Is it just me, or are the DLC quests the only ones that actually have a map marker to the monsters you need to kill if the objective is to kill some for any reason? Like they realized after finishing the game that "hey, this game's grindy enough as it is, why the hell aren't we just telling where the monster the player needs to farm for this mission is located at? Let's put markers for them in the DLC, at least!"
Reason for this is, that the affinity quests are not really side quests, but rather the important main quest for the whole team. Please do all of them, because they complete the story.
I know, I've been doing every single unique side quest in the game I've come across. It's just a super weird mission to lock the main mission behind - why the hell would some random BLADE having a girlfriend be important in the context of the main story? I'm not a fan of locking main stuff behind optional stuff (and while affinity quests are important for characterization, they ARE optional), but I wish they at least tried to make an effort and make the locks make sense.
Like, lock a main mission behind an affinity mission that gives me a new party member, cause only this party member knows of some specific location we would need to find in the main mission. Or something.
Also, what do you mean by "change your ideling settings in the game" ?