ARR: new player perspective

[basketofseals]

It's funny, the skills from the base class like lancer use to have debuffs attached to them (leg sweep was a good example as it placed a slow buff) for example and we had some cross-class skills we could use to add small variety.

I thing feint was the slow. Leg sweep was always the stun, although it had damage attached to it.

Funny enough that you mention LNC though, since that was one low level experience that actually improved after pruning. Previously you spammed impulse drive from level 12(I think?) to level 34.

Well, that is your opinion, and I disagree with it. The storytelling in ARR is not bad, and the number of fetch quests is no worse than in most other MMOs.
The story is a bit unfocused because it is "our" story - the story of how we go from unknown adventurer to famous Warrior of Light. It also has to do a lot of worldbuilding and introducing characters and events that will become important later on. A few too many "pray return to the Waking Sands", but even that does not actually happen all that often.

There's definitely a couple times that the story takes a giant stomp to the face in terms of pacing for not very good reasons.

The company of heroes fetch quests made little sense in universe(although I'll give them credit for pointing that out), and it was all for some shallow vapid reason that I can hardly remember, but I do remember my reaction to wanting to grab my face and go "OH MY GOD GUYS THAT WAS SOOOOOO DEEP" melodramatically.

The getting the wrong aspected stone to pierce Garuda's wind barrier made zero sense in game and out of game. It serves literally zero purpose but padding.

Both of these moments happen right in the middle of an arc climax and just totally ruin things. Especially since you're likely to get 3 overgeared allies with you that will just trounce the boss for you without you even understanding what happened. Then you'll wonder why everyone was even worried the Primals in the first place when you could have just ordered a pizza and had some randoms take it out for you.