Most of the quests in modern RPGs feel like "while I am out do you need me to get something"

When I joined the Fallout London team I tried pushing for more pacifist ways to resolve quests across the game, but it quickly became obvious that the work needed would be insane for a payoff that would affect a tiny number of players, and that it would distract from much more important priorities. It's left me in awe of the games that do commit to full pacifist and kill-all options, as it's a lot of work that so few will ever appreciate.

One of the memorable quests in Arcanum for me was a quest where you had to deliver a giant heavy boulder that took almost entire inventory grid. That meta element of dealing with inventory grid and quest item's weight would never happen in a modern game where quest items are stored separately and have no weight. I really liked that quest.

Lower level quests be like "Hey can you go out the back door of my house and pick these herbs for me? Your reward is a partially-used napkin. Thanks."

One quest type that I occasionally like to see are detective style quests. It could be figuring out and hunting down who robbed a place or being hired to find out who murdered someone and why.

Ian's quest: Kill the vault dweller

There’s always the type that remains in your journal the entire game cause you either forgot about it or never figured out how to finish it.

This is why I like crafting systems when they provide meaningful rewards. You’re effectively choosing your own quests to acquire materials.

One of my favorite quests from Skyrim is trying a deadly scroll made by one of the students at the college. The scroll surrounds you with fire but unlike the other fire cloaks in the game that are master crafted, this one hurts you. You essentially just set yourself on fire

I like the type where you find water chips and hunt down necromancers in the void 😇

(With Apologies to Mel Brooks).   Haha! I've got the title for the sequel to my RPG:  "Recycled Plot #3 - The Quest for More Money"

One quest type I would really like to see is one that I normally only see in military games rather than RPGs. Namely, take control of point X. I feel like with towers, castles, etc., quests of this type could work very well in RPGs.
What's more, an RPG could offer multiple paths to complete such a quest. For instance, besides blunt force, you could take control of a location by convincing the garrison to change sides, convincing the garrison to go home, cutting off their supplies so they are forced to leave, bribing them to leave, etc.

My favourite part in quests is when the giver says "follow me, I'll take you to master Gwamgorb..." he then talks to you as you cross the village, walking at a slower pace than you can achieve in the game so you end up stopping until he is a bit ahead, then catching up to him, then stopping, then catching up. All the while he is nattering on and at no point does he stop and say "what the hell are you doing? Weirdo.". There ARE a few games that actually DO limit your speed to the NPC in these sections. They are doing gods work.

Go pick up 75 rare herbs while escorting a NPC who can't run and get lost easily.

Also if you get detected, the mission fails (the NPC can break your stealth, of course).

I watched a Matt Colville video a few years back about how the best adventures a DM can make/run all come with engaging verbs and, as a corallary to that video, I feel like that's true here too. It seems that the best quest types are those that have a strong central verb but then layer on many other types as well.

The quest item complications are exactly what was happened to Bethesda when they were working on Oblivion. All their quests kept breaking and it was a huge headache they couldn't solve until they figured out that their Radiant AI governing their NPCs was allowing some NPCs to go and kill important quest NPCs. So essential (unkillable) NPCs were born to fix that. It's hilarious to think about discovering that the NPCs you created were a little too clever and free roaming for their own good.

My favorite quest type is where you have to solve a problem and it gets a bit complicated along the way and its more than one person being the quest giver.

Worst ones are quest giver gives you instruction. You complete it. Come back. Get XP and reward.

Especially like "I can't go to this area for whatever reason (too busy, dangerous, handicapped etc). Take this sentimental thing and put it there.".

So the quest giver just hands a stranger some unique thing and later gives them a reward without checking if the task was actually done.

For these types of quests you should be able to lie to your quest giver, and if later they find that out they come for you.

Im GMing for my ttrpg group for the first time, this video was incredibly well-timed for me!

Listening to all these quest types reminds me of how much I enjoy (to a degree) doing busywork in games.

A quest type I remember enjoying in both New Vegas and Mass Effect 2 was getting ingredients for a chef to make better food. The ingredients were all over the hub worlds and it was kind of fun collecting them and knowing the end goal would be better food for some troops

Absolute Tim-nema in the thumbnail there