So gonna rant about the story in Final Fantasy XIV for a bit, and how it deals - or rather, fails to deal - with enemies more powerful than you. (Spoilers below the cut.)
So you're the Warrior of Light, and you're presented as being absurdly, supernaturally powerful, because you're the chosen of Hydaelyn, channeling the power of the Mothercrystal to be the world's defender. You turn the tide of battles single-handedly. You face down and defeat godlike beings who can reshape the landscape. The first part of the story culminates with the Empire digging up Ultima Weapon, a weapon so powerful that its mere existence is enough to get the Eorzean city-states to consider surrender, and the first part of the story climaxes with the Warrior of Light smashing the thing in a straight-up fight. Much the same thing happens in Heavensward, where you're able to face down ancient dragons of godlike power and win. The Warrior of Light is Eorzea's trump card.
So when you meet up with Zenos and he beats you in a straight-up fight, this should be treated as a very big "OH SHIT" moment for everyone. The Scions and the Alliance should all be shitting their pants; after all, they were shitting their pants over Ultima Weapon, and this guy is even stronger than the only person who could beat that. They should immediately be trying to figure out A.) why he's so powerful; and either B.) how to neutralize that power or C.) match it themselves.
And these could be storylines in and of themselves; after all, "undergo the training arc to become strong enough to defeat the guy who beat you" is a classic storytelling trope. "If you wish to defeat Zenos, you must become stronger." "But how?" "Legend has it that 1000 years ago, when the unstoppable monster Grover threatened the land, the legendary hero Throckmorton underwent the Trials of the Three Sages and thus gained the strength to defeat that terrible foe." "But no one who has attempted the Trials of the Three Sages in the past 1000 years has survived!" "We don't have a choice. We'll do it."
Besides that, the Scions - with the exception of the Warrior of Light (and Tataru) - are all supposed to be scholars with PhDs from Sharlayan, a city-state that's basically just a giant magic college. Solving the mystery to their opponent's unexplanable power should be, like, the first thing on their minds when confronted with someone like that.
But what do they do, and how do they explain it? "Uh oh, looks like we got beat, run away! Yeah, that guy's really strong. How'd he beat our supernaturally-powerful warrior who's able to defeat dragons, gods, and high-tech superweapons through the power of the Mothercrystal? I dunno, I hear he trained really hard from a young age and he takes protein supplements or something."
"Anyways, let's just blow off the fact that they have something that trumps our trump card, regroup, and start a peasant revolt over here! I mean, yeah, this guy could crush it just by showing up - and also overthrow any of Eorzea's city-states basically single-handed - but we'll just kinda hope that he doesn't."
And yeah, it's eventually explained why Zenos is so ridiculously strong...but it's through cutscenes rather than actual intelligence-gathering, and they still don't do shit about it and there's still no real overt training arc. Urianger (keeper of one of the Scion's two brain cells) eventually pieces together why Zenos's henchwoman Fordola suddenly became so powerful and comes up with a scheme to counter her, but for Zenos himself, the real threat, the one who's even stronger (and from the same method, no less)? They don't bother. It doesn't seem to concern them at all that the Empire has a seemingly-unstoppable superhuman who's apparently several orders of magnitude more powerful than a weapon whose mere existence nearly brought Eorzea to its knees. You're eventually like, "yeah, he kicked our asses the last two times and we plan to do nothing different this time, but this time we'll win!" and then you do.
And with Ran'jit, it's even worse. With Zenos at least there's an explanation as to why he's so absurdly powerful. With Ran'jit, it's just "yeah, he's an old white-haired guy who knows kung fu, we really don't need any further explanation than that."
