Well, i think people are still looking at aspects like this with rose-colored glasses. The sidequests in this game are very, very bad. I'll give my reasonings below:

1) Bad flow: in other mmos you're led from place to place along some path or tether. The first quests you take are level 1 then they rise with you at a generally predictable rate. In ffxiv, quests do not do this at all. There are no "rails" to set yourself on. Sidequest givers are as spread throughout cities as the leve people are. They are scattered, with no rhyme or reason. The first quests you find aren't necessarily for your level range. There's just no hop, skip, jump like you'd expect from a typical mmo where questing is used to level.

2) Poor rewards: when they bumped up exp rewards for leves, they might have considered making sidequest xp worthwhile too. Quite frankly they are a huge waste of time and you could grind xp a crapload faster. The item rewards are even worse. They are not even class-appropriate, nor is there a choice to pick this or that. It all seems fairly arbitrary what quest gives what, and as such it is terribad. The gil rewards are equally as underwhelming.

3) No motivation: other than the meta-game "completionist" stuff like achievements, there are no reasons to ever do this "content". It does not enhance your character whatsoever. There is no higher goal nor connection between the quest and you as a person. Why should I go kill those dodos exactly? Do I really care of it's not progressive? Vast majority of players (ie. not the people who will subsequently post here to disagree with me) will not because it does nothing to further their level(s).

Sidequests are more-or-less designed as poorly as leves still are. It's just something thrown in to make us feel like there's something to do. Just like how we had to spend anima porting around the world to unlock the achievement categories. Just one inconvenience after another but we can do ourselves a favor by just ignoring them entirely anyway