I have worked out 2 options how to get rid of quest system in FA with mechanics we already have in a game.
To do so we need to get badges directly from a building instead of from the quest.
1. Option is to have buildings similar to how ancient wonders work, every building will produce different badge per x minutes/hours, after it produces it will wait for our collect (like collecting militaries from AW).
Only downside for developers would be to have few new buildings, but lets face it, taking already existing buildings and recolor it is easy to do and much faster then overhaul of whole quest system.
The advantages for players are much better tho.
We can place buildings only after Adventure start, making it same for everybody (personaly i dont like that FA start 2 days before it even start). Buildings can be build with 10s construction speed. This will also balance human and elfs to have same space required.
If we take 1st variation of FA into this new system then waypoints only needs to be adjusted as follow: If brewery badge required 50x 5 min from workshop to get 1 badge, in new system it will be 50x 5 min from new building to get 50 badges, so in the waypoint 1 brewery badge will be replaced with 50 badges, 2 badges with 100 and so on, this will also make it more possible to spread production of badges between members in a FS.
Since we have new buildings we can have much bigger variety then 6 option from workshops and 4 from manufactory, anything from 1 min to 48 hours. This can be even different for every FA to increase challenge and make it new every time we play it. They can even remove worst ones like 5 minutes or 48 hours and replace them with 5 hours or 10 hours or 15 hours.
This will greatly reduce data sent to server making it much smoother and less laggy, now every quest we accept, decline, finish, make progress are need to be communicated with a server, with this system you just sweep collect badges similar to how you collect coins and go offline.
5 mins, 15 mins, 1h, 3h, 9h, 24h are with us already too long to have some kind of new timings for us to play with.
I often ask myself what should be the main difficulty of FA? In my opinion it should be find the right time to log into the game and collect your products and make proper strategy in FS who produces what, main difficulty shouldnt be the endlessly cycling quests over and over again.
There is another solution if you dont want to create/recolor a lot of new buildings to have only 2 buildings which will have new tab after you click on it where you can choose what you want from them to produce.
2. Option is to have new buildings like i mentioned before but with 6 or 4 options which would reduces for developers to make only 2 new buildings but it will be less user friendly for players to click on building and set right production of badges, imagine recolored lvl1 workshop, after you click on it you will see 6 options with 6 different badges to produces, and than have another new building with 4 new options (this building will be bigger but will combine all 3 manufactories spaces required together = 8 tiles)
Only problem with this new iteration would be for people who cant place any new buildings into their city, which should be according to Marindors earlier post minority. Every FS who wants to fight for best spot has full city of buildings anyway, now they will just have new buildings. For that reason this old quest system can be active for this people, but will reward you with adjusted badges so it can be combined together, 50x5min will reward you with 50 badges from a quest and so on.
Last FA gave us 3 new badges which can be a bit more challenging to add to this new system but not impossible (Having only 3 quests instead of 13 just for this type of badges, have special options in MA to produce new badges there, implement it in new a builing, options are a lot, discussion can continue)
We can even go more deeper and add set mechanics to this and make it like tetris, the more different buildings we combine together for different badges, we could get some percentage advantage for generating this badges (1%,5% whatever) so people who like to play with their city will have new minigame to maximize their badge output and obviously smart players will have advantage. (Dont everybody want deeper building strategy already?)
In case you dont know what i am talking about, here is a small sample, buildings wont be able to be rotatable, but while you design it you can rotate however you want.
Of course we can discuss details if devs would like to work with this idea, which definitely removes the worst thing in this feature.