Standing There Syndrome

[Absurdity]

I think it's not just due to budget constraints, it feels like a creative vision problem as well.
I've been thinking about it lately but for being a video game XIV takes little advantage of it's own medium.

The story and gameplay are often very disconnected, or I guess segmented into their own little pockets.
An overwhelming majority of quests are just you going to a place to talk to a guy, reading text boxes, before he sends you off to do the same thing again somewhere else, broken up by the occasional "go there and kill two enemies" quest or a dungeon.
The rare solo instance, and I guess variant dungeons to an extent, is the only time where the storytelling is integrated into the actual gameplay portion of the game.

[Valence]

To the OP, I do feel like that sometimes there is also a cultural difference at play, and that they also write it like a theater play, quite frankly. Remember FF6's scene just after they flee from Figaro castle in the sand and literally freeze time in the middle of a fight to talk about magic? Also seen in animes when 1) someone is about to have a dramatic death in the middle of the apocalypse or 2) when they need to invoke the power of friendship in the middle of the apocalypse.

Either way I do agree with you that you're not the only one that finds it very jarring in this medium, and it tends to break the 4th wall / immersion pretty hard if it dallies long enough. Special mention to actual threats running away when you literally have a firearm (and no my character doesn't need glasses).

[MsQi]

We just lack that hildebrand budget

Leave it to Hildbrand to give us some action!

I mean, yeah I noticed, it really sticks out in those scenes after being so inanimate in the MSQ. Hildbrand is the Real MSQ!

[Natalyah]

I can't lie, when I saw the title I thought you meant all the people afk in Limsa

[Archeron]

Look at the new writing teams credentials? One of them wrote a nurse dating simulator while the others wrote a story for a raid series or worked in another department.

Are those seriously the only credentials the new writers have? That's absolutely humiliating. I feel like any random RPer could be picked off the street and they would have given us a better MSQ storyline, and probably have done so for free. Oh how the standards have fallen.

[PyurBlue]

This can easily be worked around. Instead of making an animation per class, just make one per role. Imagine this, your WoL stands at the ready, their weapon is slapped out of their hand, they have to divejump away from a follow up attack, pick up a generic weapon from the floor or a wall, based on their roll, and use that.
WoL is a tank? Grab a shield and use it to block and counter.
WoL is a melee DPS? Cool, here is a halberd, go to town.
WoL is a monk? Fisticuffs.
WoL is a ranged? Bunch of throwing spears to attack at a distance.
WoL is a mage/healer? Just a staff to fling generic looking spells around.

Future proof (unless they add in a new role, which I doubt), and much more manageable in scope, considering you only need 10 choreographies now (tall size and lalafell size) instead of two per class.

It could be made even simpler if the WoL were to raise weapons and run off screen to deal with whatever needs to be attacked and the scene cut to the result without showing exactly what happened. There would be no need to account for class or future proof, and while it might not be as satisfying as seeing the action, it would be better than watching everyone stand idle for no reason.

[Hallarem]

It could be made even simpler if the WoL were to raise weapons and run off screen to deal with whatever needs to be attacked and the scene cut to the result without showing exactly what happened. There would be no need to account for class or future proof, and while it might not be as satisfying as seeing the action, it would be better than watching everyone stand idle for no reason.

SE: Gritting teeth and fist clench + stare combo and nod is best we can give you

[EchoingPulse]

Sometimes things just need to happen for the sake of the plot, but it can be rather annoying to just sit there and watch it happen...

Kind of a spoiler but

The biggest such moment I can think of was in Endwalker with Ahewann, as he gets grabbed by one of the monsters and eaten, while the WoL takes like half a minute to run a few meters just to be dramatically too late.

The vein in my neck popped out at that moment.
We can hull ass and save the day in a body that's not even ours after tanking an explosion and monsters/magicteck everywhere, but saving some guy that's 10 paces away is too much...

[Gwenkatsu]

I still remember my first steps in FF14 years ago together with my wife. We take the fight back to the Garleans, and finally end up in the praetorium... to be met with Nero's 3 minute monologue "when I was little, Cid stole my cookie, wah wah" and Gaius' 4 minute monologue "me am the bestestest of the world".
At one point we looked at each other and asked "why are we even listening to this drivel, why don't we just kick this fool's butt?"
And that's the point. Nobody in their right mind would listen to the bad guy going on and on and on and on... - they would just attack. Remember Guardians of the Galaxy 1? Nebula starting trash talking her sister, only to get shot down by Drax "noboy talks to my friends like that". This is the sort of dialog FF14 needs desperately, no more villains holding endless monologues everybody just quietly listens to.

And there are countless examples of this bad anime trope throughout the MSQ. Ilberd, anyone? We find out he's about to summon a primal, so we go there, kick his sorry behind, and it's over - we could just put his head on a pike atop his very own Ala Mighan dungheap, and call it a day. But no, WoL goes into 10 minute standby, while Ilberd does the exact thing we came to stop. Oh my.

Personally I just accepted this sort of nonsense constantly happening to me. But man did it rub me the wrong way when they finished off Gulool Ja Ja while EVERYBODY was just watching. He desperately tried to fend of his son's magical infused attack for 20+ seconds, and NOBODY came to the rescue - all the saviors of the star just standing there, gaping mouth, drooling from the chin.
I liked the character of Gulool Ja Ja a lot, and seeing him getting killed this super cheap way really p*ssed me off. They did the old lizard wrong, and I'm not going to forget this.

[Carin-Eri]

I feel we've already seen the perfect solution to this scenario.

The Shadowbringers finale, when our character was staggering toward Emet Selch. That was perfect - rather than standing there listening to him monologue at us the WoL staggers slowly toward Emet Selch whilst everyone else (i.e the Scions) engage him in combat.
It's also of note that said scene demonstrates that it doesn't have to be the Warrior of Light who acts first.