How much time has gone by...

[ObsidianFire]

It's not just Aliphinaud and Alissae that look "frozen" in time. All the Scions are like that. The game even has an in-joke with itself about their apparent lack of aging. In 1.0, there's a lot of Echo flashbacks back to when the Scions should logically look much, much younger then when we see them in both 1.0 and 2.0. And they still look the same age (Thancred is the worst; he looks like how he does in 2.0 as he does when Minfilia is a kid). This leads to even their Lore Book profiles joking about them looking younger then they are, "stopping" how time effects them, simply never mentioning their ages, etc.

It also runs into how long the game is is different for everyone. For some of us, Alphinaud and Alissae are still 16, for others of us they're 18, still others of us headcanon that they're 20. But the game is never going to change how they look since that would wreck with everyone's headcanon. And it would require more work for the dev team. And finding new voice actors, etc. It's just way, way easier from a development standpoint not to bother with how long everything takes.

[Brightamethyst]

Flip side, who is the time bubble harming? As far as I've been able to gather, the damage is limited to one type of person: anyone who can't wrap their head around the idea that just because the open world year hasn't visibly changed doesn't necessarily mean that everything in the game must have happened in under 365 days. If you disentangle those two concepts, it's more of a blank check than a cage, isn't it?

It's hot harming anyone, but it does make the entire concept of the timeline more confusing.

And it is immersion breaking. Nobody thinks that everything so far has actually happened in the course of a single year. That's the main issue here.

If it was about everyone playing the game differently and not seeing events in the same order that would be one thing. It's not though. The MSQ forces us all to watch the same events in the same order. My MSQ experience is the same as your is the same as everyone else. We know time must be passing between story events. We all see it happening. Acting like everything is in stasis just makes it more weird the more time passes (or doesn't.)

[Mirtrione]

The thing with the twins is a recurring topic, in and of itself. Admittedly, I usually see people debating it in a Are Leveilleur Lewds OK? context.

Well, I don't fancy the twins XD But I am invested in them. Alphinaud is my favourite character - mostly because of his character growth.

It's not just Aliphinaud and Alissae that look "frozen" in time. All the Scions are like that.

I think I'm okay with all the other characters. They are either adults already, or they are not a big part of the game or story. Gaius is 56 according to my Lore book, but when he finally took off his helmet, he looks young and handsome. Adulthood is wide and encompassing. Puberty is not. My issue is these two characters are vital and central. It just shines a spotlight on time not flowing and that's jarring to me.

[ObsidianFire]

The timeline is more confusing? The order of events in the game does not change no matter how long the game supposedly takes. The only thing that changes is how close together some of the events are.

How similar people's MSQs are to other people's depends on how good they are at role playing things the game does not specify one way or the other. Some people RP that they're aren't even the WoL. That's someone else's job, they're just a normal person in the world that's along for the ride. Some people RP that their WoL is Garlean... the list goes on...

Personal Role Playing Example: In my character's version of the MSQ, she and Alphinaud are more friends of convenience then anything else. They both agree that Zodiark and the Ascians should be stopped, but have serious disagreements on how to go about it. Why? Well... my character is a SMN and Alphinaud (and Cid) have serious problems with how my WoL likes using Bahamut's power and keeps using more and more Allagan-based magic. They're really worried that she'll accidentally end up triggering something on the scale of activating the Lunar Transmitter. The only Scion my WoL really gets along with is Urianger because both of them get doing questionable things in an effort to mess with the Ascians. And everyone's concerned with how there's very little practical difference between my WoL and Nero's opinions on what Allagan tech should be used for. She and Nero get along way too well for most people's comfort...

And none of that is specified in the game. Some of that is even contradictory to the way the game portrays the WoLs relationships with certain people. But it feels in-character to me given what my WoLs character is like and how we see the other characters reacting to similar things.

[TinyRedLeaf]

And it is immersion breaking. Nobody thinks that everything so far has actually happened in the course of a single year. That's the main issue here.

To be sure, as far as my headcanon is concerned, it has been about four to five years since the events of A Realm Reborn. But that's just me. I'm not particularly bothered by details, so long as the broad gist of the story supports the larger themes of the world.

That said, I simply cannot agree that accepting the time bubble breaks immersion. In the 20-plus years that The Simpsons have been running, I've been wrinkled and crumpled by years of work and real-life commitments, but Lisa, Bart and Maggie Simpson still remain ever precocious kids. By virtue of it being trapped in an ever-present time bubble, Springfield remains a familiar place, despite having a different story every episode that stays generally in touch with contemporary events.

So the advantage is that it doesn't matter which point in the series I start watching the show. Every episode brings something different, and familiar, at the same time. This sense of familiarity, amid constant updating over time, is critical for immersion in the persistent game world of an MMORPG.

For those of us who are long-time players of this game, who started at the launch of 2.0, or even earlier, way back at the launch of 1.0, our sense of "time" will necessarily be different from those who just picked up the game last week.

I am willing to bet that, for those who are only now beginning to marathon the story, it would not be "immersion-breaking" for them to feel that everything that's transpired so far is happening within weeks and months of game-time, because that is indeed how they're actually experiencing it in real-life: A series of events that are flashing by, as they rush towards a conclusion that took the rest of us five years or more to reach in real-time.

If it was about everyone playing the game differently and not seeing events in the same order that would be one thing. It's not though. The MSQ forces us all to watch the same events in the same order.

Again, I simply cannot agree with this, because the story of FFXIV is much more than just the MSQ. There are also the job and class quests, as well as the side-quests and optional raid and dungeon quest lines. Depending on how you mix-and-match the stories, and the order in which you've approached and started them, your experience of the overall story will uniquely be yours and yours alone.

For example, I started the Coils of Bahamut raids only in the last two months of A Realm Reborn, and after I had completed all three parts of Crystal Tower raids. As such, by the time I started the Coils, I was already armed with fore-knowledge of Allagan atrocities, and my experience of the various revelations within the Coils was likely very different from those players who began the Coil series as soon as it landed.

Ironically, the only consistent way for me to rationalise the way my character "experiences" the world through his eyes, is by taking a great deal of liberty with the timeline. That's why having a time bubble is not just convenient, but also critical for my personal immersion into the story.

Imagine if every single side quest is dated and slotted into fixed points in the main story. That would be one of the unintended effects of making clear the passsage of time in the game. It would, in fact, break immersion for me, the same way it annoys me when the story deliberately punts me to far-flung corners of the world in an instant, because this makes Hydaelyn feel like a much smaller place than it should be.

In the end, the argument comes down a fundamental difference in approach to role-playing. Some players want everything spelt out for them. Others, like me, prefer to have as many gaps as possible between the main plot points, so that there's freedom for imagination. Neither side is necessarily wrong or right, but I would strongly suggest that players let the details slide, because otherwise you'd just end up missing the forest for the trees.

[LineageRazor]

There are a couple ways that we could see time advance, either for the whole world or for specific characters. Taking a page from FFIV, a character or characters could wind up in an area where time flows faster. We could chuck Alphi and Ali into the Land of Summoned Monsters and have them pop out as fully-grown adults. This would jive with the whole time-bubble thing, since their age would depend on progression through the Main Scenario; there's no permanently stationed NPCs that would confuse new players.

Another method would be out-and-out time travel. An expansion could introduce a set of zones set in the future, much like FFXI's Wings of the Goddess introduced a number of zones set in the past (and with fully-functional mog mail, to boot! Those moogles are sure talented!). NPCs occupying those zones could be "future" versions of existing NPCs.

It's not impossible that the main scenario could progress the timeline significantly enough to see some changes, further expanding the time bubble, but as has been noted, the amount of work involved would be prohibitive in order to ensure that everyone gets appropriate dialog and sees appropriate scenery depending on where they are in the storyline. Because of this difficulty, I doubt that we'll see this happen, but, again, it's not impossible.

[Iscah]

Imagine if every single side quest is dated and slotted into fixed points in the main story. That would be one of the unintended effects of making clear the passsage of time in the game.

While it's not forced on you, there are actually several clear indications that sidequests and job quests are intended to take place alongside MSQ of the same level (with the obvious exception of the Lv30-50 quests for Heavensward jobs). A few examples I can think of right now: a Lv15 sidequest chain around Sastasha concludes with dialogue indicating you're just about to go into the caves and confront the pirates. Lv28 quests around Fallgourd Float make reference to the recent sightings of the 'masked man' you're looking for when you go there in the lead-up to Haukke Manor. Lv49 quests in Northern Thanalan are taking place in the leadup to storming Castrum Meridianum. The ARR dragoon questline is undoubtably pre-Heavensward, and the monk questline is pre-Stormblood.

Obviously we take in the game's timeline in very different ways - I look at all these quests and see puzzle pieces that were intended to fit together in a certain way, even if I picked them up out of order, so I need to look at them all and understand the whole picture. If I complete things out of order, that's now "how it happened for me", it means I need to file those events into the point in the MSQ where they happened. eg. I haven't finished the Binding Coil yet - but when I do, it still will have taken place in ARR and not Stormblood.

[uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu]

Instead of hard dating quests, they can use patch number in journal or the MSQ/duty bar. It's win-win. Can still use time bubble but atleast give proper indication to what/when the quests context are. edit: or any sequential number will do really, as long it's clear this set of quests belong in this or that book.

[Iscah]

Flip side, who is the time bubble harming?

People who want to know when the Doman rebellion occurred?

But more seriously...

Flip side, who is the time bubble harming? As far as I've been able to gather, the damage is limited to one type of person: anyone who can't wrap their head around the idea that just because the open world year hasn't visibly changed doesn't necessarily mean that everything in the game must have happened in under 365 days. If you disentangle those two concepts, it's more of a blank check than a cage, isn't it?

I think I'm the opposite of that: I can see that the story takes place spread out over some time, and to understand fully what the characters are going through, I want to know how much time that would be. What you call a 'cage' is alternately a framework to understand how much time has passed - and how much time characters have spent together even if we don't see it. More reminders that the world maps rightfully take hours or days to traverse, even though for the sake of gameplay it only takes a minute.

A "blank check" can be too blank. If there are fragments and clues, you can pick them up and piece them together so it makes sense. There can be gaps for a creative player to 'fill in', but leave it too wide open, and it's harder to decide what should go there.

As I write this, it occurs to me that another practical reason for disconnecting the story from a proper flow of time is to avoid showing different seasons in the game world, dictated by story progress. Which I guess is inevitable, but it means you lose out on the thematic storytelling that could have been used in some other, more fixed medium. Suppose post-ARR took place in the autumn, time of change, with winter setting in as we're forced to flee to Coerthas? Spring, season of hope and new beginnings, as we bring an end to the Dragonsong War? (And perhaps ARR began in the previous spring. A terribly inexact science for calculating story flow, but I guess it's the best I've got to work with...)

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All that said, having spent some time last night catching up on some early game sidequests around Camp Drybone, I can see the real problem with the time-bubble-vs-progress: it's not about character scripts that can be updated, but little physical things going on in the world. Time has passed for us, but not for the mourner in the church lichyard and the body still yet unburied.

Ideally I'd like to see those sort of things updated, perhaps at the start of the expansion? Then we can accept that whatever was happening in time at the start is still what we'll see happening at the end, but we'll move on to the "next bubble" eventually instead of them being frozen like that forever.

Though perhaps the ARR zones are a bit more 'set hard' in this aspect, while the HW/SB zones have been built with an intent from the start to have areas that can be swapped out for new elements as the story progresses. But going back and rebuilding ARR maps for this would be a lot more work.

[Bright-Flower]

Apparantly not even a year between ARR and HW in lore, but for RP I just go by real time. Yes that puts my RP out of sync with in game, but it just makes more sense to RP in real time and ignore the slight hiccup with the msq's timeline.