The game's 2.1 to 2.55 story could also be saved some embarrassment by reducing the number of random fetch quests and talking with someone in multiple places. There is just a ridiculous amount of nonsense and pointless quests in the story that do nothing to advance the main story once you have finished the Main Scenario ones. They should push them off to side quests and make optional character development quests for these characters instead.

Heavensward also barely ties into the old quests as well which makes me wonder why they even bothered making clearing "Before the Fall" a requirement when it has almost nothing to do with resolving those issues with the exception of like 3 small parts. One because they just happened to find out by luck. One because some dude managed to find a specific person in the middle of nowhere who knows what happened and what to do. And one more just so that they could bring you to a 3rd NPC when they could have just told you the name of the NPC to just look for the person. With the pace that they were moving they should have just separated them into an entirely different quest chain instead of breaking up the main story with "hey remember that guy from before the expansion? let's go help them" instead of forcibly jamming them in so that it would connect to the old story.