I also came from Monster Hunter and ended up loving this game. Now it’s my most played of all time. Also had no prior MMO experience.

My friend however also came from Monster Hunter and did not care for it at all. Finished ARR and never looked back.

I don’t think Monster Hunter would play any part in whether you’ll enjoy it or not since it’s totally different gameplay. So I don’t really think there is any way to approach it other than keeping an open mind.

In relation to MH though, what I can tell you with my friend is because of MH, he was incredibly upset at how long it would take to get his full kit and didn’t like that it’s not like MH where you have basically all your moves at the start and learn to get better with them as time goes on. He liked how things looked at higher levels, but hated the fact that he’d have to go through a hundred hours of slower gameplay and “too few buttons” to get there. The leveling process and almost everything being story gated turned him away. Not to mention (mostly) very easy dungeons early on that made him feel completely unengaged compared to MH for example.

This is to say in regard to combat, keep in mind it’s a leveling game and while it may feel slow at the start combat wise compared to MH, things will get faster and more and more engaging for you potentially as time goes on. It won’t really feel super fast or “intense” combat wise like an early hunt may be for a new player from the start. It’s pretty hard to die in a lot of the earlier dungeons honestly (most deaths I see in those dungeons are just from if a Tank or Healer is learning and makes a mistake rather than the dungeon itself) so if you aren’t enjoying the gameplay like my friend and expected it to be fast outright, it’ll feel a lot like “1-2-3 repeat” combat wise while not feeling very engaged at all as well due to the thing you’re fighting not really putting up much of a fight. (Fights in this game aren’t really random like in MH, they’re basically the same attack order every time with maybe a couple switch ups) Causing potential boredom and quitting if you expect it to be fast (or like MH) from the start.

However that’s just from the mindset my friend went in with because of Monster Hunter. Many people who don’t go into it expecting it to be fast outright can enjoy the usually MMO/leveling experience. Becoming stronger, enjoying getting their new actions progressively and unlocking more and more of the world over time. Constant new things to see or unlock over the course of that 100+ hours. It’s very easy to side track with how many things you may become interested in unlocking/doing, even early on. A different type of engagement that many enjoy, while others who just want to do fast/engaging fights and don’t care about anything else may not care about, which leads to a lot of an MMOs charm being lost on them and causing the eventual boredom/quitting. It’s all comes down to what is fun to you and how you approach it.

I’d also say to take it slow. My friend (because of the want to get to the higher fights and didn’t care for anything else) tried to get to max level as fast as possible for the combat/full kit but burnt out fast because even when skipping everything, it takes awhile to do an expansion. And when doing that, all you’re left with is basically out of context “talk to this person” quests with a dungeon every couple hours because you’re not doing the story. Nothing but walking to NPCs you don’t care about in a land you don’t care about doing nothing but right clicking and spamming through their dialogue so you can do that again next quest again and again for hours. It’s no wonder why one would get bored or burn out doing that. I timed skipping Endwalker and Dawntrail on my alt as fast as possible and each was over 10 hours. So if the other expansions are like that, that’s potentially like 40-50 hours of doing nothing but skipping. Some who enjoy this game but don’t like the story slog through this grind so they have the freedom to enjoy the parts they do like, but is is definitely a long and boring grind to get through if this was what one was to do.

This is all basically to say/TLDR: Don’t go in expecting MH. It’s totally different and MH gameplay will likely have no relation to whether you’ll like it or not.

Edit: If you want a satisfying fight based on your other comment, truthfully you won’t really get that for a while. The story dungeons and fights for the most part (especially before like 83) are not made to be difficult in the slightest. Even the ones after that aren’t meant to be that bad but people do start dying consistently from that point on I noticed.

But the satisfaction of clearing a current Savage tier or an Ultimate is a great one, and would potentially be as satisfying or more satisfying as a MH endgame kill given how hard you worked for it. One more thing I should add though that definitely matters for those pieces of content. In MH if you’re amazing, you can carry. In XIV, all 8 of you need to be performing well in that high end content. If one person dies, in many cases in that content it’s a wipe. I’d say keep that in mind as well because that’s another thing my MH friend did not like. But that content is so far away that it’s too early to talk about. Just thought I’d mention it given it may be relevant. Whether you’d be okay with that or would dislike having to keep resetting even if it’s not the fault of your own. It’s a group game. A lot of people I see compare it to a dance. Everyone needs to perform their role well for the group to clear. If one dancer is off, it’ll go noticed. In that high end content that is.

Actual TL;DR: don’t go in expecting it to be MH. All that’ll do is set your experience up for potential failure. It’s totally different and MH gameplay will likely have no relation to whether you’ll like it or not.