Been playing this game for ~3 months now. My thoughts so far

[Bixillarla]

"I do not expect everybody to have mastered their job but I expect level 60 players to not suck at their job.There are so extremely many Healers that just stand around overhealing the tank with the heal they pop every few seconds.I sometimes have the feeling they think the world's going to end when the tank drops below 100% health for more than 2 seconds.They won't even DPS while they're doing nothing.
Again that's not everybody but it's still a big amount of people."

This I have a issue with, the healers job is to keep everyone alive period end of story. If they decide to do some dpsing then consider it extra but do not expect it. I main healer and I do not DPS, if I wanted to DPS I would play my DPS job not healer. This is a heated debate on the forums.

[Mwynn]

Blubb.

Dragons were a Point in FFXIV 1.0 though. The same goes for ARR, heck you even fought Vishnap? Point is, we have the "bad bois", only 1/4 if not even less showed up, as a entire Group is in the background working to inflict even more chaos.

This is the thing, People rant about such things yet like in your Point, you do not know that "We" as a "Warrior of Light" have the Echo and are Blessed by "Hydaelyn" herself so every Primal is a fart in front of us...
Thus every Primal comes to a Point where we beat them up...

Following up the Story and you finally understand what Role you have in FFXIV, what happens in the World, why your Character is on which place and why things are going down as hell.
The entire Lore is way too hard to follow if you just skip everything, this is the mistake People do if they eventually get interested in it.

[Exidrial]

Yeah and I'm one of those people that thinks its a waste when the healer just stands around doing nothing.The more dps the faster the Dungeon will end.
It feels like I'm just carrying somebody who's doing not much.

I mean people expect me to attack the boss as well.I could just do my Dark Arts aggro rotation every 30 sec and be done with it.

Dragons were a Point in FFXIV 1.0 though. The same goes for ARR, heck you even fought Vishnap? Point is, we have the "bad bois", only 1/4 if not even less showed up, as a entire Group is in the background working to inflict even more chaos.

This is the thing, People rant about such things yet like in your Point, you do not know that "We" as a "Warrior of Light" have the Echo and are Blessed by "Hydaelyn" herself so every Primal is a fart in front of us...
Thus every Primal comes to a Point where we beat them up...

Yeah we fought a dragon nice.
What we did in ARR was just doing the same thing over and over again then suddenly a giant dragon appears and suddenly they are the bad boys?What why?
Why should I care about the dragons?
They were pretty much non existant pre-coerthas

[Laerune]

I have to agree that the way they went from 2.55 to 3.0 story was a little rushed. I wanted to see more stuff about the events in Ul'dah. We do have a main antagonist, they are not always in our face, but they are the reason for alot of crap that is happing in Eorzea. The Ascians and Ziodark are the main bad guys. Almost all the bad stuff, from Beast Tribe summoning Primals to people finding Allagan weapons, all of this is, because of the Ascians.

I look at Heavensward like a anime. The WoL vs Ascians and Ziodark is the main storyline, the Dragonsong War is a Arc that happens during the adventure of the hero.

[Exidrial]

I have to agree that the way they went from 2.55 to 3.0 story was a little rushed. I wanted to see more stuff about the events in Ul'dah. We do have a main antagonist, they are not always in our face, but they are the reason for alot of crap that is happing in Eorzea. The Ascians and Ziodark are the main bad guys. Almost all the bad stuff, from Beast Tribe summoning Primals to people finding Allagan weapons, all of this is, because of the Ascians.

But you could do so much more with the Ascians.Right now they just feel like a plot device.Something that somebody just put in there so that everything is connected.
Give them more presence, show us that they are the baddies.Make us hate them.Make us want to defeat them.
The Ascians are like every other enemy in the game right now, somebody tells us they are bad so we kill them.

[Mwynn]

...

Pretty much this, after 2.5 we had to flee Lore-wise to Ishgard with help from the Ishgardian People such as Haurchefant.

The Dragons are the Enemies of Ishgard and this has a good Reason aswell, they're not encountered that often in ARR due of the reason that their hatred goes against Ishgard.

Mainly what you will encounter in ARR are the Ascians and their bad doings, such as teaching the Beast Tribes summoning better Primals or getting in your Ways, which at some Point is pure Trolling from them, as you're getting more and more into a Trap.

But you could do so much more with the Ascians.Right now they just feel like a plot device.Something that somebody just put in there so that everything is connected.
Give them more presence, show us that they are the baddies.Make us hate them.Make us want to defeat them.
The Ascians are like every other enemy in the game right now, somebody tells us they are bad so we kill them.

Not every Ascian though is hostile against you, the white robbed Ascian as example did not harm you at all once in the entire Game and just questioned you once in 2.1 .

They went hell in 3.0, almost to the Point where, no , if one of them decided to kill you, they were be able to do that.
Every Patch seems to add more about them yet with no clues what might happen in the Future, while we deal with the Dragonsong War also at the time.

So the next thing we see in 3.4 is more about them if not, even more wreckage they're doing.

[Kallera]

Ascians seem odd, like the kind of villain that should be far more competent at what they do than they are showing now. Almost like the garleans in that regard, except more so since they are supposed to be millenia old chessmasters of real life conflict. (with the ability to switch sides no less)

[Anubis_Nephthys]

"I do not expect everybody to have mastered their job but I expect level 60 players to not suck at their job.There are so extremely many Healers that just stand around overhealing the tank with the heal they pop every few seconds.I sometimes have the feeling they think the world\\'s going to end when the tank drops below 100% health for more than 2 seconds.They won\\'t even DPS while they\\'re doing nothing.
Again that\\'s not everybody but it\\'s still a big amount of people."

This I have a issue with, the healers job is to keep everyone alive period end of story. If they decide to do some dpsing then consider it extra but do not expect it. I main healer and I do not DPS, if I wanted to DPS I would play my DPS job not healer. This is a heated debate on the forums.

You are healing wrong. I would mentally blacklist you if you were on my server.

[Laerune]

But you could do so much more with the Ascians.Right now they just feel like a plot device.Something that somebody just put in there so that everything is connected.
Give them more presence, show us that they are the baddies.Make us hate them.Make us want to defeat them.
The Ascians are like every other enemy in the game right now, somebody tells us they are bad so we kill them.

I have a feeling that SE has set the Ascians up to be the real endgame antagonist, which means that while we do meet them from time to time, we will not defeat them untill the final patch or one of the last patches. We already know that next expansion is most likely going to be Ala Mhigo, we also know that Ala Mhigo has been taken over by the Garleans and there is a drama with the final heir of the kingdom of Ala Mhigo. We can also guess from what Yoshida has said during interviews that patch 5.0 is going to be on the Garlean homelands, which means they will focus on the Empire.

I dont think we will defeat the Ascians untill patch 5.0. The Ascians are too strong and we have not even met Ziodark. ARR has been about uniting the 3 Grand Companies to form an Alliance, in Heavensward we see Ishgard join the Alliance. I think in 4.0 we will liberate Ala Mhigo from the Empire and they too will join the Alliance. In patch 5.0 we will form a Alliance with the Empire. To fight the Ascians and Ziodark we are going to need all the factions in on the planet.

[Exidrial]

I just want to point out real quick that I've only finished HW yet.
Haven't played any post HW story yet because I didn't find the time for it yet.

The problem I have with the games story probably is that it doesn't feel connected enough for me.
The story seems so random.
I get that the Ascians are behind all of this but then again they are just there.They aren't something we can really grasp and they didn't really do anything that makes me hate them yet.
Summoning primals and all that stuff isn't a big deal to me simply because I don't feel connected to the world.
The game is failing to make "bonds" that are crucial for good story telling in my opinion.

I don't really know how to explain it.

...

We don't have to be able to defeat them.They should just make them feel like a real enemy.To me they just seem like some side enemy that just wants to troll us by getting us into trouble all the time