IS A QUEST SYSTEM A GOOD IDEA FOR AN RPG MAKER GAME?

Depends on how it's implemented :V

But really what is it for? Is it the main bread and butter to get resources or is there a main quest line you're better off doing that'll reward you enough to continue along anyway? Do they add any kind of story, are they infinitely generated or finitely tailor made? A lot of 2D RPGs have side quests actually but tend not to have a quest tracker. Though the existence of one usually means side quests becomes more part of the game.

Having stuff to do is good, but whether or not it is boring is dependent on so many factors and the personalities of your players. Some people might only play RPGs because they want to fill large checklists, some might just want a tightly made story without filler. Do you personally like doing fetch quests in RPGs? Some games are fun to play repetitively if the core is good (like Harvest Moon-likes) but standard RPGs can have a tough time getting mileage out of their core and often rely on set-pieces and such.

As a player, I feel the most rewarded by quests that give me some extra story or characterization, in addition to the item rewards. (In fact, I usually don't care much about the items.)

If you're worried about power creep from quest items, you could always have quest rewards be something that's an interesting lateral move, or just gives players access to the next tier of equipment from where they are.

Typical solution to power creep is usually a level scaling system (enemies are always the same level as your average party member), but a lot of people dislike it usually. Not really so much during it but in hindsight realizing all their grinding doesn't contribute to something. But I think the fact that it's so invisible is what bothers people.

It'd be cool if doing a side quest actually triggered a cutscene that showed the next boss lifting weights or something as if to show you not saving the world contributing to the problem even further. Show in-game reasons as to why the game is getting harder as you gain rewards maybe. In the end though I think people like being overpowered in exchange for spending extra time.

Also everyone loves costume cosmetics and non-gameplay collectibles. I particularly enjoyed the moogle stamps in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles even though I don't think they do anything until you collect them all if I recall, Ni no Kuni has something simular.

I mean, the idea of sidequests is nothing new. FF5, FF6, Chrono Trigger, and DW4 each have more than a dozen of them.

What newer games invented was a standardized system of tracking them. Where you know exactly when you start one and when you end one, and you can look in a list to see which quests you're currently on and what the next objective is.

I don't think this system has anything to do with 3D. Mostly I think it has to do with how much we've learned about players' attention spans. But in addition to that, it also has to do with the fact that modern games have a lot more dialogue and story. In old games, it could be assumed that nearly every single bit of dialogue in the game was part of a gameplay hint or sidequest. That's no longer the case, now that games are more story-driven, and so the game needs to clearly tell the player which parts of the dialogue are gameplay-related and which ones aren't. Exclamation points over important NPCs' heads and quest logs that list the important parts of what they told you are an easy way to accomplish this.

If your game's dialogue is modeled after SNES games, where people say what's necessary to get to the next dungeon and not much else, and townspeople mostly just exist to give the player minor clues or to tell you what town you're in, I don't think it needs this kind of system. If it's modeled after PS1 games, where there are lots of long cut scenes that serve only to develop characters and explain the backstory, and many townspeople exist purely to flesh out the world, I think a quest tracker would be really helpful (even though quest trackers didn't become common until the late PS2 era). The amount of dialogue in a game like FF7 or Suikoden is vastly larger than that in a game like Chrono Trigger that came out only a couple years earlier, and so investigating every line of dialogue that every PC and NPC says is an outrageous task for most players.

It also depends on the plot. If you do a plot-driven plot with high stakes, e.g. you are a high ranked general leading an army in a war, random fetch quests aren't going to fit the narrative. However, if your party is a group of adventurers, side quests make sense. On the other hand, you can spin the concept around to fit your storyline; for example, you are playing as a police officer who deals with complaints and requests on a regular basis.

Some of the rather outdated types of quests these days are pure 'fetch then get rewards' types that don't do anything to the plot. Having them isn't bad, but it helps if you can write beyond pure fetch quests. If sidequests are incorporated well enough into the story, they'll give you opportunities to do the world-building and give the main characters interactions or even minor character development outside the main story.