FF14 is a Final Fantasy games first. If you ever play any of the offline FF games, most are littered with mundane quests and side quests that encourage exploration (and to showcase how dumb the npcs are) - mostly are contents that add "hours of gameplay". It is a story driven game, so be ready to deal with it. It is no different than Dragon Age or Skyrim, where you do a bunch of quests - kill X enemies, go fetch me my stuffs cuz I am too lazy to do it, BAM 100 hours of "gameplay". Honestly if you want a game that lets you get into the action with very little story, you can play Destiny - ignore the non existent story and dive in straight into the action.