The game and its current state

[Enkidoh]

I use The Secret World as a comparison to this game a lot. Its story and side stories blows FFXIV's out of the water in my opinion if we want to compare MMO storylines. The quests themselves are more unique too in their formula. There are investigation quests that actually require research outside the game (such as one requiring you to figure out that you're supposed to scan a bar code, another where you have to translate morse code, etc).

Firstly, I think you're confusing the quality of the narrative with how the storyline is relayed to the player in the form of quests, because the two are totally different concepts. It seems to me your problem is how the quest system in FFXIV holds your hand with telling you where to go and what to do, rather than just giving you a basic hint and leaving it up to you to figure out yourself. In other words, like FFXI's style of questing:



That is no exaggeration - that is exactly how FFXI's story and quests were handled.

Although some might find that style of questing to be fun, really in practice it turned out not to work quite so well - all it does is drive players to look up online guides for the information, inevitably leading it inaccurate and incomplete information as people struggle to find out what they have to do exactly and often just plain give up. All the ARR system of questing does is cut out this middleman and tell you what you need to do simply. If it's that much of an issue, turn off the Duty List and quest notifications in the Config.

[Adire]

Firstly, I think you're confusing the quality of the narrative with how the storyline is relayed to the player in the form of quests, because the two are totally different concepts. It seems to me your problem is how the quest system in FFXIV holds your hand with telling you where to go and what to do, rather than just giving you a basic hint and leaving it up to you to figure out yourself. In other words, like FFXI's style of questing: (more coming)

Nope. I'm not fond of the narrative either.

Although some might find that style of questing to be fun, really in practice it turned out not to work quite so well - all it does is drive players to look up online guides for the information, inevitably leading it innacurate and incomplete quests as people struggle to find out what they have to do exactly. All the ARR system of questing does is cut out this middleman and tell you what you need to do simply. If it's that much of an issue, turn off the Duty List and quest notifications in the Config.

The Secret World's investigation quests actually turned out well. In fact, it's one of the most praised things about the game's questing system. It requires the community to work together sometimes, other times it simply requires you to use your brain on your own. You could always spoil the fun if you wanted, but you don't have to. And when quests are first released, it's always been really fun to see the community work together to figure them out.

Not sure if you've heard of The Black Watchmen, but it's a "game" with a similar take on things. The vagueness of the quests in FFXI seem to me more like laziness to try and make them challenging by just simply leaving details and forcing you to fill them in out of nowhere rather than intentionally making them challenging without being just vague, as in TSW.

[Obysuca]

That is no exaggeration - that is exactly how FFXI's story and quests were handled.

As much as I love XI and kind of prefer when a quest doesn't tell you the exact location and what not of where to go, SE just took vagueness to a whole new level.
There was actually one mission, think in Zilart, that actually said "find a mithra, she's somewhere in the world" and that was it lol