If I had to speak on arbitrary roadblocks since that's now a topic of conversation, let's talk about the Hard Mode Titan/Garuda/Ifrit Block that requires the Side Quest. We typically aren't given much reason NOT to progress aside from it being there for...well, probably gear gating I'd imagine when we already have strong catch-up gear. In general something as small as this would help improve flow instead of not giving a reason to do them. If they properly baked this into the story right, we would've had to do them because "Beast Tribes keep doing it again and again" in ARR.