How much time have passed since ARR?

[Dzian]

I think the time being static is part of what makes eorzea so bland, lifeless and inconsequential. its just a static world in which nothing really matters.

they could allow time to flow without having any significant impact on the story or actual timeline. XI as old and archaic as it was even managed this. what you did one day would have some actual effect on the world the next. the balance of power between nations under constant flux, the variety of goods available from vendors constantly changing based on the state of the world. places like sacrarium where the maze was different every game day..

loads of these little things all bought the world alive and made it feel like it was moving forwards. makes a big difference in comparison to eorzea where you can sit there eat popcorn while a bunch of beast men run rampage on a settlement in some fate or other and pooooffff! it never happened..... which is often stated as a big reason why fates are so boring and tedious because nothing actually happens.

you could consider beseiged in XI to be basically 1 big fate. but it was a million times better simply because its outcome had a real impact on the game world...

you can create the sense of time actually progressing by such small and simple things

[SannaR]

Yet even in XI those things didn't change the overall story or like with beseiged it didn't make you unable to go to a zone. XIV has two where those things do happen one is the note which tells you coral to interact with in Sastasha and what the one npc sells in Highbridge. I guess you could say the difficulty spike that HW and SB fates have depending on how many people have been doing them is another thing. Another is which color is the good buff to get during the 2nd boss of Wander's Palace Hard as it changes every time you fight them.

[LineageRazor]

In fairness, all the stuff we've gone through COULD have happened in a pretty short space of time, if it was packed back-to-back and we disregard time spent doing optional stuff like fishing or bumming around the Gold Saucer. I think of it a bit like the TV show "24". Jack Bauer packs a ridiculous amount of activity into a single day. I mean, there's a logical upper bound of six years on everything we've done since ARR. Subtract all the stuff we've done that are just bards' tales (most Extremes, all Savages), subtract all the time just grinding tomes, subtract all the time just faffing about with side activities, and you can likely condense what's left into well under a year. Perhaps tack on a couple months to account for travel time that's not actually shown.

"The Calamity was five years ago... well, five years and ten months, really, but 'five' has a much better ring to it, don't you think?"

they could allow time to flow without having any significant impact on the story or actual timeline. XI as old and archaic as it was even managed this.

Honestly, I consider FFXI to be a MUCH more static game than FFXIV is. Stuff like Aht Urhgan's Beseiged, or Adoulin's Rieve barriers - yes, the world changed, but only through extremely limited gimick mechanics localized to specific expansions that can and will be undone and redone again and again.

Aside from these rare gimmicks, zones never changed shape. NPCs never appeared, or disappeared - the EXACT SAME NPCs in every zone appeared in the same places in each zone, no matter how far along you were in the storyline. In most cases, their dialog stayed the same, as well. In fact, being a zone NPC guaranteed immortality - no one ever worried that Nanaa Mhigo would get killed in a quest she appeared in, because a player could go talk to her at any time in Windurst. (The closest the game ever came to bucking this trend was the "puppet Shantotto" that took her NPC's place during the mini-expansion "A Shantotto Ascension".)

By comparison, the world of FFXIV is far more dynamic. The Scions have changed headquarters. Haurchefant is no longer in Coerthas Central Highlands, and never will be again. Crafters can witness the restoration of the plaza in the Churning Mists through the Moogle crafting quests, and ANYONE can help rebuild the Enclave in Yanxia.

We even have universal world changes, independent of storyline or quest progression - stuff that older players have seen, but newer never will, such as the evolution of Revenant's Toll from a collection of tents into a thriving town. (And that's to say nothing of the changes that occurred during the transition from 1.0 to ARR - but that's a special case.)

No, when it comes to a changing and evolving world with permanent consequences, FFXI is not a good counterexample! Certainly, I wouldn't mind seeing something like Beseiged in FFXIV, but I don't see it as any kind of "real" world-impacting stuff.

[Cybylt]

I think the time being static is part of what makes eorzea so bland, lifeless and inconsequential. its just a static world in which nothing really matters.

they could allow time to flow without having any significant impact on the story or actual timeline. XI as old and archaic as it was even managed this. what you did one day would have some actual effect on the world the next. the balance of power between nations under constant flux, the variety of goods available from vendors constantly changing based on the state of the world. places like sacrarium where the maze was different every game day..

loads of these little things all bought the world alive and made it feel like it was moving forwards. makes a big difference in comparison to eorzea where you can sit there eat popcorn while a bunch of beast men run rampage on a settlement in some fate or other and pooooffff! it never happened..... which is often stated as a big reason why fates are so boring and tedious because nothing actually happens.

you could consider beseiged in XI to be basically 1 big fate. but it was a million times better simply because its outcome had a real impact on the game world...

you can create the sense of time actually progressing by such small and simple things

XI had a bubble too though, its entirety takes place within the same year in-game.

I'd also say time passes in every which way but fine in WoW because time travel shenanigans have been a thing since Crusade. On top of that, due to its open structure it doesn't even follow the A to B to C sequencing of a plot unless you really hold yourself to it. Mag'har orcs can time paradox themselves into joining decades after the fall of the Iron Horde, back in time and to a parallel dimension to the days of Cataclysm where they were not present, face the Lich King, see the rise of Iron Horde and then be the very hero who inspires them to join the Horde in the first place.

Bizarrely, Nightborn Elves come to their racial faction with max reputation specifically to avoid this same manner of paradox.

WoW's also got the world NPC issue where unless the instance of a locale is changed to reflect some kind of change, NPCs there won't be affected by events like their own death. Conversely in 14, so long as you've completed content where they need to be present on the world, injured or dead NPCs will be removed from the world if they're normally there.

14 holds fast to its sequencing of events which I think is more important than getting deeply involved in how much time has explicitly passed.

[Iscah]

loads of these little things all bought the world alive and made it feel like it was moving forwards. makes a big difference in comparison to eorzea where you can sit there eat popcorn while a bunch of beast men run rampage on a settlement in some fate or other and pooooffff! it never happened..... which is often stated as a big reason why fates are so boring and tedious because nothing actually happens.

They tried to do this, especially in ARR.

Highbridge - what I assume you're talking about where "beastmen run rampage but then it never happened" - actually is a good example of how they tried to have FATEs dynamically affecting the setting.

There are two paths that the Highbridge FATE chain can take: players can successfully fight off the invading Qiqirn, then launch an attack on the Qiqirn camp to fight their Amalj'aa leader. Or players can fail (or ignore or not be present to attempt) to defend the settlement, the Qiqirn kidnap all the residents, and you have to invade the camp to rescue them.

Unfortunately in practice, people rarely fend off the initial attack - it seems to require more than one player, even if you're there at the right time, and it will often go entirely ignored. So everyone is kidnapped, the timer for for the "rescue phase" FATE is an entire hour, and the result is that 90% of the time Highbridge is a ghost town.


Similarly, the Redbelly Hive FATE chain in the South Shroud. You can fight your way through the Redbellies, defeat their leader and kick them out of Boughbury, and then wait and defend it when they try to re-invade. (The Hive can be cleared solo if you get there at the very beginning, but doesn't seem to be defendable solo. I assume if you could beat them off, you could continue to hold the location.)

Again, it falls down in practice because there is little to no incentive to actually keep the Redbellies out, unless access to a single vendor (and the ability to purchase Baby Raptors) is worth sticking around to fight over.


The frequency of FATEs just doesn't mesh well with giving players an ongoing reason to get involved in them.

[Limonia]

What I would find interesting is, despite the time bubble, how much time actually could have passed, according to time references in the story or by NPCs.
There is the comment that the Doman rebellion was about a year ago or so, for example. What exactly has been said here again?
We also travel 2-3 months to Kugane.
When I did the Heavensward story with an alt character, I also noticed an NPC say something along the lines of some weeks or months have passed since XY. I thought it was really interesting, but I just cannot remember which NPC it was and what he said. I think it was either directly in a story cutscene/dialogue, or some important NPC, or else I wouldn't have talked to him with my alt character, as I usually don't talk to every NPC when I don't have so much time to play. Does anyone remember this one? Or other references to how much time actually could have passed, were we not in a time bubble?

[ADVSS]

Indeed, as the voice in Shadowbringers trailer says: "How many years have passed since that day?"

None, I started my journey as a fledgling marauder this morning, was slaying primals left and right by lunchtime and became a legend and a master or many forms of combat who has liberated several countries by afternoon.

LOL this made my day!
Like, mor dhona was never a dirt pit, idyllshire was reconstructed in a second, ishgard got a full government reform within hours, doma was liberated just a second ago and now we live on another shard and it just happened like 10 seconds ago!

I get the bubble idea, it works when you can just buy a potion to make 8 years become today, but its not viable for lore references. To me its
and like the trailer states "years since that day" but we can always look at past content being the echo.

[Mansion]

I think they could use expansions as measurable time spent. 3.0 to 3.55 took X amount of months, 4.0 to 4.56 took X amount of time. And if a year passes, then go for it. I understand that the events can be quite rushed (the whole doman ark of 4.2 and 4.3 could happen in 24 hours), but major events like rebuilding Doma, Idyllshire, yeah it breaks the immersion a bit.

[ZeroPointSigma]

Just to keep my sanity over the subject, I just headcanon it to be a year's worth of time in ARR, HW, SB, etc. each.

[Jandor]

Just to keep my sanity over the subject, I just headcanon it to be a year's worth of time in ARR, HW, SB, etc. each.

Same.

ARR was about a year of stuff, HW the same, SB maybe a tad longer because of how long I like to think the initial sailing over there took.

Essentially I just put each bit in its own bubble.