Possible level/story jumps....really?

[seraf]

snip.

That's fine if you don't like the story and would rather do without it then go ahead. But a large portion of the player base do enjoy this game for the story and story based content. If it weren't for the story then I probably wouldn't have been subscribed to this game for 3 years now without missing a single month's sub during that entire time frame. When a new patch comes out it's the first thing I look forward to doing and I enjoy discussing story elements of this game with other players and coming up with future plot theories and soaking in the Lore the game offers.

Do I enjoy this game for its gameplay and complexity? Sure and I always strive to be the best at any Job I play at. But without that story I wouldn't care as much about what I'm doing within the games world.

[Voltyblast]

But without that story I wouldn't care as much about what I'm doing within the games world.

I always find this situation funny because, I always want people to do this test when it comes to Final Fantasy: try removing the title and insert a generic mmo name like "Eorzea Online" or something.
I would like to know how many people would still consider the game's story great - or even the gameplay for that matter.

What I mean with this is that I understand if people enjoy the game's story and gameplay, but I also don't understand why people are constantly defending it. For example - and how blasphemic it is - I actually love the lore of Warcraft (my sister even reads the books) however I do understand if some players don't care about it and don't follow it: you won't see me complaining or bashing them for disliking something that I do. On top of that, a lot of the moments in the game are actually somewhat important to understand what's going on so while the story isn't vital, it is good to understand it in order to know the situation.

For the matter of FFXIV's story, while it's not ENTIRELY bad it makes me wonder if it's the name that actually makes people follow it and enjoy it, rather than actually having a good story (not to sound too offensive, I do think it's a very badly written story, especially due to the pointless olde english writing that really feels forced in). Infact I had similar issues with FFXIII: I had people defending its story in many ways, such as how Lightning isn't supposed to be liked by everyone (then how am I supposed to immerse myself into the world?), how the game gets good after X amount of hours (why can't it be good from the beginning? Because of the plot?), and how the story is deep and complex...if you read the datalogs (which leads again to the fact that story shouldn't be work: it should be enjoyed and easy to follow). There are flaws yet they're heavily defended, just like now people are defending the MSQ of this game.

So my point is, I understand if you (and many others) like the game and its story, but to the point of not caring if this game (and all FF games) had no story??
I might even suggest to play visual novels or read a book at this point...