[SPOILERS]Considering that new Minfilia feature.

[HyoMinPark]

Thats speculations, of course but looked very much like so. Like they wanted to get rid of unwanted character and in ShB they patch plot holes introducing Ryne taking heritage.

From what I understand, Minfilia was very popular in Japan. But she’s long since worn out her welcome from most of the NA/EU fans I’ve spoken to. I didn’t think she had much of a personality, nor did I find her particularly talented in anything other than getting kidnapped by every other villain out there. The declaration of “she did a lot behind the scenes” that I’ve seen from Minfilia stans really fell flat for me because we never saw any of that throughout the entirety of ARR.

If the developers want to get rid of a character, they’ll do what they did to Fordola. She had a really good arc in 4.1; but Japan did not like her character, so they relegated her to a Lodestone “Tales of the Storm” post and wrapped her story up there off-screen. I just think it was time for Minfilia to...move on. Especially after not being a part of the main story or our adventures since 2.55b—she only appeared briefly during 3.1 and 3.4, and that was that. I never had any emotional attachment to her despite her screentime.


Also, Re: 3,000 character limit—you can edit your post to include the rest of your thoughts on it. Editing bypasses the 3,000 limit these forums have.


EDIT:

Alphinaud basically [redacted] everything up and has since replaced Minfilias role but somehow gets far less hate.

A note on Alphinaud—I thought he was an absolute weenie when we met him in ARR: arrogant and prideful, everything I hate about a character. But his redeeming factor was that he recognized his own failures after the Crystal Braves (he had the best character development in HW of any other character), and has since strived to not make the same mistakes. Honestly, his portrayal in ShB endeared him to me more than I thought it would—I still prefer Alisaie, but I don’t mind Alphinaud now. I think he’s matured quite a bit.

[Hezzlocks]

Unjustified hate to ARR Minfilia? I would say any hate towards her was entirely justified. She served no purpose but to direct the storyline. Realistically her job *was* important, but they just did nothing to signify the importance of her work beyond "Oh, we're facing some new unknown problem, I'll summon this brand new NPC sort the problem out for us. Oh, and pray, return to the Waking Sands." Then in HW, she basically became a plot device herself.

Could they have improved OG Minfilia? Probably. She was a nice person, she just never got any chance, any chance at all, to prove herself to be an actual good character of worth, of which I'm sure she must have been, considering how much all the other Scions love her.

However, I'm absolutely fine with the route they took instead. Ryne is a sweet little thing, designed to wrap up Minfilia's plotline without actually replacing her. Ryne is her own person now, and they did a fine job differentiating her from Minfilia, with her own character development and growth. I, for one, welcome her to the group, and hope that she follows the Scions back to the Source when the time to go home arrives, though I'll be content if she also chooses to stay and and help support her people.

[Antoine_Lenheim]

Also, Re: 3,000 character limit—you can edit your post to include the rest of your thoughts on it. Editing bypasses the 3,000 limit these forums have.

Oh, thank you! I will try it with my next post since I dont see a way to delete my own posts.

[FJerome]

Being a leader and actually managing all the money, contacts, workers, etc, is hard and unexciting work, and I know that's exactly what Minf does, but I know it because she is the leader, not because we see her doing that.

She generally spends her time standing in a room supposedly gathering leads and funds, but you're also only told this most of the time. Sge sometimes gets to "show" but is largely a bigger "tell" character than Minfilia was.

You can't say in one breath that Minfilia was a good leader who took care of all the necessary financial things, because that's just what leaders do, and then in the next complain about how we're told that Tataru is actually doing it. You can complain how it should have been Minfilia, that's valid, and yeah, Tataru took a while to get good at the job - but Minfilia's position as written was more a religious figurehead than a pragmatic leader. Livia sas Junius even refers to her as the Scion's priestess at one point.

The early section of Stormblood has us seeking passage to Kugane by sea and so we go to Limsa Lominsa to avoid the obvious solution and ask the criminally underutilized Admiral Merlwyb. Instead, Tataru blackmails an on-the-spot made-up Isgardian moonlighting as a sailor to do it.

Carvallain has been an established NPC in Limsa since 1.0 and what Tataru blackmails him with, his real identity, was something that had been hinted at for years. It was pretty much the opposite of on-the-spot made-up.

[CaesarCV]

I think I'm just complete opposite of what this plot hand over to me. Im way against ultimate sacrifices and "leaving past in the past and live onward". I don't want to fight for something I've never been a part of if I still can bring back the world i know and love. I don't want ones I love sacrifice their lifes in order to bring peace and prosperity to the future. There will be no future for me without them.

Maybe you should try and seek out more Objectivist focused literature or something then. It seems like you're looking for works that advocate putting one's own desires above those of others, and that framework may prove useful in finding more works you enjoy. That being said, I want to make clear that bringing Minfilia back would definitely be a selfish act on the part of Thancred, or Minfilia herself. Minfilia's immortality was essentially that of an Ascian. She took over the bodies of various girls and used them to fight Sin Eaters and bring hope to the people until they died. However, Minfilia herself (arguably rightfully) was horrified she was taking over the bodies and lives of others in order to continue this cycle. The people she took over weren't blank clones or robotic shells, they were human beings with their own souls and personalities. The Ascians are more than happy to just take over bodies since they don't care about most people, but Minfilia did care. She grew weary of killing people to ensure her own immortality. So she decided to go softly into the night. Thancred had a similarly selfish desire. He could gain back Minfilia...but only by killing Ryne. He put his own emotional needs and satisfaction over the life of a human being. Indeed, he put his own emotional needs over Minfilia's desires, given how he advocated for her to kill Ryne even though she wished not to.

But if you wanted a story where selfish people kill others in order to get what they want, maybe try crime fiction or something ha ha.

[CaesarCV]

I apologize if I came off as a bit snide or rude there. I was just trying to explain the situation in a different manner that might describe the moral conundrum the characters are facing.

[Claymore65]

Comments about Doing stuff Off-Screen

As much as I like talking about lore and storytelling, you have to understand something important: this game is a story. One of the most basic rule of story-telling is "Show, don't tell." If something isn't demonstrated directly in the text, the onus is not on the reader to assume they're doing something useful off-screen. The onus is on the storyteller to make a character's motivations, actions, and dialog compelling. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed her as a character, but a lot of people did not.

I'd like to reiterate, this isn't about Combat Utility, this is about Narrative Utility. Characters need to have skills, knowledge, or talents that allow them to push the plot forward, or at the very least create interesting situations for scenes. Comic relief characters (such as Tataru), provide a valuable service to the plot, releasing tension when it's required. Urianger has a wealth of ancient prophecies and prior knowledge that have solved countless problems for us. Y'Shtola is an incredibly skilled and knowledgeable researcher, who provides the bulk of our explanations on how magic works. While Cid has helped us with a gunblade on occasion, his primary skills are not combat-oriented, yet most people tend to like him. Through poor storytelling, they failed to establish what Minfilia was providing from a narrative perspective, at least for a lot of players. All she really provided was...telling you where you're going next. Since she didn't personally develop a lot as a character, so a lot of players didn't get invested in her there as well.

Also, super minor nitpick: the Caravallein is actually an Ishgardian nobleman reveal wasn't pulled out their ass. That character had existed for a while, and his strange heritage was hinted at/explored in some side quests in Heavensward, and this was paid off in a minor but fun scene. Like I said, super minor nitpick though.

[Vidu]

There's a handful of characters who fall into this, too. Y'da is wearing half a pair of booty shorts for crying out loud. And the only reason for wearing short shorts and sabatons was for them pale, milky thighs. But I think thats just the personal preference, like I said fanservice is a common thing in SE, it just scales to game to game. Yes, maybe for a negotiator wearing such outfit is unacceptable but I liked to believe that shes wearing her "tribe" clothes. Like we didnt know much about Highlanders and Ala Mhigans back at ARR so I had a theory about her representating her country.

While I'm not a fan of Yda (or her outfit) either (she isnt a Miqo'te, so on ') she is a puglist/monk - someone who moves around a lot during combat, so wearing a bit less clothes that could hinder your movement always made more sense to me than wearing a leather-outfit like Minfilias to a diplomatic meeting. (Also: "Others are doing it too" is never a good argument to defend something)

I also cant help but think about the following:
Who would we - and Thancred - gotten back if the real Minfilia returned? Just giving us the old 2.0 (or 1.0) Minfilia back would have been extremly bad and lazy writing, basically ignoring everything that happend to us and her since she vanished 2 expansions ago (I dont count her cameo in HW because she was more Hydaelyns Voice than Minfilia).
Lets look at what happend since then and what options she has!

First, the very obvious one: What kind of body does she get? Currently, her soul shares Rynes body while we dont know what happend to her own body (probably desolved somehow in the lifestream).
So either she ends up with the body of a 13-year old OR we get some lazy writing that suddenly turns Rynes body into and adult one as soon as Rynes soul is gone. Either way she ends up with a body that she had to take from a girl shes know for over 10 years (I think it was mentioned that Minfilia "possessed" Ryne when she was like 2 or something around that age? And I would estimate Ryne being around 13 right now). She only has this body because someone else died - if that doesnt has an effect on her, it would seem pretty wrong and weird to me. (It also seems a little weird to me that Ryne doesnt has a bigger problem with this, but after all its her body that she finally has to herself again)
This also raises the question: How does Minfilia leave the First now? The Crystal Exarch already has no clue how to transport the souls of people who have bodies waiting for them on the Source. And we can only travel because we have a strong connection with the Source - how is Minfilia in that new body gonna do that? Or are we only sending her soul back, so she can find another host?

But more importantly than that... her old job is basically gone. We agreed that we would desolve the Scions and just keep working togther without forming this organisation. We also dont need someone who negotiates with Merlwyb and Nanamo anymore - or rather: we have Alphinaud to negotiate and we dont need anyone to "introduce" us anymore. I guess she could go back to becoming this decorative figure, though - as she basically was in ARR, since, as we established: They never showed her actually doing stuff and, worse, they never showed that things were falling apart because she vanished. We gave up the name "Scions" in a way, but the story never showed that anything important was missing. No Tataru complaining that she has to take on more paperwork now, no mention of missed meetings or banquets that someone of the Scions should have attended.
So... Minfilia would come back to a world in which shes basically not needed anymore.

And she would come back changed, one would hope: She died, she lived as part of a primal/the will of the planet for we-cant-really-say-how-long, she died and died again in all the "Rynes" that came before our Ryne. She was the Voice of Hydaelyn - and now shes supposed to go back to her office to represent an organisation that was doing fine without her for the past 3 expansions (I'm counding Shadowbringers aswell here. We did fine without Minfilia and special what she was/did in 2.0 in Shadowbringers)?

And what about her and Thancred?
While we have already established that a romantic relationship between the tqo is out of the question, lets just assume it isnt: Thancred would have gotten a woman back who was a goddess, who lived all those lifes and who died all those times. If hes lucky, she gets her old body back, If hes not and she keeps Rynes, he now has a 27 year old woman with more "age" under her belt than can actually be expressed in the body of a 13 year old girl...
I'll admit the last option sounds like it could have been intresting, but my point is: It wouldnt have been "old Minfilia". With how they set up the story in 2.55 Minfilia had to drastically change if she ever were to come back. The "new Minfilia" could have been nothing than a re-write and a replacement - just as much as Ryne.

Old Minfilia was dead with 2.55 - and the story failed to show a need for her character in the first place aswell as showing a need to bring excatly that character back.

[Antoine_Lenheim]

But if you wanted a story where selfish people kill others in order to get what they want, maybe try crime fiction or something ha ha.

I must repeat myself, I do consider her sacrifice to be suitable to this plot as a whole, if you really want to go all the way in building this improbable spectacle of cycle of death and rebirth, impermanence, legacy, letting new life grow on the past, sacrificing something you love in order to have a better future. It is indeed all well tied if you look at it from story perspective and your later comment actually opened my eyes at it.

My claims are more about why did it have to be the poor Minfilia, who suffered from everything in this game, bad writing, unjustified hate from community, they never gave her a chance to actually redeem herself in being a good character. She had a tragic story and personality that made some of us empathize with her, and then just got rid of that character in some out of reason way by making her a vessel. For me it wasnt fair that after all this the only way they can dig out some appeal to this character is ultimate sacrifice. That it should fall on her to hold up that microcosm of Ascians and Shards. She deserved much more than this, my opinion is they were out of ideas with how to smoothly return her to the story, hence why they came up with this whole "generations of Minfilias" thing and introduced Ryne as her legacy character.

And my second claim is Thancred reaction on which I already said everything that needed to be said. Again, not being crazy about this "forget the past, live onward" thing, his motivations after Minfilia passed away were quite alien to me. I couldnt understand why now he want to protect and fight for this new girl, it felt so stretched and unconvincing to me. Yes, shes not just a clone or a robotic thing, she is a human being and it will most certainly be selfish to sacrifice her but he never ever had any connections to her, again, he only recaptured her in order for his Minfilia to awake, he kept himself emotionally distanced from her and his only wish was to see his Minfilia again. I will never believe that in such short time he could come in acceptance with fact that shes dead for good now and he need to live with what remains and put his faith into this new girl. I would tolerate it much better if he would just walk away after that happen, giving up on this girl and this world as a whole. But ofc they needed him for further plot and they wanted some development so yeah, they made him into some sort of resigned saint who need nothing but carry legacy of his old Minfilia forward.

But I want to stop at "its selfish" point and ask -- why not be selfish? Its the most "realistic" attitude you can expect, anything else will be overstretched like with Thancred. And there's no need to resort to crime fiction or objectivist literature as you pointed, I can name you a few examples of this being done right and they are from videogames.

So, The Last of Us firstly. Or more accurately, Joel. I dont know if you played it, I guess you at least heard about it. Throughout Joel's story he fights and kills people strictly to survive, but there's one other thing. He sacrifices all of humanity to save one girl, Ellie. The fungus in her brain were needed to make a vaccine to save millions of infected people. To take it out would mean to kill her. But Joel chose not to save humanity but to save the only person he loved in this world. He didnt need humanity to survive because what would humanity matter to him if Ellie wont be with him. That shows that he is selfish, yes, and that he didn't even give Ellie a choice on whether she wanted to not be used for a cure. But thats what made The Last of Us story so awesome, sometimes you just cant put the world and ones you love on the same scales. You will have to choose and the most desired solution will be the selfish one.

Fang from FF13, the very franchise lol. Shes actually considered to be among the most loved characters from this game and I know how much hate FF13 got for being... linear? But we're not talking about it. Fang's primary motivation is to find Vanille, ensure she's safe and hitch a ride back home to Gran Pulse, whether that means helping the Cavalry, party of our heroes or neither. It's actually used against her, when she contemplates completing their Focus (i.e. do the opposite of your party's goal and destroy Cocooon) because it means Vanille won't become a Cie'th. It's best summarized in this line: Pulse and Cocoon can rot for all I care. I'll tear down the sky, if it'll save her. And its completely understandable, Vanille was the last person she cared for because they both lost their parents in Oerba. It only felt right that Fang wishes to fight not for the world, but for only person she loved in it. It didnt stop them from becoming a crystal together but at least they all got a happy ending in the last game.

These are two examples I can straight take out of my head, I think I can Google up even more if I want to give it some time. Also, to answer about your previous question about, what a character will it be to care only about his own wishes but not so much I can give another example. Surprisingly, Bronn of the Blackwater from GoT comes to mind. I know how much hate GoT recieved for its last season and it were pretty much justified but before Season 8 it was actually a very decent show. And Bronn is a perfect example of such character. Hes the very stereotype of a mercenary, greedy, brutal, does not shy away from dirty tricks. But at the same time, compared to the books he is friendlier towards Tyrion, even going as far as to ask Jaime to defend Tyrion when the latter is accused of murdering Joffrey. And while Bronn ultimately abandons Tyrion in both versions, he's more apologetic about it. He also has some genuine friendship with Podrick, which wouldn't be in character for the colder book counterpart. He even genuinely cares for Jaime, ultimately risking his life to save him from being incinerated by Drogon, and then dragging him off the bottom of a lake to safety. He has his own codex and sense of morality, though yes at the end of the day he always put his needs above others. And what did it brought him? Well, he came up being one of few characters to actually come out of it with his head on his neck, he became the most wealthy man in all Westeros, he finally got his castle, and he got a position in a Small Court.

So I think selfish can be done right if you want to put some effort in it. SE decided not to and quite frankly, ShB is not about such choices I guess.

All she really provided was...telling you where you're going next.

I find it really funny how you supposedly didnt read any of my arguments about Minfilia not only being there to tell you where you going next. She actually does work and researches. And why you cant wrap your head around the fact that you dont need to show everything to make a good story is beyond me, look at Dark Souls franchise for example. The only story you have there is just simple hints you get when reading description of items and a tiny bit of plot that coming from few cutscenes. That's all. And people still consider Dark Souls to actually have a good story. And also, if you can read so deep between the lines to find correlation between Ryne and Minfilia and Ascians and their Shards, it amuzes me how you couldnt get that Minfilia were actually responsible for almost every victory you have during your battle with primals.

On the point of Carvallain, I never given too much attention to side quests so didnt know that he was actually a known person. So yeah, maybe I rushed my statement a bit.

[Dualblade]

The only thing I have to add is, even if Minfillia had been better received by the western player base, assuming the story went the same way regardless it would have been very out of character for Minfillia to take away the girl's choice in her right to live. Her actions of acting as an Ascian in taking over the lives of previous girls was already borderline but it was shown it was taking its toll on her, that she did NOT want to do it anymore than she had to. She didn't want to do it again but knew that her powers were needed to help save the First, Ryne ultimately wanting to live was for sure a relief to her. She didn't have to take another life after all.

Thancred as well, while in the flashback he probably did want her back more than Minifillia/Ryne by the time the WoL/D got to the First he wanted her to live, but he is...not great at communicating plus the fact that he wanted her to make her own choice instead of going along with what he wanted just because he told her. Which again comes down to bad communicating since if it hadn't been for the WoL/D and even more Urianger she probably would have sacrificed herself instead.

TL;DR Minfillia wanted this outcome, trying to say she should have been more selfish goes against her character and speaks to how little you cared about her character even in comparison to those who didn't like her.

Edit: As well, as someone who did in fact like Minfillia and didn't mind the trip back to the Waking Sand and all that: Minfillia did more in HW and SHB than all of ARR despite appearing less. Her character was used to much greater affect in what probably at best takes up an hour of screen time combined between the two than the much longer amount of time she had in ARR. Can't speak for Legacy though.