I agree with Nialle. In 1.0, each nation had a more in-depth storyline in which you came to learn more about the personality of the Scion assigned to your city-state than you get in 1-15 leveling experience in ARR. It is my hope that, in the future, we will get questlines that delve into the situations of the individual city-states and, in so doing, show us more of Thancred, Yda, Papalymo, and Y'shtola. We also got the story behind the Students of Baldesion / Minfillia's Grandfather to be told.

Even if it didn't feel very FF-like as YoshiP has said, learning about the machinations of The Syndicate of Ul'dah, the intricacies of how Gridania believes in Elementals in addition to The Twelve, and how the heck a government by pirates and for pirates works in Limsa Lominsa was actually quite engaging for me in v1. The fact that these local stories never really got closure bothers me.