If you think the fighting is slow in XIV then please don't go and play XI that's 15 years old and unless you play a caster there it's all auto attacks until you have enough TP to do a weapon skill. I mean yes there are actions you can do before you can use a weapon skill, but it really just boils down to slowly whacking at a thing over there.

ARR's story does have pacing issues and the devs are aware of them and more recently have been talking about fixing it. It's just right now that's kind of low on the order of things as I'm sure everyone else would like them to test the crap out of any early story instances that are in Shadowbringers and that they actually balance and change the jobs to where a lot of players are happy and not wondering if the devs were too sleep deprived when they came up with those changes. That and they are also probably checking on their end the world visit system so that runs somewhat smoothly once they flip the switch for us players.