On Goobues and Timelines.

[Iscah]

That was specifically Koji's words so I guess take them as you will.

When people use that quote to 'prove' the "span of one year" thing is canon, they invariably overlook two things:

1. The span of one year is how long the time contained within the bubble condenses into despite rightfully taking longer, and it is probably only a year in the first place because they mentioned in Stormblood that it had been a year since the rebellion in Doma.

Secondly, it's something he said during Stormblood, where a year still sounded like a plausible timespan for the events. If he repeated it today it might come with a lot more emphasis that the events are not actually all intended to fit within the designated year of time bubble.

[MikkoAkure]

When people use that quote to 'prove' the "span of one year" thing is canon, they invariably overlook two things:

1. The span of one year is how long the time contained within the bubble condenses into despite rightfully taking longer, and it is probably only a year in the first place because they mentioned in Stormblood that it had been a year since the rebellion in Doma.

Secondly, it's something he said during Stormblood, where a year still sounded like a plausible timespan for the events. If he repeated it today it might come with a lot more emphasis that the events are not actually all intended to fit within the designated year of time bubble.

It should rightfully take longer.

- The death of the emperor and the rebellion mentioned being a year ago despite the news being broken to us in-game seemingly shortly afterwards.
- The ~3 month travel time to Kugane on the very fastest chartered "merchant" ship and the boat rides to Sharlayan and Tuliyollal that would be smaller distances, but slower boats.
- The on-foot traveling and plot happening.
- Downtime in between world-shattering events.

But deciding on a timeline is probably going to cause complications down the road in regards to aging up main story characters like Alphinaud and Alisae who would reach their adult height at age 20-21 which would then cause problems if you do stuff out of order like Coils. Plus there's the many children NPCs running around like important ones such as Khloe or background ones such as the playground in Gridania. The writers would also have an extra layer of complexity when trying to writer future stories to remain consistent to the timeline.

While they definitely took the lazy route of "just ignore a timeline and let plot happen", I don't think having a strict timeline necessarily suits an MMO.

[Cleretic]

While they definitely took the lazy route of "just ignore a timeline and let plot happen", I don't think having a strict timeline necessarily suits an MMO.

I wouldn't call it the 'lazy option' when I don't think there's any better option. Sometimes, the winning move really is not to play.