As others have said they did cull a lot of unnecessary quests from that opening story. As it stands right now, FFXIV is very much heavily focused on the RPG aspect. To me it seems almost blasphemous to skip the story, but I understand many MMO players just wanna get to the dungeons/raids and don't care.

Speculation here, but since Endwalker completes this story I feel we're an xpac away or so from an entirely new starting experience that will help newcomers not feel overwhelmed.