Multi-player adventure games should have a NPC setting. Rather than being the adventurer, you can choose to just...vibe. You can gather food and farm and craft things and build houses and chat with your fellow 'NPC' players, and when you need something thats difficult to get or something, you can just activate a little "quest available" button so that adventurers know to talk to you. You can ask adventurers to gather the thing or item or tool you need, and because you have all the lore and knowledge about the thing in a handy handbook, you can give them cool quests and lore, but not have to GO ON QUESTS
As someone who likes just chilling in adventure games and doesn't want to fight things so much, I think this could be a fun way to play games with your game grinding friends. They get the adventure and you get the bliss, and you both enjoy the world the way you want to, but you can still play TOGETHER.
And you can change anytime you want. You aren't STUCK being an 'NPC', you can CHOOSE to adventure if the mood takes you, but it's an option you can activate at any time, in any game area, and you can do all sorts of fun little things with your fellow 'NPC's on the side (including decorating and organizing things and just doing COMMUNITY things, and making the world better and cooler and more exciting for the visiting adventurers!
