Do people not care enough or does the game do a bad job at teaching?

[Iscah]

SGE [has the tutorial battle] on the second quest, you can pick up SGE and walk away from her, and not be negatively impacted by that in any way until you are level 80 at which point you would need to complete the questline for Panhaima.

I think that's just the nature of the quest structure – the only way to give you the gear and soul crystal is through a quest reward, so that happens, and then the following quest is job-restricted to ensure you've equipped the things before continuing. Most (all?) expansion jobs follow this structure of putting a tutorial battle in the second quest, even back in Heavensward.

Perhaps if the second quest wasn't job-restricted, you could go into the solo instance as any job. (Hmm, I wonder if ARR lets you into MSQ solo instances on non-battle jobs...?)

[VeyaAkemi]

I think that's just the nature of the quest structure – the only way to give you the gear and soul crystal is through a quest reward, so that happens, and then the following quest is job-restricted to ensure you've equipped the things before continuing. Most (all?) expansion jobs follow this structure of putting a tutorial battle in the second quest, even back in Heavensward.

Perhaps if the second quest wasn't job-restricted, you could go into the solo instance as any job. (Hmm, I wonder if ARR lets you into MSQ solo instances on non-battle jobs...?)

Yeah, I understand part of it is that the game is limited to needing you to have the job unlocked to enter the tutorial, perhaps they could load you into a NPC kit with limited moveset for the tutorial, like, say, Dosis, Diagnosis, Prognosis, Eukrasia, Druochole, Ixochole, Kerachole, Physis II and Kardia, it'd fit a single hotbar, give you enough of an understanding of SGE basics, and give you some oGCD to work with, and narratively you could prove yourself a Sage to Lalah before she hands you the Soul Crystal rather than you being the rock's chosen one, but that would also have issues of awkward hotbar set up, so it wouldn't be ideal either, but it is the best I can suggest.