Like your suggestion just pick one type of player thats the person that just want to engage with FFXIV MSQ and thats it.
If anything I'd suggest quite the opposite regarding the story length, prune all the non voiced cutscenes, I know its empyrical evidence but out of 5 new friends that started playing FF last month, they all had the consensus of that the story overstay its welcome and start being an unnecessary padding with chit-chatter cutscene as they classified. They only start enjoying some parts of HW and fully ShB.

Content wise they need to spread the actions much better than they do now, lots of players don't learn their until 75-80 because how their toolkit is spread and there is no time to practice with their new abilities. Yeah content could ramp up the difficulty so they don't feel like the game is hand holding then until savage or extreme if they wish so to engage with.