I would like to ask you guys to move your discussion about tournament-centric play-style and what is the up and downside of it to a separate topic. This topic is about the current event and a much larger number of player is effected by the poorly designed quests then just tourny people.
Also criticizing those who complain about a certain quest on the basis that "it was always like this" or "that is players' choice" is not very polite and not at all productive. Quests are changed and fine tuned based on those complains and sometimes despite of those complains, but nevertheless the complains are a major driving force of changes.
E.g. the manufacturing quests were really a pain in winter event and was only a cosmetic change to the autumn event when those "produce a huge amount of t1 goods" style of quest was announced. Now I find them as the biggest improvement of this event.
On the other hand the researching quest is something developers must touch for every single event, for no apparent reason. And there are other quests which are show-stoppers, like the "buy 10 kp" or the "complete a province". None of them are stopping the completion of the event for good, but they can cause severe delay, when they are repeated several times.
And here is where I find the root of the problem: the endless quest system allows unlimited repetition of any quest. I had a nice variety of quests until quest 65 or so and I was happy that the quest system was enhanced. But since then I see little variation and I guess I was only lucky at the beginning. The pattern
q(uest)1
q2
q1
q2
q1
is back again, no improvement to the system at all. And it is bad experience even if the q1 and q2 quests are not particularly painful.
If they can't fix this repetition they must limit the amount of certain quest. When the quest-line was fixed, it was balanced that way that the painful quests came only in 2-3 times. Yes, there was always research quest, but there was just a few. Yes, we had to buy kp, but only a certain, fixed amount. We could get away with a small amount of scouted province to complete them when needed. And so on...
This unlimited repeat must end! If somebody received e.g. 5 "buy kp" quest than that quest must be ruled out for the rest of the event (or at least until you reach the "bonus quests").
But obliviously the best would be to fix the system, so you don't see the above pattern over and over again or at all. Quest would not return until you complete another 10 or so different quest. This would ensure that no quest repeat too many times, and also the event would be a way better fun to play.