To me, it doesn't matter so much if the area follows the main questline or not as long as the content is something I enjoy doing.
That's nice. Either way, most of the side content was not something I enjoyed doing.
If you don't like fighting dragons in a game called Dragon Age I don't know what to tell you..
I play games primarily for story, characters, and character building/roleplay not combat. I don't care what the story is called.
Why I say fighting the Red Templars fits into the main quest is because the Red Templars are one of the beings that answers to Cory. Its not that much of a stretch to say because The Red Templars serve the main antagonist that is is related to the main story arch.
It's extra tacked on mooks. It affects the story in zero ways.
Iron Bull as a playable char that you can interact with and even romance is a huge deal. Does it change the main outcome of the game? No. Should it? I don't thinks so. My point is because IB adds such quality content it makes no different if getting him as a companion changes the outcome of the game. I'm currently doing a run through where IB is always in my party (after Skyhold). I have not done that before, but I find the commentary he provide to be great and he has cool abilities and that is why he is staying in on this run through.
I didn't say anything about Iron Bull not being "quality content" I said he's optional content.
You don't need to do a single thing extra to have the miniscule amount of power needed to meet with the cleric so to me its a moot point.
You need to grind 4 power doing menial tasks that I don't enjoy and it's required to be able to meet the cleric. Later quests have you grinding as many as 40. Again you fail to answer why doing any of that stuff should be a requirement for meeting a lone woman in a public place or why random goatherding would get you an invitation to the Empress' ball or why following notes in the Emerald Graves makes your troops ready to storm Adamant Fortress.
Look, gaining power is one of those things that is usually taken for granted in games. This is one instance where BW decided to be explicit about getting more powerful as the game progresses and if its not done just the right way, people through a fit that it didn't exactly meet the way they had envisioned it in their minds. RPGs inherently have a story associated with them. It is almost a given that usually you start with very little and gaining more and more resources as the game progresses. The only thing BW did differently is put numbers on it.
BioWare didn't give adequate story reasons that went along with the power requirements and the things that earned you power and influence are not things that would have realistically done so. All the power requirements ended up doing was forcing people who don't like the side quests to do over 100 of them in order to progress the plot.
I will just have to disagree with you that everything needs to be explicitly spelled out for me to know what is going on in the game.
Calm it down with the passive aggression and putting words in other people's mouths. Did I say "oh golly, I don't understand what's going on, someone please explain it to me?" Yeah, no. Explicitly spelling things out is exactly what the sidequests do (quite literally when it comes to the note based quests). You seem to have decided that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot and that anyone who finds something poorly done, uninspired, etc..."just doesn't understand." Telling and not showing is just poor storytelling.
You talk about TW3 as though everything you do in that game has to do with the main story arch..
Not true.
I'd say most of what you do in that game has less to do with the main story arch that DA:I.
Not everything has to be connected to the main plot, but the main plot needs to be the reason I'm in an area (and TW3 did this). Sidequests can be done along the way.
I think the big problem people have saying "the side quests don't fit into the may story arch" is for one reason: people have been trained that the main parts of the main story arch must be linear rather than dynamic. With DA:I that changes things a great deal when knowing that you don't HAVE to do a completion of a story from beginning to end all in one go.
Um what? Do you mean people don't know they can do some of the main quests out of order or do you mean they don't know they don't have to finish the game? In any case, if you want a game where you can just bugger off and ignore the main plot forever and have there be no consequences then you can't also have a story about a growing breach in the sky that is spilling out demons, an ancient evil wizard that is destroying the world, and the player as the only one capable of stopping them. It makes no sense for you to be wandering way off course just to run around and do random pickle extractions.
When you say "special snowflake hand" cynically, you are basically going against the core premise of the main story arch. The "special snowflake hand" was likely came up with very early in the writing process for this game.
While I appreciate that BioWare tried to kind of lampshade this trope by having the chosen one/special snowflake status granted because of random chance, in the end it was the same as every other special snowflake story. You're still the only one capable of saving the world because of that hand and the random chance has no adverse affect on your character's social standing or power.
You might as well join the "just make DA:O 2" crowd. BW is looking to be a game changer when it comes to RPGs. The fact that people don't like the game because it isn't just like the previous games they have made is evidence of this.
Yes, because that's exactly what I've been saying "I dun liek it becuz it not DA:O" 
In what way was BioWare "looking to be a game changer" when it came to DA:I? The story was cliche and not very well done, the companions seemed like a random assortment of people off the street rather than a team, the side quests were shallow and tacked on, the combat was watered down, there were fewer options for roleplay and fewer character types you could play (no one ruthless or evil for example). DA:I didn't feel like BioWare tried something innovative and fell short, it felt like they clearly overcorrected based on (their interpretation of) criticism of DA2, tried to capture Skyrim's sales numbers through a semi-open world (without knowing what people like about Skyrim) and played it way too safe with the story.
The reason I say you can't work with hypotheticals on a situation that has already occurred is not because it lacks creativity to think of those things, but because the industry is moving forward and as such, there is a framework that is constantly built upon previously used systems. BW has proven if nothing else that they do not go backwards, only forwards. They might use concepts used much earlier in gaming as a reference, but it is only a reference and not a direct copy. I see pretty much no one on this forum talking about Assassin's Creed games because its a game that has largely gone stale because Ubi keeps pumping out the same game over and over. Also, when it comes to practical application of concepts, it works very differently than theoretically. So while you can say "what if Sera was only romanceable by a male elf character" it begins to diverge into an area that if it were so, would change the game in such a way that Sera would no longer be the same character. The same concept applies to "what if.." wherever considering where a game needed to change previously, rather than sequentially. For that reason, it is best to take what we know about the current system in place and compound on that in a manner that is realistic and palatable rather than taking what we know of a system and going backwards with it so that we can apply that to a new system. The entire system would have to be replaced if you are working based on hypotheticals and that is just way too much work for the devs to accomplish. Ok, clearly you have no idea what I'm talking about. 
It's not about changing a specific already done quest, it's about thinking about how to make a more detailed and integrated quest in the future. I'm guessing you're not an artist because if you were, you'd be familiar with the concept of art critique. If I draw a picture of a dog and someone critiques the picture saying "the dog's legs are bent the wrong direction, it should be more like ___" it's meant to improve your knowledge and technique for the next picture. You can't say "well this picture is already done so your critique is irrelevant! 
" and you can't critique a picture that hasn't been drawn yet. You can give ideas on what to do in the future and that's what we're doing in this thread.
I am quoting you here to make a point. I made a comparison earlier in this thread saying how when the devs focus so heavily on cinematics as opposed to other means of getting the point across that it is the same difference between reading a book and watching TV. TV has its place, but if I want to use my imagination, I read a book, I don't watch TV. TV tells, reading a book imagines. I like to think of my video games as somewhere between reading a book and watching TV, so naturally I would want elements of both in it, preferably at the same time and place in the video game. You realize that books (for adults) have descriptions right?
Many people do not know how to use their imaginations and that's a real problem in today's world. You are speaking as someone with not as much imagination as myself when you say "not used to any believable degree and was horribly implemented." I share a different opinion. I think the game was made for those people who think like myself. I agree not as much was spelled out in DA:I, but there was enough context to understand why things made sense on a meta level.
There's that insulting passive aggression again . Tell me, when you watch the Star Wars prequels do you believe Anakin and Padme as a couple in love? They tell you they're in love, they say that they feel things for each other all the time. Since they said it it must be well done right? No. I'm guessing you don't read many books since you don't seem to know much about creative writing.
We don't know why BW went with less shot-reverse-shot for sure. I'd argue it was art directing because its not that difficult to actually do shot-reverse-shot cinematics. What is difficult and often goes with that, are voiced dialog options and that is where it gets expensive over the long run.
We can make an educated guess that there was hardly any of the budget left when it came down to doing sidequests.
If you really can't stand the side quests that much, then it is true that you lack the intuitive grasp needed to imagine the way the world works in this game. I am sorry, but that is the truth.
I'm really wishing for a facepalm emoji right now...You think I lack imagination and "intuitive grasp" because I find the DA:I sidequests shallow and poorly done, I think you have a simple mind that is easily entertained. I'm sorry but that's the truth. The DA:I sidequests are the equivalent of a children's book where everything is told and not shown and where there is zero nuance, depth, or subtext. Everything is "the puppy had a ball, the ball was red, the puppy was happy." My niece loves that kind of story too, she's 3.
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