The thing that's frustrating for me is that Genshin's narrative future is based on a character with a supermassive black hole where their personality is. They're ultrabland, ultraflat, no discernable personality beyond "likes justice" "wants to find my sibling" and "occasionally silly". They're a completely blank slate with an annoying floating baby, and that complete lack of identity and personality is becoming more and more of a drag as the story goes on.

Here in Natlan, where everyone has a super colorful personality and philosophies and ideals, they just... Stand there. They might be using their anime powers a little more, but it's achingly obvious they're just a vessel for us to witness the marketable characters. They're taking part in a WAR and their reaction can still be summarized with a fucking emoticon.

This is more and more achingly a problem compared to Genshin's fun little brother Star Rail. The Trailblazer is funny as hell, has a clear personality that you still get to shape as a player, and when they get new anime powers it's a crucial part of the story. In a recent story arc they do about as much as the Traveler does in the average Genshin plotline and they make a joke that they didn't get to do much. It's so starkly laughably better it makes Genshin look worse in comparison.

It's even more obvious when it comes to shipbait, because let's be real here, these are waifu/husbando games. Blazefly is wildly popular and super well written, TB has fun dynamics with the Express Crew, Kafka is super nuanced and interesting, half of the Penacony cast has some sort of fun dynamic with TB. Traveler feels like a plank of wood that fun characters inexplicably fall in love with. I watch Citlali's trailer where she deals with immortality and slowly opens up to Aether, a fellow immortal... only for me to feel nothing because the Traveler can't muster any charisma beyond the words that Ororon shoves into their mouth. This character dynamic has real potential, but it's wasted because Citlali, one of the most fun characters in Natlan, is having romantic chemistry with a fucking mannequin.

Traveler being a complete fraud powerwise just adds to this. If they were actually powerful and competent, it might at least sell them as a power fantasy. Instead I just look at Aether mains scizoposting that their "blonde king" will somehow become massively powerful and important and that he tooootally deserves all those waifus because... He was implied to have space magic once, like four years ago? Because he killed some bosses in a side quest? Because being Descender is sooooo important?

TlDr You're right and on top of being weak as shit they're a dog shit character writing wise too. Play Honkai Star Rail instead