I don't care for most of XIV's story. I'm not a fan of how it presents itself, how many filler quests are shoved into it, how CSs are quite often "show a fist angrily being clenched", "pan over to MC, see her make an angry emote, then show 4 other Scions make the same emote in turn", it feels clunky and it's not my thing.

I would love if they added in more "jumping in points" to the content. If someone is interested in a specific fight/raid/whatever, let them do a few quests to unlock it, then they can be on their way. This is an MMO, and as we all should know, MMOs draw people with a lot of varied interests. Forcing people to suffer through hours and hours and hours of MSQ they may not be interested in at that moment isn't great. Giving people the option of where their time is spent is not a bad thing.

If someone is OK with jumping in mid-way to the story, I feel like that should be left up to the player if it's worth doing or not. The story may not make sense, but the story may not be their jam anyway. XI and GW2 are the two other MMOs I've spent most of my time in, and both of those games give you a decent amount of flexibility in how you unlock your content. You are able to do the story out of order there if you prefer, but in doing so it lets you focus on what you want. And you can always go back to the story when you're ready for it.

With NG+ constantly being expanded, I feel that makes an even stronger point for unshackling a lot of the content being behind full MSQ completion. Let people do what they enjoy in an MMO, and if they decide they do want to partake in the full story, they have the option right there in the form of NG+.