The Calling

[MirronTulaxia]

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.



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.

I don't think we've seen a character who only does that though and is considered part of the main cast. Alphinaud was like that, and people hated him previously (not necessarily solely for that reason but I imagine it played some factor).

[Draginhikari]

I don't think we've seen a character who only does that though and is considered part of the main cast. Alphinaud was like that, and people hated him previously (not necessarily solely for that reason but I imagine it played some factor).

I would say in Alphinaud's case it had more do with his overblown self-confidence, arrogance, and expressing of our character as means toward his goal rather than any of his diplomatic stances (He does a lot of that off-screen and the few scenes that are shown are more to show his character issues more then anything).

At least in Alphinaud's case, unlike Minfilia or Lyse who shortcomings were made worse by writing issues, was kind of the point of his 2.0 version. Alphinaud was supposed to start off as an unlikable, overachieving, arrogant brat who thought he knew better than everyone else. His arc was basically to have his overconfidence bite him in the ass so he could be built up as a better person after he picked up the pieces. Compared to the other Scions in 2.0, there was a least an indication that they did have an arc planned for him that did pay off in the long run.