I am extremely concerned about this

[Fyrebrand]

"Welcome to our awesome story-driven RPG, where we put in lots of extra work to allow players to do dungeons solo so they can enjoy them at their own pace. Also, don't do that. Skip the entire story. Don't play it, it's bad."

For sake of argument, though, here's an idea: how about instead of the usual black-and-white "skip everything" or "skip nothing" options, why not just a "skip ARR" option? Most people seem to think that's the biggest sticking point, and I can somewhat see why. I still feel like new players would be missing out on a lot without ARR under their belts, but at least vanilla ARR is fairly light in terms of really meaningful "story." For a lot of it, you're just doing random fetch quests, killing primals, then storming the empire's base. Maybe they could make an optional "ARR Lite" tutorial experience where you get the gist of the story explained through cutscenes, but interspersed with single-player gameplay "highlight moments" where you learn your job and play some combat, get told about various game features, get your chocobo, etc. The game proper would start of at Heavensward... or, maybe a couple quests before that so you can see THAT scene from the end of ARR.