As far as side quests go, I prefer ones that involve roleplaying, moral dilemmas or puzzle solving. I didn't like "eavesdropping" followed by pinging a system for generic doohickeys in ME3. Even worse was some quest in DA2 where Hawke randomly found hemorrhoid cream in a mine and later just handed it to some guy without my even knowing anybody wanted it. ("Excuse me, citizen, you look like the type of guy who needs this cream I found.") Get X number of bear pelts/pieces of meat/flowers quests are also tedious.
Memorable side quests that I really enjoyed were:
1) Retrieving/not retrieving Samesh Bhatia's wife's corpse from the Alliance in ME1. It had no bearing on anything else in the game but was a nice moral conundrum that helped me flesh out my Shepard's POV. It didn't even have combat.
2) The haunted chateau in DAI. This one didn't have a quest giver at all. Just a little mystery/scavenger hunt that told a story.
3) The random N7 missions in ME2 like the "turn on the solar shields" puzzle, the wrecked ship maze or the "choose whether the colony spaceport or residential area gets vaporized" dilemma. I even enjoyed planet scanning to find them. (I did not enjoy pinging systems in ME3, because there was no payoff -- getting to go to a planet for a mission -- instead we just clicked the dot that represented the thing we were looking for.)
4) The deed to Matriarch Aethyta's bar quest in ME2 because it added to Conrad's story and further developed his (nonfunctional) relationship with Shepard.
Bad quests: A quest giver with little motivation that sets them apart. ("I need 10 flowers. Because reasons.") Lots of time spent traveling to and from a random uninteresting location. Picking up a generic object by clicking once. Handing over object for a scant reward (money or low level loot) that is the only motivation/payoff for doing the quest.
Good quests: A quest giver with a compelling personal reason for wanting the quest done that is explained via conversation. Very little travel time, or (if there is no quest giver) the quest is in a self contained area that the PC stumbles across in the natural course of exploring. Player decides or figures out something. Player gets a deeper understanding of the PC, the quest giver or some lore. The tangible reward is secondary.
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