The problem is similar to that of WoW, especially with their most recent expansion. Significant ability prune stripped away a lot from classes and consequently the enjoyment of the leveling experience. New players are already expected to go through well over 100 hours of main story quests just to play the current content and adding on top of that a less than stellar leveling experience is not a great way to sell the product to new players. I find it hard to convince any of my friends to play this, not just because of the long story requirements, but also because how slow this game plays at the start. In fact I go so far as to warn them how this game will start out for them, and to not bother trying blow through it because it will not be enjoyable.

New players have only a few avenues. Purchasing story skips and job boosts to get to the good stuff when there class begins feeling interesting, or grinding for 60-100 hours of content to get to the same point. Unless you REALLY like Final Fantasy I suspect most people do not find this type of gameplay enjoyable. Again, WoW is facing exactly the same issue with their ability prune and in fact it has become so bad there that you can go 10 levels while leveling and have nothing to show for it except for some minor stat increases.