7th Astral is a mess

[Jirah]

Actually, no. The devs realized that having the HW jobs locked by Ishgard access wasnt the best idea, so they changed it for SB and ShB(and likely would for the next expansion too). Instead, now you just have to level a class up high enough. Once you hit level 60 with a combat class, you can just do the quest to unlock any job that starts at 60(whether you have the story at a point close to that expansion or not - just have to have the expansion on your account). The first quests for all these expansion jobs are in starter cities(so ul dah gridania and limsa). Lets pretend Time Mage was a 6.0 job(all of this is hypothetical to illustrate the point - no new jobs have been mentioned yet). The quest to unlock the job would start... lets say in Ul Dah. Someone(either from the thaumaturges guild or just a rich member of the syndicate/wannabe) unearths some ancient tomes, and it leads to a hidden shrine where the secrets of time magic can be unlocked(someone visits from the past to teach you how to get started maybe? some sort of stasis field?). The job would start at level 70, so to unlock the class you would need to get any other job that far. That could mean playing Black Mage for 70 levels and a few expansions worth of story, it could mean getting to 50 and finishing ARR then grinding 20 levels on roulettes(leveling MSQ and alliance is a lot of exp without having to go past level 50 in the story - this person would end up doing the HW expansion and everything after as the new job). Some new players would spend the money to buy a level skip to get Summoner to 70(while still being at the very start of the MSQ), then instantly unlock the new class and play the whole game with it. And of course, some people would hear that this is coming in the expansion and start playing a month or two before it launches to get themselves into position to unlock it on day one naturally. So a few different options.

Thats all fine and all but why start so high? I’d love to imagine getting Dark Knight at Lv 30 rather than 50 post ARR. and if the new jobs start at 70 how would they even do job quests? Since 70 has role quests. I don’t mind leveling as it’s gotten easy and love growing with my job but the SHB jobs getting is so late It felt like I was getting a jump potion

[Stepjam]

Thats all fine and all but why start so high? I’d love to imagine getting Dark Knight at Lv 30 rather than 50 post ARR. and if the new jobs start at 70 how would they even do job quests? Since 70 has role quests. I don’t mind leveling as it’s gotten easy and love growing with my job but the SHB jobs getting is so late It felt like I was getting a jump potion

Well the start of the dark knight quests don't exactly work unless you are in Ishgard, same with the others. Squeenix realized it was a bit of a mistake to lock the classes behind MSQ progression instead of just levels which is why it's different from Stormblood onward. But as for future classes, I'm sure they'll get a 10 level questline even if that makes them stick out due to being from 70 to 80.