Players and Square have both said that MSQ is the focus of the game, and the more casual player base. One could always pay a story skip potion, but the fact is MSQ is the focus of this game, the endgame is extra stuff. Because the MSQ is mainly storytelling, and single player orientated, why not just play better solo video games that are much, much better technically advanced in gameplay, like GTA 5, Witcher 3, red redemption 2, and hundreds of others titles? There were times I was so desperate to just 'play' the game, because there is so few dungeons/trials and killing quests in-between all the walls of text. (Anything you wont remember a month from now isn't worth reading about). I'm not even talking about important background build up, I'm talking about content you won't even remember because it served no purpose in the grand scheme of things. What Square Enix is doing is inflating game time content with more and more text and sloppy animation screens, which I'm not kidding stretches the MSQ than it really needs to be. The main focus of this game is the MSQ, but the problem is the MSQ is 90% fluff pointless writing and storytelling, you could cut out 80% of this writing and still get a concise accurate description of the story, albeit just more on point.

I can count the EPIC moments of the story in one hand! 3 of them were in Havensward and 2 in Shadowbringers (forget RR and SB).

They added one different mechanic in Stormblood lol, which is to 'click stuff in FPS mode'. Your quests in order of occurrences is: talk, travel, click objects, kill NPCs, do dungeons/trials/story instances. Sure with each expansion the game (novel) gets a little better, in terms of graphics, animations, storytelling, but the CORE of the game doesn't change, it is still this outdated mmorpg tab targeting, with its main FOCUS on MSQ, which is basically walls of text. I just finished Shadowbringers 5.5 MSQ, and let me tell you, this is an 'interactive Novel' more than it is a video game. IT DOESN'T GET BETTER (a least to the point it serves as a valid argument). To all the people who says 'it gets better' seriously, what is wrong with you? This constant insincerity is what kept me going. New players hope you are ready for 200+ hours of MSQ which is mainly reading text. If you don't like the Trial / 'Realm Reborn' take my word, you won't like any of it.

Final fantasy online a realm reborn