Respected? Surely. But is it respectful to ignore the obvious flaw in that playstyle and say nothing?
I don't see how you can make the assertion that people wanting to see the story elements in coil exhibited a narrow focus in a story based game. FFXIV is a story based game, seeing the story is a core part of playing it. It's the heart of the game and hardly represents such a tiny portion of the game that it can be described as a narrow focus. Unlike Alex Savage which is truly a tiny portion of the game.
The reason I can't quite take your argument seriously is the miniscule number of people who've even attempted Floor 1 in savage mode. For that matter the completion % for Coil is still pretty poor. We're talking about content that will obviously only ever be played by a tiny fraction of the playerbase. It seems that this is really becoming a situation of the tail wagging the dog, except that it's really a tuft of fur on the end of the tail wagging both the tail and the dog.
I'm replying in this thread and another where players have pretty much expressed that it's their only reason. I could (but won't) quote hundreds, if not thousands of posts from this forum where posters had complained vocally about how they have nothing to do but cap their tomes and run their raid. There are a surprisingly large number of people who confirm by their words that their reasons for playing FFXIV are indeed predicated on the top tier raid content.
Again, I could (but won't) quite numerous posts from players who have expressed exactly that sentiment, that the top tier raid is all that they can enjoy. If this particular lockout (in place to pace progress) on this particular piece of content is an issue, and the player literally can't or won't fill their play time with other things - as intended by the game designers - then how is the solution to screw over everyone else because a tiny minority of players can't find anything else to do but farm the same limited amount of content?