A question regarding travel as it pertains to the story...

[Brightamethyst]

Tataru and Krile track down Estinien (who is in Kugane) and get him to fill in for the WoL while the WoL is away. So that's a two months boat ride from Limsa to Kugane.

All three of them went to Kugane during SB and (presumably) had already attuned to the aetheryte.

[Jandor]

I could be misremembering because it's been a long time, but I believe it was explained that people with the echo can teleport and everyone else can't.

An explanation of aetherytes, the teleport spell and the return spell, straight from the localization team:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...An-aether-what

The limit, lorewise at least, is from the spiritual energy known as anima. The WoL has so much of this energy that they can basically use teleport as much as they like, but most people are not so lucky and cannot use it to travel as far or as often.

It used to be an actual gameplay limit in 1.0, with anima as a naturally regenerating resource that you used to cast teleport. AFAIK you could run out of it entirely and be left unable to teleport, the whole thing sounds pretty annoying and replacing it with using gil was almost certainly for the best, even if the whole 'good guy WoL leaves a small pile of gil at the base of long abandoned aetherytes' "lore" is a bit flimsy.

[Brightamethyst]

even if the whole 'good guy WoL leaves a small pile of gil at the base of long abandoned aetherytes' "lore" is a bit flimsy.

Ha ha, right?

Gridania charging a tax for using their aetheryte? Sure, makes sense. But who are we paying Azys La, or Anyx Trine, or the House of the Fierce, or whatever?

[Enkidoh]

Ha ha, right?

Gridania charging a tax for using their aetheryte? Sure, makes sense. But who are we paying Azys La, or Anyx Trine, or the House of the Fierce, or whatever?

Presumedly Anyx Trine and Zenith it goes to the dragons as a form of tribute, even though dragons have no need for mortal currency, it's the act that's important - giving something valuable to you, to them as an offering for being able to use the services of their settlement. Helix's aetheryte in Azys Lla is probably just an ancient Allagan terminal automatically charging you for using it like it was programmed to thousands of years ago (and given gil, or a form of currency by that name, is apparently Allagan in origin (from what I understand), it makes sense. But yeah some of the more outlying aetherytes are a bit of a stretch.

I think by this stage we can just handwave away the charge as just for gameplay purposes (like being charged in gil for buying items and having gear repaired by the Amaurotine shades within the Bureau of the Administrator at Emet's reconstructed Amaurot in the Tempest - don't think about it too much ).

[LineageRazor]

One explanation could be simply that, because all of the Aethercites are interconnected, any activity on any of them can be observed and registered at one location. The observers don't even need to know or care what Aetherite is being activated; they detect the activity, and since you've registered with the Aetherites they're able to tell it's you, and tax you accordingly. You don't pay anyone locally; instead you pay these Aetherite maintainers, who may or may not have representatives from every nation involved in the process.

They assume that the Aetherites you're using are the local ones that they maintain directly, and would actually be surprised to learn that you're actually tooling around in far-flung places like Azys Lla.

[Enkidoh]

One explanation could be simply that, because all of the Aethercites are interconnected, any activity on any of them can be observed and registered at one location. The observers don't even need to know or care what Aetherite is being activated; they detect the activity, and since you've registered with the Aetherites they're able to tell it's you, and tax you accordingly. You don't pay anyone locally; instead you pay these Aetherite maintainers, who may or may not have representatives from every nation involved in the process.

They assume that the Aetherites you're using are the local ones that they maintain directly, and would actually be surprised to learn that you're actually tooling around in far-flung places like Azys Lla.

This is actually incorrect. Aetherytes are not nodes on a physical network, they're basically just lighthouses or beacons that guide you through the Lifestream. There may be some aspect of them that assists with rematerialization at your destination but basically they're just a beacon that your soul homes on within the Lifestream. Within the dark void of the Lifestream, an aetheryte appears like a blazing torch, and each aetheryte has it's own subtle aetheric signature so this guides you to the correct one based on your desired desination. This is why Y'shtola's Flow spell was so dangerous - it was a teleport spell that bypassed the aetherytes completely and relied on pretty much just dumb luck to guide you, thus most who cast it got lost within and were basically killed (really Thancred got off lucky).

Monetary costs for teleportation was mentioned by the development team (in the link Jandor mentioned) as being a tax collected by the citystates to cover the enormous cost the Ul'dahan Syndicate (read: Lolorito and Teledji) charged them for funding the reconstruction of the aetheryte network following the Calamity (the assumption was that the new aetherytes were constructed on their behalf by Sharalyan engineers) - the original aetherytes were destroyed in the Calamity due to the massive backwash of aether across Eorzea shattered them (linkshell and their linkpearls were also destroyed for the same reason). Reduced charges can be assumed to be simply carrying identification that authorizes a lower charge (like a FC buff), or, even a free teleport with an aetheryte token. (Incidentally the link to Lolorito is given even more proof as this is the lore reason why an aetheryte was never built in Vesper Bay. It was a snub towards Minfilia as he tried bribing the Scions of the Seventh Dawn for favours but Minfilia wouldn't play ball. So instead of an aetheryte there he thumbed his nose at her by having an ostentatious statue of himself erected in the town square, essentially laying his own ego over the good of the realm).

The collection of these tolls do indeed fund the ongoing maintenence of the aetherytes as well (according to the above developer post), but as is shown repeatedly, they don't seem to need that much, and probably just is more "make sure someone doesn't accidentally damage it" rather than "oh, this aetheryte crystal needs oiling" (after all, an Ancient one on the First is still working perfectly tens of millenia after it was constructed and despite having spent 12000 years under the ocean! And the one in Azys Llla is also equally fully functional despite not having had anyone use it for thousands of years too. Regardless, it's clear the teleportation tolls are not a flat rate and are based on how far away you're teleporting from, rather like public transport charges like a bus or train fare (of course they're probably relying on a lot of honesty from the person teleporting, something the game probably just convinently handwaves for us anyway!) :P

Of course the tax explanation then starts getting stretched a bit thinly with Heavensward with aetherytes in far-flung locations that are unmanned still having the same teleportation charges, although given not one resemble the 'original' aetherytes seen in pre-Calamity Eorzea in 1.0 I'm liable to think Sharalyan had a hand in building those ones as well. But that's just my idle musings so don't take that last point as fact!

Either way, the 'tax to repay the cost of rebuilding the aetheryte network' idea no longer really fits so as I mentioned in my earlier post, current charges for teleporting are just pure gameplay mechanics. Don't think about it really, it's easier that way.

[Kesey]

An explanation of aetherytes, the teleport spell and the return spell, straight from the localization team:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...An-aether-what

The limit, lorewise at least, is from the spiritual energy known as anima. The WoL has so much of this energy that they can basically use teleport as much as they like, but most people are not so lucky and cannot use it to travel as far or as often.

It used to be an actual gameplay limit in 1.0, with anima as a naturally regenerating resource that you used to cast teleport. AFAIK you could run out of it entirely and be left unable to teleport, the whole thing sounds pretty annoying and replacing it with using gil was almost certainly for the best, even if the whole 'good guy WoL leaves a small pile of gil at the base of long abandoned aetherytes' "lore" is a bit flimsy.

I could also be misremembering this too, but I believe it tells you it costs gil as it teleports you because that's just what happens. And it was said in an ironic way like just accept that it happens because that's how it works--to cover up that it explained a game mechanic.