Beelining story missions will result in needing to power grind. People don't necessarily want to get involved in the side content or wander about levels to see what they can find. Ultimately, if you ask yourself "why is X quest line in the game?" and the answer is "to give you power" or "to make the game longer", it's something that can be cut or reduced in scope. Generally speaking, quests like "close the rift" have story significance although I would suggest that there be fewer of them included in the game. Collecting shards should have been relegated to one single area (the area where they are necessary). Requestion requests should be totally deleted from the game. Establishing camps should not have been a (formal) quest that gets dropped in your log when you enter every area.
As much as anything else, one of the main problems is just how cluttered your map is (in terms of map markers) and how many "auto-quests" just sort of get plopped on your map unceremoniously.
I agree with some of your points, but I think the challenge that was presented to them was either to have a huge world where exploring doesn't give you any tangible reward, or make the world smaller, so they chose to fill a huge world with mostly uninteresting crap.
If you're into the lore, there really is a lot of cool stuff for you. I'm not at all, but I know people who just soak that stuff up and every quest is important for them.
You don't have to
grind for power really, though. If you consider doing Inner Circle quests and closing rifts to be grinding, then I would just argue that you're playing a game that you want to be something else, as doing quests for your party members is like one of the cornerstones of BioWare RPGs. It at least should be what you come to expect after DAO and Mass Effect. I don't see the issue with establishing camps. You're trying to spread the influence of the inquisition – that's your goal in this game. It makes perfect sense that you go around to new areas and set up waypoints.
I look at it like this: there are four tiers of content in BioWare games.
Tier 1: Story missions
Tier 2: Major side content (main Emprise du Lion quest, main Exalted plain quest, abyssal dragon quest line, etc.)
Tier 3: Inner Circle quests or requests from advisors
Tier 4: Minor side content (random quests around maps)
Tier 5: Requisitions, Shards, War table missions
The higher on the tier list you go, the more exp and power you get from them. You really need to do very little of the tier 4 and tier 5 stuff to have enough power and exp to progress. If you see the tier 2 and tier 3 stuff as being filler content, only necessary for power grinding, then I'd say you're looking at the game wrong or it's just not the right type of game for you, because regardless of meta-progress that you get from those missions, they're intended to be fun and rewarding in themselves.
I'm 20-ish hours into a Nightmare play through and I've done almost no tier 4 or tier 5 quests, yet I've still downed 6 dragons and I'm up to the big story mission with the wardens. I've done no grinding, just getting exp by sticking with the main stuff.