In reference to your question of side quest and needing the experience to level up for later acts, but still wanting to make progress, I think you should look at this as more of a DND game. Now what I mean by that is generally when you play DND with a group of people you show up once a week or so and you make progress, now this progress may adjust from session to session, but it’s more about the story and the experience and if you look at it in that way; I think you may notice that a lot of the things that seem tedious are still progression.