Is Minfilia always useless ?

[Beddict]

Minfillia was betrayed by her voice direction and the story putting Alphinaud failing at her job in the spotlight while her work was always implied.

I think this right here is a big one. In early ARR, Minfilia is the one giving us our missions and assigning us to work with the various Scions. After Titan, Alphinaud joins the Scions and starts bossing people around. During The Black Wolf's Ultimatum, Minfilia is the one that opens the discussion with the city-state leaders, but Alphinaud keeps jumping in. When the Doman Refugees land in Western Thanalan during The Mother of Exiles, Alphinaud is the one that immediately goes off searching for them in Ul'dah while Minfilia has no idea what's going on. When the Doman Refugees are denied by Ul'dah, Minfilia figures that Mor Dhona is the best place for the Refugees and begins to make plans to contact the Adventurer's Guild there, but Alphinaud waltzes in and says he's already gone ahead and negotiated terms with them. Hell, Minfilia came across as sarcastic to me when she said that of course Alphinaud has already negotiated the terms and conditions, and she honestly seemed bored because he's busy doing his best to steal her job. Every time we're about to see her go do something, Alphinaud is there interrupting her or announcing he's already done her job for her. It makes sense, they're busy building up Alphinaud's HW character arc by feeding him a bunch of accomplishments so that 2.55 can hit harder, but it comes at the cost of actually seeing Minfilia act as the leader of Scions, negotiating terms, and working with the city-state leaders. I wasn't around in 1.0 but apparently she was more important and more active there, but even I was disappointed to see SE effectively write her out of the story. She was the founder of the Scions and it feels like SE did her dirty.

[Jojoya]

Minfilia was represented badly in ARR. As others say, her voice acting made her seem more insecure than confident and knowledgeable though her actual dialog contributed to it (at least in English, maybe she was more confident in JP?). She was always "why, why, why" followed by a "No, I won't believe it!" - childish refusal instead of a statement made from knowledge. She reminded me of a pupil who gets picked to be School Princlpal for a Day playing at pretend while everyone around goes along with the show as they get the real work done.

We see little of her actually doing her job. "Urianger, have the papers from the Students of Baldesion arrived?" "Tataru, is such and such done?" is about the extent of it. She tries to defer to Alphinaud ("You hardly need my permission, Antecedent"). I do understand to some degree not showing it much (it would have been very boring from a game play perspective) but some display of her competence would have been nice.

She was supposed to be at least a competent rogue (I think?) but we never get to see her fight, even when we're in the Sahagin area. She's repeatedly presented as a damsel in distress (oh no she's crying out from the solar, oh no she's been kidnapped, oh no she's been attacked, oh no she's kidnapped again!).

Of course we're going to see her as useless. She was never displayed as competent.

Was SE relying on players having been through 1.x to have a better understanding of her character? Don't know. I didn't play 1.x so all I know is what was presented in ARR. Certainly I had the same problem with Louisoix the first year I played the game, a name mentioned with reverence over and over with zero context. Who was this guy and why am I supposed to care that they keep mentioning his name?

[MoofiaBossVal]

I thought Minfillia worked well as the desk job manager of the Scions. Buying new property for the Scions to move into, arranging meetings with the contractors and the city state leaders, collecting a list of tasks and handing them out, etc.

I suppose in retrospect, Tataru could be doing those things.

[Bright-Flower]

They definitely should have done more showing in terms of her leadership in ARR. Her combat ability though is largely irrelevant to her actual job. It doesn't really matter if she was a badass rogue or a total pushover in battle when it comes to her actual job and role in the scions.

[Jandor]

I'd say it was a bad case of telling us what Minfilia does instead of showing, but they barely ever told us what she got up to either. We've had to mostly guess and make inferences based on things that happened.

As much as I'd like to like her, she was not really handled very well.

[Hysterior]

They have no idea what to do with her character, she's becoming more and more of a MacGuffin.
After ShadowBringers, I am even less excited to see her in the next expansion.

[DPZ2]

I'd say it was a bad case of telling us what Minfilia does instead of showing, but they barely ever told us what she got up to either. We've had to mostly guess and make inferences based on things that happened.

As much as I'd like to like her, she was not really handled very well.

It's not like we got to see a lot of 'action sequences' from the Archons in 2.0. Sure, the big 4 (Papalymo, Yda, Thancred, Y'Shtola) were out in the field, and we got to fight with one or two of them, but aside from our encounters with them, we really didn't see them do much either. We're the ones who do most of the actual fighting that matters.

I suspect that most of the unease about Minfilia (and 2.0 Alphinaud) is due to "Return to the Waking Sands" moments. The stress from such tasks has been greatly reduced with the pseudo-Aethyrite tickets you now get while leveling.

As far as the "damsel in distress" thing - perception is everything, as well as close reading and subtext. While you're galivanting around Mor Dhona, Minfilia is being tortured in order to assess just what the Echo can do. Livia isn't gentle, and promised as much during certain moments in game. Minfilia wasn't broken, and still retains ability to cope with diplomatic and administrative tasks that I'd just as soon not have to role play in game. It's enough to be Alphinaud's shadow army post-2.0 in ARR.

[DPZ2]

They have no idea what to do with her character, she's becoming more and more of a MacGuffin.
After ShadowBringers, I am even less excited to see her in the next expansion.

Pretty sure we won't be seeing Minfilia in Endwalkers. I've seen no artwork that would lead me to believe she exists post ShadowBringers, where we didn't really encounter her directly.

The term MacGuffin really doesn't apply to Minfilia. You may consider her unimportant, but from a plot perspective she's no more a MacGuffin than M in a James Bond movie, or Jar Jar Binks in whatever came after Phantom Menace. (Although teen heartthrob whats-his-name who played Skywalker should have been a MacGuffin in the second film in that series. But I digress.) Uninspiring does not equate to Plot Device.

[DPZ2]

OK. I'll admit it.

Minfilia is not Nick Fury, and will never be. (I think that's mostly because Square Enix doesn't hold rights to Marvel characters.)

[Bright-Flower]

Wasn't the crux of Thancred's arc in SHB the choice to bring back the old Minfilia or let Ryne be her own person and accept the future instead of the past or something mirroring the ascians unwilling to let go of their past? I'd have to rewatch the cutscenes again but I'm pretty sure we're not seeing Minfilia again, though they could find some way to bring Ryne and/or Gaia to the Source if they really wanted to.