I know, I know, but hear me out. Sometimes you just want something to do. Sometimes you just want a reason to use all that gear you've been trying to upgrade, but you don't really want to work on getting to the next tier and you don't really want to think about what you're going to do with that spare half hour you could sneak in. If there were an NPC you could "buy" to hang out near your base or in your castle or whatever that would sell you the details to local "rumors" and you could go hunt down the buried treasure, super-powered bear, glowing crab, or whatever it is and get some sort of meaningful reward like ... good food or crafting materials, that would be kind of awesome. I could just go do a dynamically generated "kill this", "fetch that", hamster wheel quest and get a crafting mat or something. The value of the game, to me at least, just went up by 2-3 months, potentially.
