Having to slog through lvl 50 quests is tedious

[Iscah]

I cant imagine anyone here would stick up for Alphinaud or Lyse too strenuously.

Unless he becomes spectacularly unlikeable during Stormblood, I'll stick up for Alphinaud. He's got good intentions, he's learning from his mistakes, and I can't think of any reason to not like him right now.

(Curiously, I've noticed people using non-EN voices tend to find her less of a problem than people who do. Pure anecdote, though.)

I ended up putting the voices on mute, and a number of characters became less annoying after that...

If you only did the MSQ and the mandatory dungeons you'd be around level 53-54 in your main class (and not past level 50 in any other class) by the time you enter Ishgard - and would probably already have entered Ishgard by now.

My summoner (the class I'm using 'for the story') was Lv54 at the start of Heavensward. I did all the side content along the way, but I think I went into most of the dungeons as white mage so the summoner EXP was mostly from quests.