Doing tasks for the civilizations, tribes, and factions should be profitable, and those tasks shouldn't pretend to be unique or terribly important. But 1) freedom of choice has always been a core feature of Ryzom, and 2) I do feel that something is lacking in the missions. Courier missions are the most like what I imagine these groups of homins would need done, but they're not attractive (sometimes because the item weighs a lot, sometimes because the mission is timed, sometimes because you're carrying things to a wandering NPC in a very dangerous part of a distant region for too little reward).