Playable kids in FFXIV

[Tatiana]

I definitely agree with their decision on "child" characters, but what I do/did want is for the height slider to provide greater variety for the tall races so I could make a shorter (but not tiny) character with them.

As for the time jump of only 6 months since ARR....That makes no sense.

[TheMightyMollusk]

The sea voyage between Eorzea and Hingashi is stated to last about 3 months (but I don't have the quote on that at the moment, sorry) yet we do the same trip both ways several times during 4.0 alone, even if the WoL can canonically teleport, but the other characters can not.

Teleport and Return do exist in-story, as they are occasionally referenced. Iceheart uses Teleport in the cut scene after Snowcloak, Thancred is stated to no longer be able to use either spell after his possession by Lahabrea, and Yugiri mentions that only a small fraction of the Doman troops can teleport to reinforce the Alliance at the Ghimlyt Dark and the rest will have to travel by sea. The implication is that not everyone has enough personal aether reserves to use them safely, but they do exist.

[HeyMcFly]

Unless he has somehow managed to stay 16 since ARR, Alphinaud is older than that now.

Alphinaud is the Ash Ketchum of FFXIV.

[WhiteArchmage]

Teleport and Return do exist in-story, as they are occasionally referenced. Iceheart uses Teleport in the cut scene after Snowcloak, Thancred is stated to no longer be able to use either spell after his possession by Lahabrea, and Yugiri mentions that only a small fraction of the Doman troops can teleport to reinforce the Alliance at the Ghimlyt Dark and the rest will have to travel by sea. The implication is that not everyone has enough personal aether reserves to use them safely, but they do exist.

Err, should've been more specific: only the WoL can travel such long distances repeatedly. Alphinaud mentions that repairing the aetheryte at the House of the Fierce is really only for people with large amounts of Anima (the teleport resource in 1.0) like the WoL. While other characters can indeed teleport, they can't do it as many times as the WoL is implied to. (Also, Thancred can't teleport anymore because of his time in the aetherial sea after Y'Shtola's Flow spell, not after Lahabrea)

[Melichoir]

"No time" has passed at all. The whole game operates in a weird time bubble where no matter how much happens and how much time clearly passes between events, the calendar does not progress.

It will always be "five years since the Calamity" even if you could prove from dialogue or events that several years must have passed since the beginning of ARR.

This isnt exactly true.

Time has passed in the game. The events of ARR and HW take place in approximately a year or so's time period apparently. The 'time bubble' thing doesnt mean no time has passed, but that it's not moving as fast/slow/consistently as we think it is. For the player, its been what...5 years? For ingame time, its been about a year or two at most. The reason for the time bubble thing is it gives devs more space with plot. They dont have to be specific about exact dates and end up contradicting themselves with future lore. All that matters is Things are happening in a chronological order and those things do take time (this isnt like the simpsons where, short of holidays or characters specifically dying, all episodes are almost able to be placed in any order.). Meaning, All of ARR, HW, and SB did not occur in the span of 3 days. There was actual relative time progression in game. It's just not outright mentioned typically for keeping the lore semi cohesive and to prevent devs stepping on their own toes. Better to be vague than to be exact for this thing.

This is important btw, in regards to the OP, because Alphinaud was 16 already by 2.0. If things are moving forward, hes probably closer to 18 at this time. And before the "He dont look any different" Elezen age at a different rate than people apparently. So hes going to remain younger looking longer, despite being actually older.

[griffinborn]

In the end, I suppose it doesn't matter because they already said they aren't gonna do it. XP

[LyraKuroneko]

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Actually no. A community rep answered that a long time ago it seems. A year never passed, but you can think that the year after the Calimity is eternal though.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...58#post4975658

It is quoted in the answer to my question there.

[Iscah]

Thats actually stated in lore books and in the lore part of the forum here. It's actually well known that ARR is taken within a time bubble. Hell there are interviews with Koji that explain just that. Yes.. ALL of the events we did up to 5.0 have only taken 6 months.

"Six months" and "in a time bubble" are conflicting claims, not both facts.

If it's six months, time has passed.

If it's a time bubble (which it is), there's no need to insist on a heavily condensed timeline to fit it all in, because we have infinite time in which to do that.

I have the first lorebook and, while I can't claim to have read every word, it's written from an in-world perspective so it isn't going to see the time bubble, and the detailed plot synopsis avoids giving any hard dates as far as I can see.

"It's true because it was claimed somewhere in this large, hard-to-review amount of information" isn't solid enough to prove that something actually is true.

[Avidria]

Actually no. A community rep answered that a long time ago it seems. A year never passed, but you can think that the year after the Calimity is eternal though.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...58#post4975658

It is quoted in the answer to my question there.

I dunno, I don't think that's how I'd interpret it? I haven't read any lorebooks, but this just makes me think of WoW where there's a similar (if a bit different) problem.

Canonically years have past in-game since the Cataclysm, but most of the old open world is still destroyed, still stuck in that story - still stuck in that "bubble," as if no time has passed. It's part of why WoW's story ended up so disjointed - different continents are stuck at different points in time, their own "bubble" where it's forever the same year.

Unless I'm missing something, it sounds like something similar is happening here. The events of ARR all happen in a set time period and that world never changes, Heavensward all happens in one time period and that world doesn't change, so on and so forth... little pieces do, and NPC dialogue seems to change depending on what you have/haven't done or seen, but I don't think saying that the game exists in a time bubble means that no time has passed at all in canon. The in-game world just isn't being updated to reflect the actual time that's passed.

[Melichoir]

Actually no. A community rep answered that a long time ago it seems. A year never passed, but you can think that the year after the Calimity is eternal though.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...58#post4975658

It is quoted in the answer to my question there.

The community rep/dev was wrong.

Before the "Its a dev, youre a player, you cant be right", hear me out.


The Game does not take place within 3 days, right? The time bubble theory means that the length of time that the events fit into doesnt matter; its perpetually the same overall time. There is no actual distinction between saying the game takes place within a year or three days. What I mean is you cant say "It doesnt make sense all of ARR and HW and SB take place in 3 days. Thats obviously too short!" if you then turn around and say the same events + anything else you do in game that's canon lore takes place in a year or less. The logic of the time bubble means that it doesnt matter how much stuff happens, it all happens in the same span of time.

The problem is as they add more content, the feasibility of it all happening within a year realistically fails (and actually gets into the ridiculous territory the more content gets added). So lets say this game goes all the way up to 10.55, saying it all took place within a years time becomes unrealistic even for the average person. The reference to the simpsons doesnt actually work here either because of very specific distinctions. In the simpsons, short of certain events, you can rearrange almost all the episodes and it wont impact anything. This is because episodes are broadly independant of one another. The time bubble works in that case if you view the events that happen as a weird version of ground hogs day, where its the same year being perpetually repeated, but events change or differ as characters in the show make different decisions. This is supported by the fact that for most of the series, the characters dont make to many references to previous episodes unless its a more major event. So you dont see them referencing a previous xmas episode in a current episode of xmas because doing so would mean time has passed. Instead, each xmas is its own episode, like the day repeated itself but played out differently. You dont have that time bubble in FFXIV because the MSQ exists. There is a chronological order of events and referenced. This implies time passes as you complete the MSQ. Previous events affect future events, thus creating a timeline. Even holiday events do reference previous ones to some extent. Again, this implies time has past. This is fairly consistent in FFXIV.

So you cant actually have it be a time bubble like the simpsons and remain plausible as more xpacs get added. At some point, the devs have to either address this point in game by saying time has actually passed, or abandon the 'time bubble' theory and just say "Time passes but not at the speeds we think," thus opening it up from a year to lets say a few years allowing for breathing room.

This is all important on pointing out the Devs are wrong because of two things:

1) The game does not make any allusion to a time bubble. In fact, the game implicitly points to the opposite effect. Characters refer to past events we have played as being in the past (which signifies time moving forward), and stated things like traveling to the other side of the world takes time by ship. Both point to a fact that time IS passing in the world, regardless of the time bubble theory thats being pushed. And since nothing in the MSQ or game lore refers to this bubble phenomenon, the only reason the time bubble exists is for meta purposes, which is number 2.

2) The only reason the bubble idea exists is explicitly explained to cut down on having the devs go back and correct tons and tons of dialogue. It's not an ingame thing, its a designer thing that theyre using to explain to fans who are looking at the lore and saying "Gee, a lot of things have happened, how long have we been at this in in game time?" Whats most likely is they used the time bubble example as a quick short hand without actually thinking it through. Because of this, its a purely meta explanation that doesnt seem all that thought out, and not explained in any capacity within game of how this can still be as time goes on and xpacs are added.

If anyone has been thinking this through, it seems more likely the devs are wrong by their own game design than it being an actual thing. Remember, even devs can be wrong about their own story, particularly if it gets expansive enough. What do you think Red Shirt Guy over with WoW was about? Devs can make errors in their lore or how they view things. Whats more important to note is that if we go by their explanation where it's perpetually the same year, by the time all of FFXIV ends, youll be arguing that every single quest, event, lore and what not occurs within the same 1 year time span. If this was the simpsons, where each episode is independant broadly, thatd be fine, but the MSQ is chronological in nature. The more msq that gets added, the less their view of a one year time bubble makes sense.