Ivalice raid setting

[Veriden]

So, if FF12 happened before FFtactics, something has been bothering me. Why is part of Rabanastre above Limberry? (Lesia? Whichever castle we start our way into for the first step.) Something is funky there, that's not how things work. Older structures should be buried by the newer ones. At first I had figured it was along the lines that the time line goes: ff12 > ff14 > ff tactics. But no, that would mean Limber/Lesia castle wouldn't exist at all. Nor would the zodiac brave story, so how does this work? If we're looking for evidence of Ramza, why would he be in a location that 4.3 is taking the raid? Is Ramza and a few haphazardly mentioned locales the only nod ffT is getting? Their way of doing this breaks my feelings. As tactics is one of my favorite games of all time, which is a list 12 (even the new remake of it on ps4) does not come close to making..and it is a long list.

[Vidu]

Your idea that the Ivalice-timeline would include FF14 at all is probably the problem here.
Even though we're getting all this Ivalice-stuff, FF14 is not part of Ivalice - which in turn allows them a certain freedom. They dont have to stick to every detail and letter of the Ivalice-setting and can instead borrow the things they like or can use.
If it works better for them to have Rabanstre above Limberry/Lesia, then thats how that is in FF14.

Those raids are referencing the old games, they're not supposed to mimic them 1:1. They're drawing inspiration from the whole of Ivalice - sometimes, FFT might work better for a location, a boss or an NPC, sometimes its gonna be FF12, while twisting it in a way that it works within the FF14-lore.
Just how they've changed stuff about Crystal Tower and Xande compared to FF3 to make it work in FF14.

This works, because the Ivalice-rules dont apply to FF14 because FF14 isnt part of Ivalice.

We might learn more about Rabanstre and Lesalia in the context of the FF14-lore, but that wont be related to the FFT/FF12-timeline.

[Enkidoh]

Vidu is correct - despite all the flavour text the Ivalice raid is not FFXII/FFT's world and places somehow transplanted into Hydaelyn or somehow acts as a sequel/prequel to those games. It is simply using those place names, character names and story elements in a FFXIV context as fanservice, just like how we already have FFIII's final dungeon the Crystal Tower/World of Darkness, FFVII's Costa del Sol and Gold Saucer, FFI's Matoya's Cave, etc, and those places are not the originals either, they're Hydaelyn-specific locations that just happen to have the names of areas, story elements and ideas and even music from earlier FF games for fanservice reasons.

And the final say was the development team themselves already stated this long ago (even before the Ivalice raid was added, but when there was first hints about FFXII locations in Hydaelyn):

1:57:29
Q: A lot of names from Ivalice have been mentioned such as Dalmasca, Belias, and Zodiak. Is there some kind of connection between Hydaelyn and Ivalice?
A: Maehiro: To be absolutely clear, there is no direct connection between FFXIV’s Hydaelyn and FFXII’s Ivalice or even FFXI’s Vana’diel. They are not the same world in different dimensions or time—they are their own separate worlds. However, there are certain connections to people or objects that appear in these other worlds that figure into the story of FFXIV as it has been conceived and is being told.

Yoshida: We’ll be revealing more as we move forward.

So basically, the 'Ivalice', 'Dalmasca' and 'Rabanastre' that exist in Hydaelyn are not the same Ivalice, Dalmasca and Rabanastre from FFXII/FFT, they are completely different places specific to FFXIV that just happen to share the same names, appearance and certain elements for fanservice (and this is hardly the first time SE has done this - this happened as far back as the mid 90s when FFIV had a place called Mysidia which of course is also a place that formerly appeared in FFII, and later on the there was a Mount Koltz sign in FFVII referencing the place from FFVI, FFIX's Mount Gulug referencing the dungeon from FFI, etc).

Hence, don't read too much into it.