Even with Fughar's quest to skip some of the story, these last few seasons have been depressingly difficult to do. At one point I thought those 100 stacks were worth it, but not anymore and I've found myself skipping seasons since Autumn '22. We need Veteran Seasons.

If your not 25+ characters deep with all of the story explored multiple times over then this mode would probably not be for you. However, the rewards you miss that would drag me back to the seasons are at very end... which is a lot of time invested... ... not on my main or other alts. Now that we can farm stacks... there is very, very little incentive that I can see for participating in the seasons anymore. But, what about the 150 stack?? I can just grind out some Dark Hungers and simultaneously make more money in that time, then I ever would doing the season. I used to think the crystals were worth spending some time in the story for, but as I've progressed it's simply all become a huge waste of time.

They are useful for when new character classes are released, and have served a purpose. However, I don't think it's beneficial for a game to have features built around a sunk cost fallacy design. As a veteran, it personally feels like those end of season rewards are a carrot on a stick... stuck behind a sunk cost fallacy design. Especially with all of my non-seasonal things to do, why bother? Instead of spending money on that season pass, Armored Core 6 was a good buy, so was Sea of Stars, and ya know I'm looking forward to those Super Mario RPG and Star Ocean 2nd Story remakes. What I'm not doing is spending money and time here when I could be. I use to... but not as much anymore and not for a while. 

If Veteran Season is selected in the character select menu:

1- Fughar's Simplified quest skips the entire storyline besides Atoraxxia, and upon finishing the season + being 61 Fughar gives you all the rewards the storyline would normally give and any quest items that are used post Main Quests. Yes I mean crystals, skill exp books, that hourglass, etc. etc. etc. This is why you should need to finish the season for Fughar to pony up those rewards and also make it a once per family quest. No rewards? ...then I'll just go back to grinding on my other characters that mean more to me and not spend any money on seasonal passes anymore.

2- Players are now given the simplified quest from level 1, the option appears to immediately talk with Edan to tell him, "No, not again! Not this time, NO MEANS NO!" Why do we have to reach Alustin to start this? Let me just jump right into farming exp from different monster zones, we're veterans... or at least give us something entirely different to do as a means of progression without punishing us. I can also immediately equip gear that is better than anything in the opening story and stays useful for a while.

3- Different season pass objectives and better rewards. I have 186 +30s Advice of Valks, please, stop, 174 +40s, please, I would rather have anything over +60 even if it means less of them. If you told me all scrolls from a veteran's season playthrough nets me just as many except their all +60, +70, +80 stacks... I'd be out there right now instead of posting this. I get plenty low stack Valks from Bosses and other stuff to use with my seasonal character enhancing. Mythical Feathers and other end game pieces, parts, bits and bobs? Yes! Give new players the catch up stuff, give us something that benefits us in a similar way.

4- PvP as part of the veteran's season. Veteran Season servers with Arsha rules instead of current seasonal server conditions. Seasonal RBF rewards that reset weekly, daily, once a season. Players in guilds could get seasonal missions that encourage members to pvp;

Quest: Hounds of War, get 30/60/90 kills during node wars.

Quest: Nightwatch, kill 30/60/90 war targets.

I'm sure other features could be thought of for veterans. This is all I have right now.

edit 1: Lock the veteran's season behind having to have done all of the storyline options at least once.

It takes something like 3hours for a vet to do it. It's basically nothing. Yeah the rewards are kinda worthless tho.

well, we get the maid, weapon exchanges and other stuff for the seals