Our passive characters and why the 2.55 story fails (BIG SPOILERS) (rant warning)

[Cailae]

ITT: so many people don't understand (or don't want to understand) that Midgarsormr took away the blessing of light, which is the only thing that let us do all those awesome things like fight Primals, and are mad because the WoL doesn't make the same foolish knee-jerk reactions "they would have done" which would have either gotten them killed or played right into the enemies' hands.

The Warrior of Light is not the badass you think he is. He has, as Nabriales observed, "lost his fangs". Yes, you might have a crazy-strong Relic weapon but you are still just one man. Your skill as a fighter is probably quite good, but not "I can single-handedly defeat dozens of skilled swordsman" good.

This REALLY doesn't hold up as shortly after that we mop the floor with him, and then he dies. I'm still strong enough canonically take out an ascian, in their own pocket dimension. I'm also still fighting primals on a pretty regular basis, while also conquering the world of darkness (which was added in the same patch, it would follow that I do not have Hydaelyns blessing during that). Didn't we also just fight a mega-dragon? that was murdering the heck out of dozens of trained, battle hardened Ishgardians? It seems to be that my strength hasn't really been altered much by losing Hydaelyns blessing.

A whole lot just happened, and its a lot to take in. It seems clear that Teledji Adeledji is an enemy, but who else is? The entire syndicate? All the Monetarists? Every brass blade? Just a few? Who is truly a foe and who is an unwitting pawn? It would be foolhardy to just start killing people without taking time to examine the situation and try to mitigate innocent deaths. Even if you could cut a swath through the whole city of Ul'dah, which you couldn't, you would be very likely to be killing a lot of innocents and making an enemy of the city for life. You really don't want to end up with the people of Ul'dah remembering you as a butcher.

How about I be allowed to start with the ones that were extremely conveniently at the door, waiting for the Sultana to die to try to arrest me on trumped up charges, that are obviously corrupt and in Teledji's pocket? The ones whom i am QUITE certain wont be giving me any sort of fair trial. Or how about the ones actively attacking the scions? The scions had no qualms with fighting these guys, why would I? If I'm ALREADY on the hook for regicide, why would I even worry about my standing in the city? You can see above why I'm pretty sure I can still cut a swathe through some mook city guards.

A lot of people seem to be basically complaining that they felt helpless during all this -- good. I think we're supposed to. We were not ready for this level of betrayal. We're the victim of an expertly crafted trap which has been sprung on us all of a sudden and it goes way deeper than we feared to think. Sh*t just hit the fan in a major way and its probably fairly realistic to feel a bit helpless as friends betray us, allies are murdered, a city turns on us, and the entire socio-political climate changes in a blink of an eye. WoL or not, you're probably gonna feel pretty helpless and confused as all this happens around you. Needing to get away, to have time to take it all in and assess what is really going on and who is truly friend/foe, is pretty understandable and probably even quite necessary.

Hardly masterfully crafted. Even taking away scenes shown to me, the player, my character still has a plethora of clues that things have a chance to go down.my character is told directly that there are disloyal potentially traitorous crystal braves. I am fairly certain the moment people burst in the door to the Sultanas chambers throwing accusations about my character, with someone I know to be traitorous at their head, some of them wearing braves uniforms, my character would have put it together rather quickly. As a ninja it would have been pretty trivial to AT A MINIMUM evade capture by obviously corrupt guards. Thancred pulls this off with aplomb. Even if they took my weapons. The problem isn't being helpless. The problem is being helpless because our characters are given the idiot ball, written around instead of for. As I said in my previous post, give me a reason to BE helpless that makes sense and a lot of my frustration goes away. In this instance it's flimsy writing. It's an inconsiderate casting aside of my character and what she's been through, experienced, and done. I can take out city-threatening dragons, but not get away from a few mooks.

We still went to Ishgard by ourselves, killing bunches of dragons on our own that groups of sellswords were entirely unable to defeat, with ease. Then we go and accomplish a feat the whole army of Ishgard wouldn't have been able to do without us. Our combat strength through all this - which happens way after we lose "the blessing of light, which is the only thing that let us do all those awesome things". So no. The blessing of light is not the source of our strength, or they couldn't have put those story fights and the duty in after the story.

Also this.