If PF gatekeeping is already happening then the content is a bust. I thought this was going to be something akin to a BA/DRS where people were rewarded for helping each other clear and you could queue whenever you wanted. Harder content but doable. Instead it's a 24 man trial that forces you to use PF (I tried DF and was waiting for longer then was feasible, though some of that is probably due to this being released using the holiday week), and while the game wants you help newbies out, I expect the "only join if you've cleared" PFs and something that rhymes with farce runs. And then I already see a lot of the people who normally raid in Savage not even bothering to get on, because not only is it again the holidays but there's literally nothing else in this patch they are interested in. And don't even get me started on having to use Discord to find parties, you shouldn't even have to do that.
Somewhat nice to me that I see the Japanese side agrees with some comments over here.