The Calling

[Draginhikari]

I think part of the issue is that a lot of the diplomacy, paperwork kind of things aren't exactly appealing for a lot of people to see. While I would have enjoyed it, most players want action. And even then, I don't think people would have changed their mind on how useless she was, because they only value action.

The thing is we have seen diplomacy and politics in the Main Story before, it is not exactly a foreign concept. All Minfilia probably needed was a short cut scene, or even a general dialogue between her and other characters to at least given an indication of what she does. Same thing with Lyse, she really needed a scene of her leading or inspiring others or something of that nature. It didn't need to be a massive thing but both ARR and the Ala Mhigo section of Stormblood kind of wrote themselves into a corner where there was no time for anything that wasn't immediately relevant to the plot.

Specifically sine is a significant portion of the playerbase that do skip cutscenes and/or lack an interest in the MSQ. Though I wonder if the heads of state had gotten similar baggage to Minfillia as politics is by nature part of their gig

To be fair, if people are skipping the story, they probably don't care about any of the characters regardless of how good or bad they are written.