The novelty of traveling on an airship such as the one in FFXI was enjoyable the first dozen rides. Afterwards, I've become jaded to the experience and usually went AFK while riding an airship or ferry. Same concept applied here in FFXIV's ferry.

As for teleport, it is true if you're only focusing on doing leves, which has been trimmed down over time to cater to mostly causal solo players. Taking that target group into consideration, those players usually do not want to 'stop and smell the roses'. If you're heading off to a grind party, usually you have to run on a foot a bit to the target location as you do when you teleport in FFXI. (E.G. Puks and Skeletons at Nanawa Mines)

In short, exploration is nice the first time, such as running between the three city-states the first time. However, it's not exploration anymore if you've seen the area once already. It becomes a daily routine if you are covering the same terrain again. (E.G. running between Ul'dah to Nanawa Mines) I feel no more immersed in the world traveling the same terrain multiple times.