Do you think henchmen/mooks who recognize the WoL but attack anyway are silly?

[Cilia]

Ifrit gets a pass though as the development team already thought of a way out of that - in the cell another prisioner states he managed to dig a small tunnel to an underground waterway that lead back out into Thanalan, and that one person sneaking out wouldn't attact attention, but if they all tried, the amal'jaa guards would come down on you all rapidly before you could do anything, so he basically pressured you into escaping only so that you could mount a rescue party. Speaking to a Immortal Flames npc in Camp Drybone allows you to therefore return back to the prison cell theoretically with reinforcements, and thus face down Ifrit with a full party (although it's a big stretch that your party all happened to be awoken to the Echo and thus immune to his little tempering stunt).

Either way, the game basically explained that Ifirit was probably fought with a party and not 'solo', regardless of what the cutscene showed.

I'm aware of that, but that's something I chalk up to gameplay convenience - the amalj'aa aren't going to wait for you to come back before feeding the captives to Ifrit. Technically speaking there's nothing stopping you from leaving any of the urgent, imminent battles to go gallivant about the countryside until you're ready to fight them. Yotsuyu-as-Tsukuyomi? You actually can leave Castrum Fluminis and come back to fight her later, despite the fact doing so would narratively be somewhere between extremely stupid and downright suicidal. Vauthry will wait for you at the Crown of the Immaculate if you want to go have fun with the dwarves beforehand.

Anyway, I did forget what the Scions were doing while you were fighting Titania; I just remembered them standing with you at the base of the stairs leading to the Crown of the Immaculate. I know you can't take Trusts into trials, but because of how the story is designed (you had a hole punched in reality just for you to go to Norvrandt!) the likelihood of having adventurer buddies to help you with Titania and Innocence is again somewhere between "really low" and zero. Hades gets around this by showing Exarch G'raha explicitly summon other champions to help you (probably made easier because he was just sending out a call for anyone to pick up, instead of trying to reach a specific individual in spacetime).

[Veloran]

I might dismiss as just the journal going along with the joke

It's a running joke. Also your examples can also be used as evidence to the opposite effect.

Steps of Faith? You go out of your way to recruit other adventurers and ready the Crystal Braves, and the adventurers you recruit are literally still present in the story to this day. In other words, it's what adventurers helping you should look like and the obvious story results from such an instance, but nothing else abides by this formula. In fact the presence of other adventurers in multiple instances seriously harms narrative cohesion in various situations.
Big Bridge? Clearly 8v1 isn't a duel.
Bismarck? It was a spur of the moment plan conducted during a race against Thordan to get the key, while WoL was still wanted in the city-states. And after it's done not only are you clearly alone on the rock, but that's explicitly taken advantage of to ambush WoL and steal the key while nobody is there to help you.
Sephirot is actually a reasonable case where you could have gotten allies beforehand, but again they are never referenced in the story itself and your lack of Walker allies is later what forces you to ally with the Garleans, bring the inexperienced Unukalhai into battle, and leads directly to Regula's death.
Baelsar's Wall, Lakshmi, and maybe Shinryu are other reasonable instances, but once more none of your allies are present for the story before or afterwards. Not to mention that when Lakshmi is summoned in Ala Mhigo later, Lyse resorts to freeing Fordola for want of an ally with the Echo, not any of the "Echo-blessed adventurers" that you supposedly can always get no matter the situation.
With Hades the story actually does take the time to establish how you could have had help in that instance. Unlike every other trial on the First and half of Stormblood.

And, again, this doesn't address the core issue presented by this thread anyway.

[DPZ2]

The obvious answer about why we still get attacked is that the only people who really know what we look like are either (a) Scions (b) Friends or (c) dead. We are underestimated time and again. I quote those famous last words of someone who should have known better: "Who ... What are you?"

[Alleo]

Ifrit is always a funny example and to me a great way to show that this is purely gameplay.

We are out there in the desert, captured and should be chained. Yet of course we somehow have an escape nearby? So should we truly believe that somehow we are the only one in the group not bound? That instead of freeing the rest or at least some more, we leave completely alone without anyone noticing..then somehow there is a random NPC out there right infront of the lake in the middle of the desert..and instead of saying to him that there is danger and get some real back up we somehow just ignore him, go through the desert, find three other people that are willing and have the echo (something we dont even know about much at the moment). We get back with these people while in the mean time the enemies are chilling..we go back and instead of freeing the rest and creating a surprise attack we just sit down and wait..

Well how lucky to have these awesome echo blessed fighters with us..the same fighters that completely disappear after the fight, while Thancred (someone we barely know) only ask if we the player character are alright.

Sorry but if that what it happens than thats just bad..


Edit:

Also we somehow have 23 other people that are at least similiar or near as strong as the WoL is. 7 of those need to have the echo. None of them are significantly mentioned by any of the scions (other than that joke sentence from Lyse). They are always near us when we need them for certain duties but not for others (the solo ones). They are seemingly completely not available for steps of faith because we had to gather NPC adventurers to fight alongside us.

And as Veloran said: The WoL is a cheater..if they think that its fair to bring 7 other people to duels against one person..or into dungeons that are done to prove to others how strong we are.

[Cilia]

Steps of Faith? You go out of your way to recruit other adventurers and ready the Crystal Braves, and the adventurers you recruit are literally still present in the story to this day. In other words, it's what adventurers helping you should look like and the obvious story results from such an instance, but nothing else abides by this formula. In fact the presence of other adventurers in multiple instances seriously harms narrative cohesion in various situations.

Those adventurers are present because they were the winners of a contest that would get players' avatars put into the game. They aren't the only ones; the miqo'te Thancred is chatting up just before the Crystal Braves turn traitor and try to arrest him is also one such character.

Bismarck? It was a spur of the moment plan conducted during a race against Thordan to get the key, while WoL was still wanted in the city-states. And after it's done not only are you clearly alone on the rock, but that's explicitly taken advantage of to ambush WoL and steal the key while nobody is there to help you.

This one is actually very muddy. It was not a spur of the moment plan; it required thought and planning, as well as materials from Ishgard (the chains and dragonkiller harpoons). It's very improvisational, but not at all poorly planned. It's also past the point in the story where your name's been cleared. (Lolorito specifically mentions the Gration, though not by name, during your "debriefing" on his plan to stop Adeledji's coup and how Ilberd sent the thing down the toilet.)

That said, yeah, you are shown alone on the island after the battle. So, who knows.

Usually, you are given narrative time to go in with a plan. If so it's plausible (if not probable) you went in with a crew. However, sometimes that isn't the case, such as with Ifrit and Tsukuyomi. If so, you... probably did not have a crew for the battle. Shadowbringers sidesteps the issue through both narrative framing (you had a hole punched in reality to bring you and only you to Norvrandt!) and the introduction of the Trust system for dungeons, as well as Exarch G'raha summoning other heroes for the final showdown with Hades.

The journal cheekily mentioning your Echo-blessed buddies feels less like a serious piece of information and more like the writers making light of the fact that despite the narrative presenting things as if you had done them solo, as an MMO group content is the standard. As such I don't take those very seriously, owing to the implausibility of some explanations (like Lyse's "Maybe s/he has a bunch of friends who just happened to take a fishing trip to the Far East and are coincidentally close by?").

As for the central issue? TFS Freeza Dilemma, and we can change our appearance too easily to be instantly recognizable. There's also the issue of Imperial censorship, so knowledge of the (in)famous Eikon Slayer might not be widely circulated outside of the upper echelons of the Imperial government. (Still, having such a(n in)famous reputation amongst the Imperial troops that they drop their weapons and flee on sight would be cool, like Ghost of Tsushima.)

Most other antagonistic nations / factions are either completely foreign (Eulmore) or have their antagonism be flash in the pan (the Masks).

[Jandor]

Not seeing them in cut-scenes doesn't really mean much. The game doesn't seem able to put people in cut-scenes when they aren't actually there, and your adventurer friends are all real people with real lives who want to go and do other stuff, instead of having to wait around for 5-10 minutes so they can be in your cut-scenes.

It's far easier to go with the solution they have gone with and just say that your friends were close by, or that you organized it all off-screen.

-----

As such I don't take those very seriously, owing to the implausibility of some explanations (like Lyse's "Maybe s/he has a bunch of friends who just happened to take a fishing trip to the Far East and are coincidentally close by?").

At least three of them came across on the same boat as we did, you cleared Sirensong sea with them
The other four probably guarded the boat.

[Veloran]

Those adventurers are present because they were the winners of a contest that would get players' avatars put into the game. They aren't the only ones; the miqo'te Thancred is chatting up just before the Crystal Braves turn traitor and try to arrest him is also one such character.

Sure, but that doesn't change how you go out of your way to gather help and they stay characters further on into the story.

Not seeing them in cut-scenes doesn't really mean much. The game doesn't seem able to put people in cut-scenes when they aren't actually there, and your adventurer friends are all real people with real lives who want to go and do other stuff, instead of having to wait around for 5-10 minutes so they can be in your cut-scenes.

The issue is more that they have no place or relevance in the narrative. With Bismarck for example, the story is directly set up for WoL to be alone so that you can be ambushed and the key to Azys Lla stolen. In order to think that there were other people there, you'd also need to think that they all immediately left literal moments after killing Bismarck, before you even got the key. Yes, real people aren't constrained by your progress in the story, but it's beyond reasonable belief that something like that would happen within the world itself.

At least three of them came across on the same boat as we did, you cleared Sirensong sea with them
The other four probably guarded the boat.

Aside from the fact that the characters in the story explicitly say that there's nobody around to help you. Also Carvallain returned to Eorzea very soon after dropping you off at Kugane. Sort of brings in to question how long you were actually there given it's also his ship that brings you back, but that's kind of a tangent.

[Alleo]

The issue is more that they have no place or relevance in the narrative. With Bismarck for example, the story is directly set up for WoL to be alone so that you can be ambushed and the key to Azys Lla stolen. In order to think that there were other people there, you'd also need to think that they all immediately left literal moments after killing Bismarck, before you even got the key. Yes, real people aren't constrained by your progress in the story, but it's beyond reasonable belief that something like that would happen within the world itself.


Aside from the fact that the characters in the story explicitly say that there's nobody around to help you. Also Carvallain returned to Eorzea very soon after dropping you off at Kugane. Sort of brings in to question how long you were actually there given it's also his ship that brings you back, but that's kind of a tangent.

Exactly. Somehow in all these fights the people that suddenly are with us are just gone as sudden too..even if bad things happen afterwards. Where did they even go after Bismark? We know from story itself that teleportation takes time and aether. So its not like they could have just teleported away. We were high up in the sky..the sensible thing to do would be to wait for Cid to bring us on the ship. Why are they not here then when we are ambushed?

Where are the other four people while we run Ala Mhigo? Why do they only appear when we fight Zenos? (Since it changes from 4man to 8man content)And where do they go afterwards?

How does anything regarding Azys Lla makes sense with people? Did we just leave them all behind after Estinien got possessed since we can only escape with Middy and are the only one on his back?

About the ship: Who are those three other people that seemingly are such good friends that they are able to travel with us on the ship even though just getting on it needed blackmail by Tataru. Why are those friends then never with us when it counts? Why dont they have names? Where are they when we nearly got killed by Zenos? Or by any other NPC in a story fight? Where do they disappear too when we do solo instances or any of the more important story moments? Why are these friends that seemingly follow us into unknown territory and against primals or Lightbringers not there when we for example needed to defend Lakeland? Or when we went against a certain Ascians at the end of shadowbringers? (If we have at least 23 strong adventurers that will do Nier with us..then we should have at least a handful of them at that point..are you telling me that they decided not to follow their leader into the most important battle?)

[How did the people reach Eden if there is only one thing that can bring us there and its used by us?]

[Jandor]

The issue is more that they have no place or relevance in the narrative. With Bismarck for example, the story is directly set up for WoL to be alone so that you can be ambushed and the key to Azys Lla stolen. In order to think that there were other people there, you'd also need to think that they all immediately left literal moments after killing Bismarck, before you even got the key. Yes, real people aren't constrained by your progress in the story, but it's beyond reasonable belief that something like that would happen within the world itself.

- "Thanks for the help guys, see you back in Ishgard?"
- "Sure, meet you at the Forgotten Knight." /teleports away.

I'd hardly say it's beyond reasonable belief for that to happen within the world itself. Even makes sense within the world really, the primal had been slain and they were all probably soaking wet from fighting a flying whale. I'd want to go and get changed ASAP too.

[TheMightyMollusk]

A few instances explicitly say we're leading a group of adventurers/mercenaries. Cape Westwind, Castrum Meridianum, Praetorium, and the Steps of Faith all mention it in the lead-in quests. They're just conveniently off-camera during the post-instance cut scenes. (Or maybe Ultima Weapon/Lahabrea killed them all at the end of Prae.) Shadowbringers dungeons have the Scions along for the ride. In the Dying Gasp, the Exarch explicitly summons help for us to fight Hades, and presumably sends them back after the fight (having figured out how to summon people properly by now, like the WoL, rather than just ripping out their souls like the rest of the Scions). It's also entirely reasonable to assume we grabbed some other troops to help fight the Ruby Weapon, since we go straight from an Alliance camp to the battlefield.

Anywhere else? Just....don't think about it too hard. It's just Gameplay and Story Segregation because it's an MMO. Just nod and smile and kill stuff.