Clandestino is as pugnacious as ever, but the points he makes are correct. There are no western airliners flying today with conventional feel - with the exception of the B737 and DC-9 derivatives in the event of manual reversion (and both of those have been described as a handful to fly in that instance). As soon as you involve hydraulics, the feel is *artificial* - driven by electro-mechanical devices, or - in the case of the B777 and B787 - by software connected to servos. Both setups rely on the output from the same sensors that drive the instruments.
As such, there's no guarantee that such artificial feel systems will behave transparently if an aircraft is taken outside the normal operating envelope, and consequently the argument over active and passive control feedback is a moot point in the case of this accident.
Ultimately, if one or more of the sensors driving an aircraft's systems is fouled, the result is always a serious impediment to crew understanding and rarely ends well. This is as true of incidents involving types with "conventional" control layouts (e.g. Aeroperu 603 and Birgenair 301) as it is with FBW Airbus types (e.g. this incident and AF447).