XENOBLADE / OLD MMO STYLE QUESTS

I don't know about quests that ask to "Collect 10 Wolf Pelts", or whatever. However, if you tell me that Planet Priox is contracting work to eliminate pirates, I'm aaaaaaaaaaallllll over that jank.

Idk if this is a total binary to have it or not thing, more like a how well to integrate it (since you're open to it). Because they do work in just about any open world game/mainstream mmo and it's effective to have clear mini goals. It mostly depends whether or not the quests are easily completable on the way through the main story and you might as well top off the 6/8 bears to kill to get the extra exp....while you're here. But like any other optional/completionist thing it can get overboard if there's too many sidequests or they're obscure/out of the way.

There's a focused approach I can imagine where you have maybe 3 quests per story beat and 1 of them is giving you an excuse to explore the map/dungeon a little more thoroughly, while the rest are kind of what you'd probably do anyway.

The other is that there's a giant mission board that piles up half way through the game and it's a completionist's gourmet delight and you really want to inflate the optional playtime of the game. Might even be the selling point. It might lose someone like me but there are people out there that do not mind putting on a podcast and just grinding it. There's probably a lot of them given how popular open world games and achievements are.

Though more importantly, do you need to turn in the quest to a certain NPC or can you turn it on the spot. Is there a map/indicator that tells you where the nearest objective is? The more streamlined the less of a hassle it's going to be, but it's also important for the player to know in advance how much of a hassle it'll be.

There's also quest pacing to consider, if you have 10 kill quests in a row it's going to affect the enjoyment regardless if you love grinding or not. When you think about it the main story of any given RPG is a series of quests, it's just disguised better and typically has a lot of variety and cutscenes to break up the pace. If you have some optional quests that feel like a "treat" like say a really easy mini-game or literally just "go here and trigger a cutscene" that's relatively easy to make, then just the fact that it feels different is enough to break the monotony. There's an alright article written on this very subject.