An Elezen Inquiry

At what age do Elezen hit puberty and start looking the way we can actually make our characters look?

As of the end of the pre-Heavensward storyline, Alphinaud and Alisaie Leveilleur are 16 years old. They definitely look a bit older than the NPC child Elezen characters shown in-game, and have voices that are more or less appropriate to their ages, but they also still unquestionably look prepubescent in human terms, as well as being several feet shorter than even the smallest playable Elezen adult.

We know that Elezen have a longer lifespan and slower aging process than Hyur/real-world humans, but we've never been given specific numbers. As someone who plays an Elezen character, I would really love to know the point at which Elezen actually start looking and sounding like adults.

Probably their late teens/early twenties.

That's still very vague, unfortunately, and isn't much more helpful than what we tangibly know right now. The difference between reaching adulthood in one's late teens versus one's early twenties is kind of a major difference, especially in terms of things like roleplaying characters.

FanFest revealed that their lifespans are a little longer than the other Spoken races, and thus age a little slower. I'd only put them delayed by a few years. I'd put the Elezen characters we can make at mid twenties, while most other races are likely late teens-early twenties. To start, anyway, as you can use faces that look older.

So in the grand scheme of things, it's no surprise that Alphie had the wool pulled over his eyes. He's still a kid in the eyes of Eorzea. Granted, he's got quite a legacy to live up to, but he's still a kid, more or less.

...wait, I never said anything about Alphinaud other than using his age as a benchmark for Elezen aging. He's more or less the only character of the race (discounting his twin for fairly obvious reasons) who has a concrete age given, and it's one that's very illustrative of the point that Fernhalwes made at Fanfest about Elezen aging. At 16, he looks like a child in a way that cannot be replicated with the character generation tools we have. Whereas a 16-year-old Lalafell or Miqo'te or Midlander would be a completely plausible character to make as a player character, a 16-year-old Elezen would be impossible- and we don't know how old even the youngest-looking Elezen we could make would have to be in order to make any sense.