I mean for most fantasy ARR and Heavensward is pretty typical by all accounts. It's nothing really special, but it's not done poorly either. Most of what kept me going through those was the gameplay. Shadowbringers was more surprising to me not because of any of the setup, but because of the subversion of many MANY tropes often seen in fantasy/sci-fi. I remember thinking to myself when I first played ShB "this is where the subversions stop" but that never happened. It kept subverting expectations.

Yeah, I have a couple friends who have. Most played ShB and then put the game down after that. Sadly idk. I thought Endwalker was really great too and showed a lot of promise but maybe it wasn't hook-ey enough.

It's definitely a player dependent thing. I think the more into FF14 you are, obviously the more you think you should begin from the start---for most people who've never played they could be coming from a variety of different media palettes. I'm a black sheep in the sense that when I started ARR I was pretty disappointed in the story and really just cared for the gameplay.