Quote Originally Posted by LianaThorne View Post
Theres no trap, it used to be worse. They shortened it. I'm sorry it's not to the length you prefer but people like me had to go through 100+ at one point. Whatever was kept has some relevancy to the main story or characters in general.
They tightened it up a hair but potential players still bounce off the 100+ hours of mandatory story before endgame (and that's only if they're skipping cutscenes). I certainly do not recommend XIV to anybody but the most hardcore story fanatics and even then I'm very explicit about the amount of story grind there is.

Story gating instances is just as bad as instance gating story and this game has both in spades.