What lore do you ignore?

[SannaR]

What example are in ARR with that context?
I know/remember only 1 scene. And that is after a fate at the sun beach, where you has to protect a dancer, who was going to the east part of the Coast. And where a male npc say, that both could wait inside a building, until its time for her job. And both walken very fast to that building. Where it looks heavy cleary, what both would probably do there.
The only other moment, where a slightly hint of that exist, would be the elezen, near Ishgard, who is helping us later.
That he says at last in some languanges things, as if he is interessted in us and want us to be in his sleeping room later (what is interrupted by Alphy, who missunderstand that). At last, how i remember the scene (i need to replay that part, and it is at last my head canon, that there was happening something, if your WoL is female, the same with Zenos interesst in you, if you are female -in addition of his lust of hunting and fighting-)

The women we see in Sastasha, the post moogle quest of stroking the haft, many female npc speech bubbles in Limsa hint to said activities. The Ninja quest Ninja Bathin'.. The mamool Ja that you beat up in the fate Peeping Ja. His "dance" is implied to be more about what he wants to do with some of the female Miqo'te bathers. Also Haurchefant, Aymeric, Zenos and any other npc that can be seen as flirting with the WoL don't care about their gender. Magnai and Daidukul being rare exceptions. As Magnai only wants to flirt with you if you're female and well all Buduga only want to interact with other men.

[nukemind]

How Allag fell. Basically the idea that a single Earthquake led to the collapse of a civilization (and yes, it had rot, don't get me wrong), and that all that tech was lost.

There had to be more. I like the idea that there was *some* Dynamis... or something like it. Even in the worst of the Roman civil wars, and the ensuing conquests of Rome, much if not all tech was preserved, contrary to what the term "Dark Ages" would tell you. It's just it became decentralized with lots of petty kingdoms.

-------------------------

Secondly, and more importantly, the timeline. We have literally taken multi month (?) ship rides, traveled all over the continent, fought a dozen if not more primals, rallied armies multiple times... and it's been like a year? I think 4-5 years, at minimum, should be expected- if not more. Not least with the formation of the Crystal Braves, the Doman War, Ul'Dah's reforms, and more.

At current each expac would be months and that just... doesn't fit. If anything taking "real world" time into in game would make sense to me.

[Bun_Vivant]

Even in the worst of the Roman civil wars, and the ensuing conquests of Rome, much if not all tech was preserved, contrary to what the term "Dark Ages" would tell you.

Concrete, a major technology for buildings and fortifications, was lost when Rome collapsed. Other technologies may have been as well -- indoor plumbing perhaps? -- but concrete is the one that stuck in my head.

"Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water,[1] and is the most widely used building material. Its usage worldwide, ton for ton, is twice that of steel, wood, plastics, and aluminium combined." -- Wikipedia, "Concrete"

[MikkoAkure]

How Allag fell. Basically the idea that a single Earthquake led to the collapse of a civilization (and yes, it had rot, don't get me wrong), and that all that tech was lost.

There was a giant revolt against the emperor right at the very end and the earthquake swallowed up the Crystal Tower and likely the capital. The Crystal Tower was also the main power source for the entire empire’s technology.

We never see what the average Allagan citizen’s life was like and how much technology was involved in their day-to-day. We’ve only visited their secret labs. The average person could very well have only experienced life improvements like the better roads while stuff like the robots and airships were only used by the military.

On top of all that, by the late empire all their knowledge was being put on tomestones. If they suddenly lacked the ability to read from the tomestones at the same time the fall of the empire, civil war, and the and power source for everything gets swallowed up in a calamity, I can see technology falling backwards. IIRC the reason why Principia was a magic familiar in a paper book was just in case something like that happened so she could assist future generations with primal problems.

That said, not all knowledge of technology was lost since the Onishishu seem to have been able to keep knowledge preserved through generations unbroken since the Allagan Empire.

[MikkoAkure]

Concrete, a major technology for buildings and fortifications, was lost when Rome collapsed. Other technologies may have been as well -- indoor plumbing perhaps? -- but concrete is the one that stuck in my head.

"Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water,[1] and is the most widely used building material. Its usage worldwide, ton for ton, is twice that of steel, wood, plastics, and aluminium combined." -- Wikipedia, "Concrete"

The Eastern Roman Empire kept going on with the same technology and was the core of “Roman” society before even the west fell. Greeks called themselves “Romioi” until only about 200 years ago when Greek Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire became a thing. The only reason they didn’t use concrete was because it required volcanic ash they no longer had access to with the fall of the west since I think that came from Sicily or Naples or something.

As far as that goes with FFXIV, if there’s no clear successor empire to the fallen capital and an irreplaceable piece of the technology (Crystal Tower power) is no longer accessible, loss of application of the technology will occur and then knowledge will follow soon after.

[nukemind]

Concrete, a major technology for buildings and fortifications, was lost when Rome collapsed. Other technologies may have been as well -- indoor plumbing perhaps? -- but concrete is the one that stuck in my head.

"Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water,[1] and is the most widely used building material. Its usage worldwide, ton for ton, is twice that of steel, wood, plastics, and aluminium combined." -- Wikipedia, "Concrete"

Yes and no- lack of access not lack of knowledge. For a similar reason the Coloseum was cannibalized for resources- it wasn’t a lack of knowledge in how to precisely cut stones but rather it was an easy resource and quarried stone was hard to access.

Make no mistake even the “barbarian” kingdoms like the Franks, the Visigoths, the Suebi, the Lombards who conquered Italy, and many others advanced technology- they just existed in a fractured world as opposed to a world with a singular power structure.

Likewise even with the loss of the CT, the earthquake, the revolt… many major powers had a cacophony of tragedies. Look at China- multiple dynasties fell, warring states would emerge, but technology and progress still marched forward. Qin rose and was replaced, Han rose and eventually fell. Yuan, Ming, Qing- even when at times half or more the population died and the seats of power were razed technology didn’t regress but rather progressed.

Likewise one of the major reasons we view the post Roman world as being backwards (and as mentioned elsewhere- Rome survived until 1452 in the form of Eastern Rome) was that major projects weren’t as common. But what architecture we do have is often more advanced than the Romans, just as the armor and weapons advanced. And while ancient healthcare wasn’t great yes that too was advancing, though slowly until times such as the enlightenment.

Edit: I’m kinda passionate about this as while I am a (soon to be) lawyer now before I went for my grad degree I got a degree in history and taught it for a bit. If the pay would allow me to take care of two aging parents I would have continued.

Contrary to popular cultures no matter how many calamities befall a nation large ones (ie: existing as more than a city state) don’t just disappear even if conquered.

Probably the only example of true tech regression I can think of, that would be similar at all to Allag, would be the Mongol conquest of the Middle East, when literally every book in the House of Wisdom was thrown into the River, with spectators saying the River “ran black with ink”. Likely apocryphal, but the point is to have such regression basically every last book and manual had to be destroyed.

[Cleretic]

It's been five thousand years since Allag dunked itself into the ground in what by all appearances was a continent-wide earthquake. That's a lot of chance for knowledge to get lost, especially considering the fact that they were by all appearances a very centralizing nation, and that nobody liked them, including their own citizens.

Basically all it would take to lose a huge bulk of Allagan knowledge after their fall is one modestly successful generation of 'let's return to the earth'. They had a lot of institutional knowledge (including knowledge of how to read their own surviving records; computers aren't as easy to use as, say, a book) that would've been lost, and once that's gone it's leagues harder to retain.

The women we see in Sastasha, the post moogle quest of stroking the haft, many female npc speech bubbles in Limsa hint to said activities. The Ninja quest Ninja Bathin'.. The mamool Ja that you beat up in the fate Peeping Ja. His "dance" is implied to be more about what he wants to do with some of the female Miqo'te bathers. Also Haurchefant, Aymeric, Zenos and any other npc that can be seen as flirting with the WoL don't care about their gender. Magnai and Daidukul being rare exceptions. As Magnai only wants to flirt with you if you're female and well all Buduga only want to interact with other men.

Yeah, that's a pretty workable starting list. I was going to mention the Ul'dahn merchant making some very unsubtle threats to the Ala Mhigan woman outside the Quicksand, and in a more indirect form there's the numerous bastard children in Ishgard, but other than that you've got most of the big ones.

If we're going whole-game the other big one to mention is Yotsuyu, but I think the game's approach to the subject becomes very different sometime around when Kazutoyo Maehiro left to do FFXVI; Yotsuyu is emblematic of a very different era.

[Iscah]

Secondly, and more importantly, the timeline. We have literally taken multi month (?) ship rides, traveled all over the continent, fought a dozen if not more primals, rallied armies multiple times... and it's been like a year? I think 4-5 years, at minimum, should be expected- if not more. Not least with the formation of the Crystal Braves, the Doman War, Ul'Dah's reforms, and more.

At current each expac would be months and that just... doesn't fit. If anything taking "real world" time into in game would make sense to me.

The much-repeated claim that "the devs say the story officially happens within a year" misunderstand the intention of that stance.

It's not that the story happens within a year, but that they have made an official decision to not count any time passing, so character ages and "years since X happened" never move forward. This becomes more noticable as the amount of present-day events gets larger, and perhaps they regret it in hindsight, but they're sticking with it for now.

When Heavensward was the current expansion, the events of ARR and Heavensward apparently fitted within a year, which was fine.

When Stormblood was current, the events of ARR, Heavensward and Stormblood apparently fitted within a year, which was starting to stretch things but not enough to protest about it.

Now at the tail end of Endwalker, the events of all five expansions still apparently fit within a year because the calendar is still firmly at "five years since the Calamity" even if that shouldn't be the case any more, so it becomes more important to understand that this is a deliberate and artificial situation and not actually a statement of how long it actually took from one event to the next.

Even if you could count up all the events and conclude that it has unquestionably been (say) three years from the beginning of ARR to the end of Endwalker, the calendar remains firmly frozen at Day 1 of ARR, and that is only going to change if and when the devs change their policy regarding timekeeping.

[Anonymoose]

I try to advance the idea of seeing the "frozen on day one" phenomenon (aka the Simpsons Bubble) as a blank check and a baseline.

First, it's already difficult for the developers themselves to keep a 12,000-year history straight numerical terms. Imagine how many more dates that are different today than they were on the first day we saw them we'd have to contend with before we even factor in the ongoing adjustment of open-world dialogue. I'm glad it doesn't move.

Second, one of my favorite one-two punches is to ask a large group, "How many think we should pop the time bubble?" (Overwhelming majority.) "OK everyone suggest how long it feels like it's really been." (Overwhelming disagreement.) It's been static for too long to change it without another concrete universal jump to another bubble, imho.

So I like to say that the developers gave everyone a blank check they can cash in for however much time they want their WoL's journey to be, and you have a very handy never-changing number from which to do all of your time-related calculations.

I've seen some RP groups agree on a pace and then all share that pace going forward, for example.

I just use real life earth days for Moose. Every patch is a few months of time spaced however makes sense to me.

[Keichi]

I personally ignore job stones, I understand their gameplay purpose but on a story level the idea of "get this rock and you know immediately how to do all of this specific stuff" is pretty dull to me personally. The stones with the memories of the ascians at least serve some kind of practical purpose that is brought about by the vast time abyss their job is taking, but most of the time in the job quests the stone is just There for gameplay purposes.

That is not correct.
It is stated, that the stones help to learn things faster.
Whe see it by Alphinau, who needed some time with the stone of his father to learn the Sage skills. And that is even counted as fast.
Whe see, how the stone needs time, because whe obtain new skills after some lvl happens. And by the older jobs is it even stated, that the stone obtain new power/awakening new power, after the class quest is finished.
And now are the stones in a state, where they learn from us.