That's probably just past the limit we would reasonable expect the twins to look young. There are 16-year-old Hyur using adult models so while there is a difference in how fast the two races age, it's not a super large one and they'd still be expected to reach their adult height before their 20s.

The devs themselves said that they're not keeping track of time so we're not likely to ever get clarification beyond a small handful of events like the couple of months it took us to get to Kugane or event NPCs remembering us from last year. I believe it was mentioned that it's been at least 1 year since the failed rebellion in Doma that made Yugiri leave with refugees that was a result of the First Garlean Civil War caused by Solus's death, which happened sometime during ARR.

No matter how you write your own interpretation of the timeline into your RP or your fan fic, you'll find someone who disagrees with you so it's probably best to not touch on it if it can be avoided or to be vague if it can't.

The simplest version of the time bubble concept is: the devs have stated that the passage of time will not make sense, and they will not attempt to resolve this. If you want to establish your own concept of how long it has been between events, you cannot use the characters' ages as a reference, because they are not officially ageing.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

I need the timeline to better enjoy the story.

I WANT to better enjoy the story. The timeline/clock is part of the necessary path to get that.

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No timeline is the same reason as they don't have full voice acting for the WoL. Some elements are being kept indistinct deliberately so as to not interfere with your visualisation of your own character. It's as much or more them not wanting to box YOU in as it is for their benefit.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

That's nonsense and everybody knows it. You could make a case for 4-5 years, but 1 is nonsense and no writer worth their salt will ever accept that time frame, especially when in HW there was a woman who ran off to Idyllshire with a man and ended up getting pregnant before eventually giving birth (I believe that was over the span of 3.0 to 3.3). That alone implies the end of 3.0 to 3.3 is at least a year.

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Are we assuming pregnancy is 9 months?

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Originally Posted by Zaniel

No timeline is the same reason as they don't have full voice acting for the WoL. Some elements are being kept indistinct deliberately so as to not interfere with your visualisation of your own character. It's as much or more them not wanting to box YOU in as it is for their benefit.

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It's nothing to do with visualisation. It just saves the devs from trying to keep track of time and having to make sure people say it's the right number of months or years since something else happened.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

It's nothing to do with visualisation. It just saves the devs from trying to keep track of time and having to make sure people say it's the right number of months or years since something else happened.

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These two ideas can be true at the same time, its not exclusive.

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Originally Posted by Zaniel

These two ideas can be true at the same time, its not exclusive.

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They can simultaneously be true, if they were true, but as far as I'm aware, the devs have only given the one reason for it.

In any case, I don't see how being able to decide whether it took a week or a month to do something would matter to "imagining your character how you want them", though. If there was a straightforward timeline, I doubt anyone would be complaining about the lengths of time in it – or at least, no more than they would for any fictional work even with a set cast.

In ARR there was a rather bizarre scenario where if you progressed the main story far enough a character died, but if you then went and did the CUL quests up to level 50 they rose from the dead just to come and judge your baking competition. That sparked the community to question if there was some timeline of events and exactly how much time had passed since the start of ARR.

The dev response was that they think of it like the Simpsons. They don’t really care about a timeline and the events happen in kind of a “time bubble” where even though the Simpsons has been going for 30 years Bart and Lisa are still 10 and 8 years old. So the events of an expansion are isolated to that expansion (estinien in ARR DRG quests is happening in ARR time and is not effected by the events of HW onward). Time only progresses when it needs to for the plot. But they also acknowledged that time has to have passed between ARR and the start of HW so they gave a kind of loose timeline that the events of an expansion happen over the course of about a year.

So, if we assume this holds true for every expansion then we can assume it’s been about 10 years since dalamud fell. But this doesn’t exactly match with the development cycle as we have had twice that many rising events, so it’s more likely an expansion happens over the course of 2 years to match the development cycle.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

There needs to be some way of telling how much time has passed in game from first entering the starter cities to killing titan, to killing despair itself.

It would help the story make a lot more sense. Particularly when you get things like "the scions are pretendjng to disband and won't see eachother as often" to the next quest being "let's get the gang back together"

Been like 2 days dude. Gonna get a restraining order for Graha.

So right next to that Eorzea clock? Add a Eorzean calendar date that only advances with MSQ progression.

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I think at this point is far from their reach.

Some parts in ShB's side quests give us the same old text like "5 years ago" to reffer to the Calamity. Not a single year has passed '-'
It feels like the longest year they had in their world. Like 2 to 4 years long in just one.

And the funny thing is: when the Scions were at the First they aged a "bit", but not a single "ilm" for the twins height... In fact, they are supposed to have different ages and heights since they went to there at different moments (1 day in the Source is like 1 year in the First or something like this) Te word "twins" could've lost it's sense for them xD

They neglected this from the start and I think it's irrecoverable at this point after so many things we did and we had.

The best bet is they someday will fast-forward us at some point and only then they start to count the passage of time properly.

I remember an old thread about this problem and people consent that the passage of the time would be like real life inside each patch (or between patches, I don't recall it right).

But yet again, not a single ilm for the twins height no matter the number of patches or when they arrive... '-'

We are dealing with imutable twins while Thancred aged a bit '-'

Edit: don't believe in what I said here! I forgot about corpses. A mistake as usual u.u (always trust Iscah and always doubt everything I say here. Sometimes, the aging hit us harder than we think '-' )

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Originally Posted by Wanzzo

And the funny thing is: when the Scions were at the First they aged a "bit", but not a single "ilm" for the twins height... In fact, they are supposed to have different ages and heights since they went to there at different moments (1 day in the Source is like 1 year in the First or something like this) Te word "twins" could've lost it's sense for them xD

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Not at all. Only their souls travelled to the First, creating artificial aetherial bodies that specifically had to be unravelled before their souls could be taken back across the Rift. Their bodies were lying soulless in the Source the whole time.

They may or may not choose to count their age by experience from now on, but their bodies have had no additional ageing.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Not at all. Only their souls travelled to the First, creating artificial aetherial bodies that specifically had to be unravelled before their souls could be taken back across the Rift. Their bodies were lying soulless in the Source the whole time.

They may or may not choose to count their age by experience from now on, but their bodies have had no additional ageing.

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Oh yeah!
That's true!!

Forget what I said xD

Maybe an Eorzean year is the same as 5 irl years, and time/aging happens reaaaaaaally slow. To add to this silly theory, it would actually explain why Cid, Thancred and F'lhaminn feel and act like grandparents despite none of them being even 40 lol