I don't play many PC games these days because of how woke a lot of the shit is. I got burned on Cyberpunk, so now I pretty much play FS2020 and that's it these days. The last game I played through was System Shock remake, which I found to be decent enough.
BG3 won game of the year from Worth a Buy, but I hear it has a lot of gay sex?
I disagree with that that you have to get your quests from a questhub somewhere its not an mmorpg and even there I hate it makes exploring no fun if you just collect all quests in a city and follow the quest markers to the goal.
Also the area with duergar/myconids is optional you can also go over the mountainpass (no underdark needed) and directly into the shadowlands if you can beat/avoid a few level 5ish undeads where the shepards can rezz the ghouls.
Overworld map would have been great but devs probably didnt want to balance the game arround the legendary items in the city.
I've played tabletop for 20 years and I've never seen a campaign made this way. No one just wanders around and finds epic quests under every rock and leaf. Players start from some kind of safe point and go out in search of adventure based on requests, rumors, and current events.
Landing in a random patch of woods with so much crap going on in a 100 yard radius is absurd. The goblins and druids are 3 minutes away from each other, and yet they "can't find the other's location."
All they had to do was let you find a tavern or inn on the road after crashing and hear rumors about the various quests there, and then made them discreet locations. Like BG1, not MMOs.
Do you have any specific quests in mind here which dont fit while you travel? It really arent that many epic quests really on the road. Only one which comes to my mind is the chest with beholder bottle in it. And that only really gives you an option to trade in the zentarim hideout. And the only tavern early on you find is burning. The Githranki on the road make sense because a giant ship crashed near by.
Cant really think of any major quests you cant pick up in npc hubs unless you count the Ravengard rescue from the burning tavern. Nightsong quest starts in the druid grove which is a big quest hub.