FFXIV:ARR praise is weird to me.
As you mention, the quest design is TERRIBLE. It is often "go to this place on the other side of the world for a 5 sentence discussion about something" followed by "go back to where you were, on the other side of the world, for another 5 sentence discussion."
And in terms of story there is basically nothing but boring filler from 1-49 and like 92% of the story is packed in a few dungeons. And the villains up to it have absolutely no development or anything. If you only played ARR you would have no idea who any of the Scions are or what that group is about/why it exists as it does. But the story is put up as like the bestest thing to come out of Final Fantasy in a long time.
FFXIV 1.0 - 1.23 had a better story.
I agree completely. I would add that the lore and the characters, including the villains, are all potentially great (Eorzea is arguably the most-realized setting in a FF, if not the only one brave enough to detail more adult/gritty aspects), but get buried under the game's poor plot, pacing, and content. (This is not getting into how much the game's verisimilitude and feel was sacrificed for tacky MMO/F2P-isms or more action-y play.)
They really fucked up by stepping away from the FFXI/1.23 model of having a single-player quality "campaign" separate from the fodder. This time you can't point at the "missions" and say "well, yeah, it is a grindy MMO, but look at this string of episodic content and tell me it doesn't provide a (multiplayer) "FINAL FANTASY" experience"; in ARR the main scenario "quests" are so deeply integrated to the terrible MMO tropes and filler, that trying to sell it as a traditional Final Fantasy would be like trying to sell Breath of Fire VI as a traditional BoF. Everything is sacrificed for the solo player treadmill then pushed into the endgame treadmill. If a mainline Final Fantasy so much as dared to have the narrative and content work the way it does in ARR even at level 45, it would make the XIII's series reception look like a parade. The content is not only disposable, it's forgettable. How can you remember, when you have a main scenario quest log with over a hundred puny quests by the time you clear the first campaign? Normal quests, once few and meant to be enjoyable/immersing in themselves, are now what guidleves were (no surprise they struggle to find a use for this content) and their lore is about as engaging those were, hit-or-miss humor aside. FATEs factor into this, but there's just too much to say about them to fit it here.
It's too bad, because you can see internal fighting within the game's design ethos. On one hand, you have a successor to Chains of Promathia and the later half of FFXIV's meteor storyline with level caps, dungeons (though a little too puny at times), and, especially, primal battles. Despite that, you also have the pointless solo, cap-free exp-building fodder that you are doing even after you've gone so far as to slay Titan and Garuda. The capped solo instances were promising in beta, but they nerfed it to hell and for all intents and purposes, there's no difference the fodder and these "boss fights". In the beta people remembered the tactics/special moves used by these story bosses and the strict tactics required to beat; that's gone now, restricted to dungeons and primal battles you face once in awhile. So the game has you triumph these relatively tough challenges (in the case of primals) and once you complete one, what do you get do? Well, it's back to collecting soup ingredients and pottery for the next one in 5-10 hours. The quests you're doing right before and between the final two dungeons are more or less exactly in the same as the ones you are doing at level 1 and 2 in terms of how effortless and non-sequitur they are. I refuse to believe Lightning Returns even attempts to be that ridiculous. EDIT: You can't even say "at least FFXIV doesn't have Lightning".
(or an hour, whatever it was)