why during cutscene its always like this ... (small spoiler)

[Kallera]

I'd rather have a playable instance where I "lose" and see my character's efforts beaten back than a cutscene when I don't even participate in helping my allies.

You never hear anything bad about the fight before ifrit story mode, the one where you get hit with a sleep spell, and this is why: We participated in it. Our characters got to fight in the situation however hard we went, in so doing we saw the situation getting bad despite our efforts, and then the scene played the result of it at an appropriate point: sleep spell unawares.

We don't look lazy or helpless(unless we played that way), we stay in the story without getting taken out of it by odd combat behavior, and the story can go on still in control of its outcome.

There is no way you couldn't retool that into the fight with Derplander's team, with the cutscene continuing after a certain percent of damage dealt/received.