The story is great, but it blatantly gets in the way of the rest of the game

[Skivvy]

Considering the fact that the purpose behind the creation and continuing development of this game is the story, with dungeons and trials contributing to that story (not separated from the story like so many other MMOs), you are asking the developers to abandon the basis of the game in order to satisfy some supposed 'new player' experience.

Do you ask that of every game you play? Completely abandon the reason the game is different in order for it to better conform to what you think the game should be?

Story is not the only thing that people play this game for. If that were the case, most people would simply unsub once they've gone through those tiny story-patches we get every so often. There is a lot of other content in this game that draws people to XIV, and I'm failing to see how making that more easily accessible could possibly be a bad thing for the game as a whole.

It is possible to keep a heavy story going in the game while allowing people options on how/when they jump into it. Yes, story skips exist, but IMO that's a cheap fix for SE being short-sighted in how they've handled the intertwining of the MSQ.

If we're looking at things that have been poorly implented in-game, I would rank the forced-MSQ up there with housing and Viera/Hroth.