I agree that I feel it's very backwards.

I would have liked to see the backbone of the game based on regular quest-based leveling, with leves as a supplement. You do leves when you need some extra exp, money, or to rep grind.

I despise doing my daily quests in WoW because they get boring fast. FFXIV making a game based on 'daily' questing (yes, I know it's 36 hours, just making a comparison) was a bad idea, IMO. It was okay for a while, but now it's like being stuck in a special kind of hell.