What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Turtledeluxe]

You've essentially head cannoned the entirety of Elpis as a giant Echo vision. Fun fact that's actually very close to how I suggested it should have worked some 600ish pages ago. What you are describing is time viewing and not time travel though. By this logic you don't think we actually traveled to the past and instead just looked at it which is prove-ably false; some of that proof I already posted to prompt this specific tangent.

No I haven't. It's well understood that when you travel to a point in time where another version of you exists, it creates a temporal paradox. Which is why I believe the Elpis visit itself is supposed to be considered a deviated alternate timeline that essentially conjoins with the present mostly for fanservice effect (the Hydaelyn trial, the Emet pop up at the end m, the raids, etc). The WoL can interact with this timeline to essentially do things Azem would have thereotically done in the same time. That is the idea.

I have in no way denied the Crystal Tower allows for time travel, that we time traveled, etc. I've been talking about this for soooo many pages. You can believe the Elpis visit is a single timeline time loop..idc I don't believe that. And nothing you have proves it. The devs haven't confirmed it. Because the situation with Elpis bends the rules and they don't feel like explaining it.

And please don't repeat "but Argos, but Elidibus", because it doesn't refute what I am saying. Here is a similar take on reddit:

"I interpreted the Elpis loop as being us creating an alternate timeline like Graha, but where he stayed in the alternate timeline, we returned to ours.
Then Venat confirms the "convergence", where due to actions being carried out were so similar to the original past, that alternate timeline fused back into the main timeline, bringing its minor changes with it.

By this interpretation the events of history could have occurred without us, but Venat would not be aware of future events, nor have tracked Metion. History would have occurred how it was explained in SHB: Venat opposed the sheer destruction of life.

This interpretation also resolves the potential paradox of Graha's timeline where the WoL died before they could visit Elpis, yet history remained."

The only difference is they aren't concerned with a time paradox as the reason for the alternate timeline. They theorize its because it is too similar to the original timeline which, I'm not sure why. That's also why I originally called it a plot Mcguffin tho bc it's kind a joke. The reason doesn't matter-- the writers wanted to conjoin the Elpis visit to the MSQ so they did. That's the real reason. What you are thinking is that it didn't need to be conjoined beduase well, we time traveled and it's a time loop that is now history! I do not think that otherwise why would they bother so blatantly calling out the conjunction .. and this does not mean the visit itself is an echo view or a fever dream. It means it is a literal timeline, a pocket of time where we time traveled, that splintered off from the original timeline (aa the user i quoted explained) and conjoined to the present msq timeline bringing the "minor changes" (I wouldn't say they're minor but I mentioned them already).