I don't really understand why so many gets so worked up how some would like to play this in another way. If certain people would like to skip the story and focus on enjoying the other good parts of the game, how does it affect you so negatively? There's room for all kinds of players here, right? You can still do the Main story as many times you want, be the hero of Eorzea and all that, but from my experiences, there are quite a lot of people who don't give a flying thingy about the story.. which brings me to this..

My situatuon is little different. I want to do the story.. and it's actually the main thing I want to do, but there have been barriers and frustrations all the way up to 50 and now even more. And that's the group content. I would consider myself a terrible player, but a very persistent(in most regards) one and what seems like others are opposite, good players but very impatient. Watching cutscenes and trying to follow the story? Nope, get yelled at and have you skip them. Slightest hints of troubles along the way and people leave and finally party breaking up if the tank leaves and replacement isn't appearing within a minute. In a single player RPG, I could just keep trying myself, but I can't do that here.

Here's the thing where I'm not as persistent. I'm not really into grinding stuff.. dungeons, fates and things like that. I'm persistent trying to over come challenges, not somewhat mindnumbing repeating chores. And now I'm in a situation where my item level isn't high enough for the next story part and I lack the motivation to join those wonderful dungeon parties or chase around maps for the fates. Thankfully I still have plenty of other quests and things to finish, but right now it looks like I'm not experiencing the expansion content any time soon.