The whole argument about making side-quests unrewarding to encourage leveling up in groups is rather... dubious, in light of how many steps they also take, to make it possible to play more and more parts of the game solo. Not to mention that running TRUST dungeons, which by their very nature are also done alone with NPCs, is also considerably more rewarding in terms of XP than side-quests, and you can do them as often as you like, while side-quests are available once and then finished.