yeh i think right now in the storyline, we're still adventurers. i think they want to build up the story as to where we start out as helpless then given the opportunity and time, we become heroes. taking ffxi's storyline for example, the first missions that you got to do around lv50 basically revolved around you being caught in a story and heroes all around you (lion and that batman galka looking guy) once they revealed who the bad guy was, you then were given the chance to become heroes by defeating the shadowlord.

i also think that they want people to feel heroic in groups. everything you did in ffxi was with groups (talking about storyline missions) so instead of making you yourself feel like a hero, you accomplished a lot of heroic things with your group. i really hope thats how it turns out in ffxiv