Quote Originally Posted by FJerome View Post
. . . My bigger issue with the Scions is why none of the other Echo holders, like Arenvald, ever help out with this Primal thing.
They probably aren't skilled combatants like we are. Our sheer martial (or magical) prowess is our main asset in fights against primals; the Echo just prevents us from being tempered. Ordinary people can and have defeated primals in the past before, it just takes human wave tactics to exhaust the primal's ability to temper before the real fighters can go up against the primal.

Put bluntly, even with the Echo a primal will still murder your ass if you can't fight. *glares at Minfilia*

Quote Originally Posted by Fenral View Post
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True but protagonist != hero. This is common, but not always the case. While we do make everything better, for most intents and purposes we aren't really a character; we get almost no characterization in the MSQ and are simply treated as the standard humble doormat of a silent protagonist. In almost every single class / job quest you're just a spectator to the story of others. This is even true of most of the MSQ!

You're the hero, the unstoppable force to point at whatever is threatening Eorzean peace this week... but that's all you are. You aren't really the protagonist of anything because only one story in the game is really your story. The rest are about someone else. While RPGs do generally avoid the "paragon" archetype these days, the problem is that XIV is an MMO... and thus every PC has to be interchangeable. It's a limitation that comes with adding MMO to the RPG. You do influence events, but take one Warrior of Light out and plug another one in, and the story would continue rolling with no changes at all. Hell, if the Echo weren't a damn-near necessity for fighting primals and the soldiers were competent, you could almost take the Warrior of Light out of the story and it would spin on none the wiser.