Story quests

[Genz]

Yeah, the main story is bad on every metrics (and most other quests too), and the reasons are obvious :
First, fan-service. Devs think that by just putting "warrior of light" and "crystal" everywhere, people will think it's a good story. Sadly, they're half right : average fans actually think it's a good story because it looks like others FF stories.
But this first point only speaks of the events of the story, and it isn't that important. Anyone can stack a pile of events, add some twists, and them copy some FF-themed words to make it look like a FF story, but this has nearly no value. What's important is the narration : how the story is told. And this is where FFXIV is utterly lacking : since the devs are convinced that their pile of FF-like events is awesome, they seem to think it's self-sufficient and doesn't need a good narration.
Another problem for the narration is the length : by being too long, the resources to make the quests and cut-scenes were divided along the quest-line. The devs couldn't make enough interesting game mechanism or cut-scenes.

And last but not least : the characters are bad, the Scions of the Seventh Dawn in particular, because they're too similar and don't evolve. They're like clones of each other, because they all come from Sharlayan : they have the same (ridiculously small) back-story, the same knowledge, the same convictions, etc. (minus Minfilia, but she doesn't bring anything to the table).

[Fenral]

Pardon the counterpoint, but if they cut too much of the random questing, we'll end up with more scenarios like the Crystal Tower, with all of the plot details condensed down into far too little time to properly convey the story they were trying to tell.

If you think about it, from the moment Doga and Unei (and Nero) walked in out of nowhere you could tell that they intended all three raids to have a lead-in questline like Labyrinth of the Ancients, but ended up crunching down everything into a few really long scenes with only the bare minimum of narrative coherence.

It also ends up being a huge victim of the FF copy-pasting, because while the actual human-rights implications of the ending are horrifying on many levels, they thought that dropping one name from FF3 and playing Eternal Wind was enough to make it a happy ending.

Ironically, the mostly-original (with cameos) Hildibrand stories are the closest FF14 has come to the classic Final Fantasy feel.

[Mirron]

I personally like the story so far. It's more lore-driven currently than plot or character, but I'm hopeful that we'll see more coming up in Heavensward. I believe that Thancred and Papalymo were given as characters that will see more focus for instance.

Edit: I'd kind of have to question what FF's people are playing if Hildibrand winds up feeling the most like an authentic FF. Outside of V, they usually aren't that consistently silly. I still think there is an FF feeling to this game, but it's still taking a bit to get going due to the complete overhaul they had to do. But we're still in the early stages of the game, so whatever the main story is will be shown soon enough I imagine.

[BreathlessTao]

So, the main story and the NPCs are bland and boring and all sorts of bad. But hey, let's skip over it all as fast as possible, so we can

- farm the same few endgame dungeons/raids over and over and over again, for gear that's gonna be obsolete in a few weeks (if it isn't already), just by the time you actually finish the set (also gear many of which is just a recolor or a reuse of a more common/special piece)
- farm the same ex primal(s) that literally do(es) not even have any story or lore to them, over and over and over and over again, for (overpriced glamour) gear that's gonna be obsolete in a few weeks (if it isn't already), just by the time you actually finish the set (also gear many of which is just a recolor or a reuse of a more common/special piece)
- farm hunts that literally do not even have any story or lore to them, over and over and over and over again, for overpriced glamour pieces that are already obsolete and nobody really uses them anyway
- do the relic questline that literally does not even have any story or lore to it beyond actually getting the weapon, but at least outright sends us back to old low level content, because we've not done those enough by the time we got to the relics themselves
- do the same 3-6 beast tribe dailies over and over and over again, to be able to spend a buttload of money on some mounts and minions
- spend even more money on / throw ourselves at RNG in crafting and gathering and in GS (for overpriced glamour pieces) and Sightseeing
- go back and level up other classes/jobs, rinsing and repeating basically everything that we surely have not yet done enough times, over and over and over again

...because all that is not boring and not bland and not all sorts of bad at all. Oh-kay...

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I agree that there are aspects to the story/NPCs that could be quite a bit better. But ok, you finish the story - what's there to do afterwards that is so much better in comparison? You say the story is so bad (that you just skip over it, but then how do you actually know what it's like?), but how is anything after that (which is basically all grinding) any better? If you're more into the grind, you should be in another game; FF has always been story and character focused - and with any series that goes on this long, you can't help some "episodes" turning out weaker than others.

People burn through all the content in a week and then cry for more, being bored, forcing SE to keep adding more and more stuff at the pace they have been going. Of course some aspects are gonna suffer. And then people cry about those aspects being below standards - they can't win, no matter what. Yet, when I said SE should slow down and pay more attention to details, polish and fix things - nobody liked it.

But yeah, at the same time, for the same people, Hildibrand was such the funniest storyline with its oh-so-original elements... riiight. @.@

[Anapingofness]

I quite like the main storyline. Could it use more improvement, yes, but I don't find it boring.

OP, if you're hoping for SE to stop giving us MSQ then you're playing the wrong game.
Final Fantasy has a history of being PVE and Story Driven.
The second they stop that is the second a good amount of players will up and leave, myself included.
FFXIV being story focused (and in my opinion they could use more focus on story) is what separates it from other MMOs on the market.

[Fenral]

I sometimes consider myself a Hironobu Sakaguchi fan more than just a Final Fantasy fan (please don't kill me).

Without Sakaguchi at the helm, Cloud goes from being a derpy tryhard to an unstable wreck, Squall from being a poser to some obnoxious emo kid, and so forth. Hildibrand is far sillier than most Final Fantasy games, to be sure, but it comes the closest to capturing that feel that the older FF games had. Most FFs are still pretty dark, but the "light in the darkness" has never been an actual power of light, but the irrepressible human spirit that drives all of Sakaguchi's stories.

This is not to say that modern FFs are bad, or even FF14 as a whole, just that I think the je ne sais quois that modern FF games have been lacking is Sakaguchi's guiding presence.

[AskaRay]

words n stuff

This is sorta how I feel... I mean, is it the strongest FF storyline? No way, not even I think that. But is it enjoyable and do I care about happens in Eorzea? Yes, or else I would've stopped playing long ago.

I really don't get why people play RPGs, games famous for having important storylines, and then not read the story??? Are you here for friends? Because personally even if all my friends are playing some RPG and I just don't like the story, guess what I won't play it with them. That's an opinion of course, but I still don't really understand the other point of view...sorry.

[SummonerSenah]

I love the story. I always do the MSQ first. RPGs, even single player ones, usually have some kind of fetch quest. It's just that some are more cleverly disguised. The only part of the story that dragged for me was the part before Titan story mode. And even then I enjoyed the tongue -in- cheek reference Y'shtola made to the player character having to do them.

[Battlewrench]

too long post

I don't think this has anything to do with the type of content or burning through anything....I think this is about how some of us obviously think the main story ark fell alittle more than short...So yea we're complaining that the story is bad to the point we want to skip through it even if at the end there is a grind....which is kinda all MMO style......mmm sounds like you don't like the game in that post lol.

[Averax]

I picked up that this was a story driven game rather quickly, it's like a single player campaign, but with other people in the world (in a good way, people always take that as a bad thing).

I mean really, you only have to do it once, and then for the rest of your classes you can just do whatever to level 50, unless you decide to level a second character alltogether...