Idyllshire: Expanded

[Shougun]

Question is how would we go back and forth? WoW has the easy, lore compliant answer in the form of the adorable Chromie.

Echo. echo.. echo...

You can see the past with Echo and some users of Echo have seen the future.

If you wanted to give it a very strong cave of time vibe, not sure why but just to say we can lol, rather here it would be Cid's cave of time (feat. Mikoto perhaps). Through magitek and echo you're able to interface with the future or past in a limited simulation capacity. You can bring things back as the magitek devices scan the items aether and then recreate them (you're not literally taking items back or forward in time, just recreating them). Interactions are limited and simulated (and obviously not actually going to affect the timeline, 'as much' lol).

Although like I said in the first page I would be more for the player doesn't travel through time but just technically views / recalls time non-linearly. So you might be in Ishgard at the year 2031, meanwhile in Gridania everything is on fire in the year 2020, but actions done in Gridania's don't ripple through like a time traveler (to Ishgard's view whatever was in 2020 was in 2020). If you wanted to take that one step further (rather than just funky memory + echo)- then maybe a visualization of that would be the WoL is a sun with their rays beaming down onto the timeline (the rays don't move up and down the timeline as they all radiate out from the sun, there is no time travel - you touch down onto the timeline from the point outside of the timeline and no ray returns and then bounces back down again to interact with another, the WoL exists as one blip of great radiance - the echo facilitating a sense of recollection for each ray), of course that begins to call forth some god like imagery (outside of time, etc), or at least some sort of interdimensional/outerdimensional being, but I'm okay with that- we're already basically on that path to be a god killer as is the ancient tradition of jRPGs lol. Extra Nomura points if you're the thing that caused Ascians to lose control (by entering the dimension/sudden introduction of your existence caused creation magic to fracture, the great terrible sound, the echo source, all you baby ).

Coming back down to a bit less out there thoughts- Without actual time travel they could have shattered / false memories too if SE wanted to play with the idea of time travel without making it 'time travel', like in Chrono Trigger if you do something in the past it can affect the future - here perhaps they keep that fun part of time but it's represented rather through your mind trying to make sense of this madness (and there is /technically/ only one solution but you may have difficultly seeing straight until you recall everything properly). Divergent timelines 'could' be represented through mental stress, with only one truth (so no actual time travel) lol. Especially could create interesting story if we keep somehow getting stronger and stronger, might suggest 'actual' changes occur but again are not technically through time travel but just the enormous amount of energy your character contains and it leaking out making thoughts reality and perhaps with a bit of community faith / thoughts (just like a.... a certain.. something something.... lol, "the tree was always red... wasn't it....? You think, and the towns folk think it would be cool too" no it wasn't red before, but it is now! ).

In terms of in game example there is a cooking quest that can happen that relates to a MSQ that may have happened already. But the suggestion isn't that you changed time, but simply viewed it non-linearly. Making the player sort of a being outside of time (I like to take that a bit further and say it's why we don't age either, just sprinkling the time bubble with cannon xD), while still avoiding like "yo WoL since you can manipulate time why don't you just go back and hug Zenos as a kid so he's not so bad".

(Yes I will go through lengths to avoid actual regular time travel, that most 'timeline' affecting, "what if I kill my grandfather" / "why hasn't the superior technological enemy ripped the rug from underneath me", mechanics! lol). Not that I'd riot if they did exist (I still watch/read/play stuff that sometimes uses it, obviously lol), just a preference to treat that whole concept with greater than dalamud levels of massive caution.

There are multiple quests in Idyllshire and the Hinterlands about wanting to expand Idyllshire to the rest of the Hinterlands.

I'd love to see some sort of natural change, like if you had a cute stream in the 'present' but in the far future that's a giant canyon. Mountains are a desert, etc. OF course for Idyllshire it's more about seeing that expansion of civilization, so that'd be the focus for that- was just thinking for other areas.

Or you know seeing Silvertear lake back when it was not a giant crystal garden lol.

[zlygork]

Question is how would we go back and forth? WoW has the easy, lore compliant answer in the form of the adorable Chromie.

I could see a special "echo empowering" item that we could use to trigger all applicable areas between "present" and "echo".

[Garnix]

But...what content would that be?
I mean, I'd like to be able to see the old Iddylshire, for sure.
I just don't understand which piece of content you are referring to.
The Ishgard restoration fates would be the only thing I can think about, but even if you go back to time, this is not a thing you'd be able to easily re-clear solo. And there is no way that a massive amount of people would join you to rebuild something that would not reward them with anything...

And if you are just speaking about a theoretical world where Iddyl map will be merged into the hinterlands, that won't happen unless they do a calamity/apocalypse followed by A Realm Re-Reborn, which I doubt they will do anytime soon. If they do that it's not Iddylshire that would need to be reconsidered, but the whole game. Considering how they "complained" about the work that was needed to enable flying in ARR, I don't think they would ever want to remake the whole world...
And if there is no such calamity happening, there are probably too many things in Iddylshire for them to simply merge it with the Hinterlands just to get rid of a loading screen IMO. (Khloe, the two weekly delivery NPCs, all the relic quests, all those merchants, all the actual quests happening in Iddyl that would need to be "relocated").
Honestly, I'd rather just have a quest to build an Aetheryte in the hinterlands than merging those two maps...

[Styrmwyda]

But...what content would that be?
I mean, I'd like to be able to see the old Iddylshire, for sure.
I just don't understand which piece of content you are referring to.
The Ishgard restoration fates would be the only thing I can think about, but even if you go back to time, this is not a thing you'd be able to easily re-clear solo. And there is no way that a massive amount of people would join you to rebuild something that would not reward them with anything...

And if you are just speaking about a theoretical world where Iddyl map will be merged into the hinterlands, that won't happen unless they do a calamity/apocalypse followed by A Realm Re-Reborn, which I doubt they will do anytime soon. If they do that it's not Iddylshire that would need to be reconsidered, but the whole game. Considering how they "complained" about the work that was needed to enable flying in ARR, I don't think they would ever want to remake the whole world...
And if there is no such calamity happening, there are probably too many things in Iddylshire for them to simply merge it with the Hinterlands just to get rid of a loading screen IMO. (Khloe, the two weekly delivery NPCs, all the relic quests, all those merchants, all the actual quests happening in Iddyl that would need to be "relocated").
Honestly, I'd rather just have a quest to build an Aetheryte in the hinterlands than merging those two maps...

There are multiple quests in Idyllshire and the Hinterlands about wanting to expand Idyllshire to the rest of the Hinterlands.

[LisSquid]

I'd love for npcs and maybe some structures be phased with those in the msq coming back. To get away from having to change an entire pve area, they could add another exit towards the back. In the same way we enter gyr abania through the shroud.

[Edax]

I've seen time travel ruin franchises as the story get's hopelessly convoluted and the stakes destroyed since the question arises on why they don't time travel for every problem or death. Better to keep things as flashbacks and remain in the present.

[HyperiusUltima]

This whole thread is Alexander Raid Tier in a nutshell. Can we just not do it? If anything, it causes a GIANT hassle for the people who write the story. We already had Shadowbringers involve Time enough as is with *insert name here* interfering with our timeline from the future, and that's literally stretching it since our asses were dragged to the First because of him. We really don't need another time-related storyline in our story at this current juncture.

The only reason WoW did it was because their lore had a lot of "why not this" as someone said compared to XIV's story structure. XIV is continuous whereas WoW is chopped up into pieces by taking the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey route.

[Styrmwyda]

This whole thread is Alexander Raid Tier in a nutshell. Can we just not do it? If anything, it causes a GIANT hassle for the people who write the story. We already had Shadowbringers involve Time enough as is with *insert name here* interfering with our timeline from the future, and that's literally stretching it since our asses were dragged to the First because of him. We really don't need another time-related storyline in our story at this current juncture.

The only reason WoW did it was because their lore had a lot of "why not this" as someone said compared to XIV's story structure. XIV is continuous whereas WoW is chopped up into pieces by taking the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey route.

I am not talking about time travel storyline, just some sort of way for people to continue to access an old content so it can evolve instead of staying mostly stagnant. Time travel, echo flashbacks, some way for people to continue accessing the content in current Idyllshire and the Hinterlands while allowing Idyllshire to evolve and expand.