Not sure what you mean about too much happening? You stumble across a group of refugees in a druid camp and the druids want them out because they are attracting goblins and danger to the grove.
He means, we have Richard Scarry's Busy Busy Faerun where you have numerous NPCs all in animation loops eagerly awaiting player intercession. As noted above, in an MMO where immersion is linked to experience this is acceptable because people are more interested in the game play than the story, but RPGs it needs to be done more tastefully as much hinges upon how authentic characters and environments feel and will directly influence how the player responds to them. You never want quest opportunities to feel like those assholes on the Vegas strip handing out escort adverts.
Are they? Are the druids performing the ritual really just waiting for you to interrupt them, or are they in the middle of casting a ritual? I'm getting this "in a SP game, the zones should be dead of anything not directly tied to a story" vibe, intended or not. "Feels like a chore" doesn't leave me feeling like there were too many NPCs in the zone, but more with the "I've done this so many times" vibe. I get that vibe a lot. I had that vibe a lot in Baldur's Gate, with over 110 completions, but there's that thing, I did it a lot of times, and introduced myself to burn out, to the point where BG 2 was less, although not a lot less... In Mass Effect, I'll get to certain points, 1, 2 or 3 where I'm like "dread, this again", and will save and log out and come back later. I get a lot of "I'm not ready to deal with this right now" moments, and none of them are the fault of game design, or being too busy, but simply because I burnt myself out.
The nice thing about my disability, if there really is one, is that after a few months, I'll forget all about what's coming, and can almost enjoy it like a new experience. Playing the Tomb Raider reboot games, I'd get to a point, and just stop progressing and do the little side missions, optional tombs, collections, etc. It doesn't have anything to do with "Busy Busy Faerun", not even in Faerun, just burnt out, or not wanting to deal with what's next. Nothing in the OP suggested anything like what you're saying here, and I get that from "after 10 times, it just feels like a chore".
That's great but not everything is about you.
The introduction to the Grove starts with an interrupted fracas. From there you will encounter a heated exchange with the survivors, someone who tells you everyone is being evicted because the Druids are going dark unless they are spoken to/someone is rescued. From there you meet an overly aggressive squirrel, intervene in an assassination, help someone compose a song, save a child from some harpies, teach another child how to be a better thief, motivate yet some other children who are learning how to fight, helping still more children steal a statue, rescuing yet another child who had attempted to steal said statue whilst dispersing a lynch mob, investigating strange brews and the bitch who peddles them, giving someone hope for their future, convincing three friends they should stick around and lend a hand if things should go south, investigating the ad hoc leader of the settlement, helping a rat who can't distinguish steel from food, saving a goblin POW. . .This is just what I recall off the top of my head, I am sure I did not nail them all. In a small city of a few hundred residents this would still seem a little overwrought, but this is a glorified commune where every knot of people you stumble into has a unique problem they want you to help them with.
In an MMO, if Johnny Thundercock and little Sally Rottencrotch want you collect 10 lamb caecum, noone bats an eyelash so long as three lines of dialogue or less explain their motivation. Noone cares. They just want an excuse to run out into the pasture and mutilate some lambs. An RPG on the other hand should be about story, and little of this contributes anything meaningful. Despite much of it being thematically linked, it all feels like content for the sake of having content. It is busy work, the sort of shit a bad manager assigns to an employee who has handled their responsibilities but is still on the clock.
I am glad you are happy with the game as it is, most people will be. However good enough is never sufficient argument against pursuing excellence. Musical scores should be written so that the audience enjoys it, obviously, but there is no reason why they cannot also impress other musicians with interesting chord progressions, challenging time signature, or novel composition. This is true of any art form one might care to consider. If good enough really were we would still be playing fucking Dig Dug.
