New player | How do I endure Main Story Quests?

[Enkidoh]

Welcome to Eorzea!

To answer both your questions, sadly most of the game's content are locked behind main scenario quests (the idea was to guide the player gradually into everything the game has to offer). Unfortunately this meant there is a lot of filler quests during the main scenario which things do indeed drag a lot.

Unfortunately the only way to skip all that at the moment is to purchase a 'story skip potion' from the Mogstation which changes all main scenario quests as complete and thus unlocks everything to the end of the main scenario for the relevant expansion the story skip is for. This does also unfortunately mean you miss a lot of the story development that takes place early on which helps set up things much later in the game and which make better sense in context as Gula mentioned above, so if you are interested in the actual story, I don't reccomended this option.

The development team are in the process of cutting out the filler quests in the ARR main scenario which you're on meaning the main story will be streamlined considerably, but unfortunately the patch that will be adding that won't be added for at least another month due to the current pandemic forcing the development team to adapt to working from home which has delayed the next content patch. So have patience, things will improve!

And the main story quest isn't bad at all, it does just have a lot of filler in it where there is just a lot of busywork with little happening narrative wise, but if you stick at it things do eventually improve (and SE did learn from their mistake, the main scenario in the later expansions doesn't have anywhere near such filler and things are much more enjoyable, so it's just the beginning really that things are like that). So keep at it! You'll soon get to heaven after going through all that hell!