Quest length is important to account for, too. From memory there were a lot of "quests" in there that were simply "go talk to A, who will explain the next step of the plan". Victory fanfare, yay you completed a quest.
Those are steps of quests.

The actual quests end up being:

Albert says "Go talk to Bob".
Bob sends you to get something.
Bob says to take the thing to Chuck.
Chuck says cool, take this to Danny.
Danny says cool, go pick up some sticks outside.
You pick up sticks.
Danny says cool, go tell Chuck you picked up sticks.
Chuck says cool, I needed to know you could handle taking this thing back to Bob.
Bob says cool, go tell Albert I'd live to come to tea tonight.
Albert says (predictably) Cool, thanks.

You have completed a quest.

Albert says "K, now that I know he's coming for tea, go kill this god for me"



Instead of the MSQ being what an MSQ should be (introducing new people, places, dungeons, trials and concepts) its largely made up of pointless sidequests that arent sidequests.