Blarg... The forced grouping of the main story was one of the things that finally drove me away from XI.

Took me a month of begging, pleading, and shouting just to clear Rank 3, and once I had to take a break from the game shortly after CoP came out... getting Dynamis done (which I never did) was like pulling teeth because everyone else had already done it. and getting past rank 5... yeah never did that either due to very few people doing rank missions and if they did it was usually with their LS. I wound up getting locked out of the story because I wasn't hitting the new missions at the height of their popularity.

Making the central plot line dependent on other people being willing to help was just annoying. Same with the AF being as tied to grouping (good luck getting anyone to help with BRD gloves and Justacorps with out serious bribing, stupid ghost mob, past mobs with true sight/sound, and the dang coffer being at the BOTTOM of castle Zhval). I like being able to just log onto XIV and say "I think I'm going to do story missions today" and I can, without waiting pointlessly, and begging for help.

I'm not saying I don't want "Challenging" content, I would just rather they reserve that for other things and not lock people out of the main story because they came to the game to late and it's no longer the hot thing to do thus finding a group to do it nearly impossible.