I've noticed that a lot of the quests for temples and minor factions are bugged. For instance, i have run into the problem where i have to give a minor faction 20 gold and even when i have the gold it tells me to come back when i have met the conditions of the quest, and it will never let me complete the quest.

Can you upload a save file?

Sometimes you can end up with more than one quest on the same ruin and a few take precedence and will block the completion of others, while many allow a partial search.

When it comes to the Minor Faction villages, make sure you are speaking to the correct village.  In 3 village regions, you can be at the wrong village at times.  You can use the little button on the quest to show you the correct location with some quests or look at the tooltip for the correct quest name by hovering your mouse over.