To me, if I wanted a game that didn't have the FF classic deep and troubled pasts, cheesy love triangles, tear-jerking character development yada yada... then I'd have bought a different game These are the things that "defined" Final Fantasy for me.

But I suppose it's true enough that people want different things. I've always been one who enjoyed caring about the characters, and I have a very hard time caring about these at all, or even remembering their names half the time (mostly because we don't seem to get to know them)