Hot Take: The MSQ grind is too long and its harmful to expanding friend groups.

[PartyBarn]

As others have said, skip potions are designed for what you are talking about. But I have to say, there are things in the Chronicles of a New Era storylines that should not be skipped, because each opens up new dungeons, trials and raids. And some are required for later content. Such as the Ivalice raids in Stormblood, and of course, Crystal Tower for MSQ progression post-Shadowbringers. Just food for thought.

Totally, I agree with you, which is the struggle for me and my friends.

I think a lot of replies didn't really read what I was saying here either. Fully skipping is bad because it requires you to sit in an inn or a house and watch everything with no gameplay, and playing it legit gives you gameplay but a lot of it becomes tedious. Middle ground is really what I'm after here. Anyway, I dont think Square would take the time to do this regardless, as its probably a lot more work to design a whole new system for this problem that they (and a lot of the responders here) probably don't think is a big problem (yet). I do think though that as the game gets bigger and more story content continues to get added, both the problems with skipping and not skipping become more pronounced.

[DPZ2]

Fully skipping is bad because it requires you to sit in an inn or a house and watch everything with no gameplay

This is the second time you've asserted this. It is False. There is no such requirement.

You can safely do a job+story skip to [currently] level 70 and see zero cut scenes before beginning to play the current expansion.

You can revert to New Game + in order to experience those story lines you may have missed that you want to go through (including the job quests).