I also felt very "lost" and unengaged by the Ivalice questline. There was so much lore to take in, disconnected from anything else in the game and so much of it delivered via text dump, without making the actual characters likeable or enjoyable to spend time with.

I had no idea the Crystal Tower was a reference to another game until later, but I didn't feel lost at all. We were finally getting information on Allag, we were spending time with characters central to FFXIV, and the only stuff we actually needed to know to grasp the storyline was "there's a guy at the top of the tower trying to destroy the world - go stop him".