It feels like NPCs in side quests are too nice and reasonable

[Sjol]

I think that it's ok for sidequests in the game to be roughly the opposite of the doomerism that is ubiquitous across all forms of social media.

A little escapism to optimism is, I think, ok for FF14.

I'm not saying everything needs to be doom and gloom. There's a spectrum between okay outcomes and good ones. And sometimes positivity is the thing some of us would like to escape, though I understand that it might not be a common sentiment. I've certainly met my share of toxically positive environments where all problems are swept under the rug. For me, escapism is seeing us succeed in something hard where people aren't getting along and don't want to admit to there being a problem. The escapism becomes the success.