RP Timeline

[Sienna]

So, this topic came up in the Skype group, so I thought I'd throw it out here as well for discussion.

 

According to the Devs, the entirety of the game so far (From launch to End of an Era) occured within the year 1572. That means the two years the game has been active has all occurred within a year or less.

 

As such, where does that leave you as the RPer? The two most obvious choices are that A: we all just pretend that we started our RP adventures in the year 1570, 'cause nothing loreheavy happened then anyway, or B: we pretend everything we've RP'd since the start has happened during 1572 alone.

 

Are there other options? If so, what would they be? If not, which of the two would you go with?

 

Will you hold others accountable to your decision?

 

Just a few starting questions. What're your thoughts?

 

 

 

For me, I'm lucky with Sienna. I started her out in August, so she doesn't have the whole two-year issue. The alts of myself and my brother, however, have been around since Beta. If we bring them back, we'd prefer to go with option A: Treating the start of our RP adventure as 1570. Very little discussion has ever occurred IC for either of us about the dates of Ala Mhigo's downfall until more recently, so it's easy enough to make A fit.

 

As for holding others accountable, I'd just tend not to bring up dates and specifics. Moreso "Remember when...?" and leave it at that.

[Satisiun]

Sort of makes you happy that Final Fantasy XIV didn't have a running in-game calendar like Final Fantasy XI did. If you were to attempt and go for full-blown immersion based off the actual world calendar, you'd basically be playing a hundreds-year old character whose life seems to fly by at one hour per day, give or take a few real-life minutes. :?

 

In any event, it may very well ultimately depend on the amount of roleplay that you do. If you're a very heavy player who has scenarios and scenes coming out the whazoo after about two years of playing, treating those two years like, well ... two years, may be the best option, because trying to figure out how to condense so much activity in to just a year could be troubling. On the other hand, a lighter roleplayer who isn't at it so much may go with the option that dictates that everything which has happened with them happened inside of just the 1< years that 1.0 took place in. But that's only going off the possibility that Options A and B are the only two options available.

 

The crux of the issue, in the end, seems to fall on what you said at the end involving 'others'. The way time works in an MMO, beyond the fact that night and day whiz by from a game mechanics standpoint at a staggering pace, just varies too much between players to really work well unless you are working on a specific storyline with someone where you are figuring out things like time passed, time spent together, et cetera. It's not something that can be dictated or forced upon others, really, without risking the possibility of discontentment and disagreement, especially if there hasn't been some sort of hammering out of details prior.

 

Seems like the safest bet is to simply handle time in a very general, almost vague manner, where specific dates or elapsed periods of time are left out of casual, non-storyline'd roleplaying.

[Ariel]

This is very simple, there is a 5 year time skip from bahamut's release, otherwise I rp the present (That being whatever time is being represented in the rp scene/session/event), and use group events as points in the timeline.

[Satisiun]

This is very simple' date=' there is a 5 year time skip from bahamut's release [...']

 

Speaking of the 5-year time skip, here's a thought.

 

Depending on how the time skip is explained -- be it some sort of dimensional limbo stasis, or just a total and complete 'blip!' from the end of 1.0 to the start of 2.0 -- has anyone considered aging their character five years physically as well?

 

Just sort of popped up in my head as an interesting thought, mainly if it turns out that those who were teleported in to the future spent time in stasis. Sorry if I am getting off-topic! :moogle:

[Tadir]

As Tadir wasn't at the final battle, (He was with his ailing father. His father got better.) he wasn't teleported into the limbo zone. He has his history for the intervening five years. (A lot happened for him.)

 

There is actually a thread somewhere about what everyone's characters were doing if they weren't ...uh...saved?

[Moltove]

1572- Well, it's fine with me, and the only thing I can offer is shift 2 years worth of RP to 1570, since nothing RP or Lore wise happened that was big enough to note. This shouldn't be too much, just a minor technicality. I think.

 

5 Years- I'll be aging Molt. I should have journals up of his exploits or something...unsure how to RP it out, but might make an open thread or too.

[Deirdre]

I have two years of RP I cannot just condense in to nothing, so I will be kind of... fandangling it. Makes me super annoyed at SE for this.

 

And yes, Deir will also be aging five years, and the details will emerge in her wiki and journals, once I get some solid time.

[Aysun]

I also have two years of RP that apparently happened in one year. Meh. I will have to play as if launch was 1570. The only real issue (which would hopefully NEVER come up in RP) is that Aysun has had the Echo from the beginning, but the starshower event thing didn't happen until 1572... Gah. Messy.

 

Smile and nod.

[Deirdre]

Seriously. They gave us two new years events as well, which the in game chaarcters participated.

Makes me wanna stab a Dev...

[Chloe Ardarose]

I never really got my RP going during 1.0, sadly. However, it does give me lots of freedom for structuring my character for ARR.

[Eva]

I refuse to condense two+ years of RP activity to within one year's time. As a dynamic character, Eva is far different now than she was when things started and RPing out these gradual psychological and behavioral changes (coping with multiple losses, letting go, etc.) has been part of what we feel makes her kind of realistic as a character. Compressing that timeframe for the sake of S-E's inconsistencies would force those character growths to have been accelerated to a point where they no longer seem so realistic. So for Eva, the RP adventures would have begun in 1570 and I suppose it bumps her birth year back a bit from what we had previously thought, but that's fine.

 

As far as what other people do, if there is some inconsistency with timelines than I think we can just sort of leave things abstract. "Remember when...?" as was suggested above. I wouldn't really expect many RPers to go into specifics anyway.

 

But yeah... thanks for the paradox, S-E.

[Sigil.9054]

Wow, you guys must have been really, really active RPers. I can't recall a single RP instance where minutes worth of RP didn't take an hour of real world time.

 

That said, I would go ahead and condense it. Regarding In-Game Holidays: I tend to ignore them as meta anyways (my character will participate and react, generally speaking, but I tend t leave it out of their bios). Of course, since I haven't RPed in FF14 yet, you're welcome to ignore my opinion.

[Aysun]

Well, we are really active RPers, as you guessed Sigil.

 

Both me and Eva keep journals for our characters that are pretty extensive (hers more so than mine) and record things as they happen. I believe Aysun acknowledged both new years in her journal.

 

Things occur and are dealt with over time. Major events occurred for our characters over this time. Something very traumatic that occurred two years ago vs. earlier this year? I mean it's a given it messes with the character to try to condense it.

[Moltove]

I ignore the holidays, as well. I mean...technically speaking, in that one year, you /do/ get one shot at each holiday...but then if you make it a point to take your wife/daughter out on the designated Ladies Day, you're kinda bunked.

[Sienna]

One issue with some of the holiday events, especially in the past several months, is they've been tied in to the storyline (Such as Founders' Day and fighting Atomos to keep people safe)

[Sigil.9054]

Hmm. Would it be possible to have your character's histories start a year before the game supposedly does? I haven't quite read up on the lore (been playing Fallout: NV), so I don't know how feasible that is.

[Aysun]

Yes, that's what most of us will probably have to do. Start in 1570. The only problem there is what I said before, that the event that gave adventurers the Echo apparently did not occur until 1572, whereas I've been playing for 2 years that it existed. Yay paradox.

 

Basically: such is life. The date of the event or how long she's had it is not bound to come up in RP for me, so I won't worry about it. :3

[Eva]

Wrote a long post but it got gobbled up.

 

The gist was twofold so I'll try to summarize what I had written:

 

1. As Aysun pointed out, any inconsistency between people who choose to compress everything pre-ARR into 1572 and people who choose to "push back" the start of adventuring time to 1570 is going to be pretty negligable. I'm not sure anyone would really nitpick specific dates and such, and rather than referencing a specific timeframe, more abstract methods like "Remember when...?" can easily be used to circumvent this.

 

2. What may be a bit more of a concern for folks is the passage of time (or lack thereof) post-ARR. I know a majority of RPers right now haven't been RPing since the game's launch back in 2010 and compressing events into one year may not be such a detrimental thing, but the LoreBomb that was recently posted suggested that the passage of time would be more or less halted for the sake of in-game story incidents, so presumably after the launch of ARR we'll be perpetually locked into the year 1577. Consider if you RP for five years, will it be feasable to have all of entirety of your character's RP life taking place inside only that one year?

 

For myself I'm doing something like this:

 

2010 == 1570

2011 == 1571

2012 == 1572 (Dalamud impact)

2013 == 1577 (after the 5-year gap)

2014 == 1578

2015 == 1579

etc. etc.

 

But I don't think this is the right way of doing things, nor do I think compressing the time for anyone that chooses to do that is wrong - I just think this is probably the most graceful way to explain the passage of time and character development appropriately, so that is my choice. *shrugs*

[Aysun]

That's how I'll be doing it as well, Eva, since there will be holiday events (as they did in 1.0) that progress time in game, even though we'll be locked in the same year according to SE.

[Sienna]

Here's hoping expansions don't mess up the timeline terribly. They tend to be set X years later with certain MMOs (XI included)

[TWF]

The devs said that essentially, while time flows in the real world, it's been 1572 in Eorzea this entire time. Kind of like the endless staircase in Mario 64. My character had not been RP'd in 1.0, but I will still technically be aging him. He was 14 in 1572, and will be 19 in ARR. For those of you who are worried about the destruction of the city states... he did a poor job even before the reconstruction of certain places. Just a bit of... educated speculation. Your characters should be fine in the cities.