Shared World games is my favorite genre this gen. Destiny is my most played game of 2014, the Division is in my top 5 for 2016, Destiny 2 is my third most played game last year and Sea of Thieves is my most playrd game so far this year.

Some of these shared world games are intentionally filled with padding to keep people playing them. Fallout 76 took a page out of the CCG market with its perk cards. Destiny is a grind fest, that requires you to have the latest "expansion". I have no doubt that Anthem will be the same tedious unending grindfest as other shared world games. Even Monster Hunter World gets in on the endless and pointless late-game grindfest with Tempered Monsters, and ultra-rare gems.

I have no clue how SoT is, and will never know. Forza isn't for me since its a racing game, but at least they are taking a step in the right direction.

I played Chromehounds and MHT when they came out. Sad to see the servers for those games die.

The Forza Horizon series, at their core, are single player games with a bunch of social features. The other games you mentioned are built for co-op and PvP, also action games.

I've only played the original Destiny, for the most part that functioned fine as a single player game. You could complete every mission alone, but it would require some grinding to make it easier.

I haven't revisited Sea of Thieves since its launch window. But that felt very much like a social experience/experiment more than an actual game, which I expected.

The Division was horribly designed/balanced. Its impossible to play alone, enemies are ridiculously over powered, even with a full team it can be difficult and low player population has made it difficult to find a group. It amazes me Ubisoft still pushes that game without rebalancing the difficulty. I gave up on that game because I sick of boring grinding missions.

If Anthem functions well as a single player and co-op games, I'm open to that. Look at Left 4 Dead for example. The AI group was okay, but its an enjoyable game to play with randoms for the most part.

Sometimes games are fine just with some co-op modes. Like Horde Mode in Gears of War. Halo 5's firefight mode is also a blast. Have fun, grind for currency, buy crap, good stuff.

I agree that games that can be playable offline, should be playable offline. .

Destiny and Destiny 2 are my most played games of all time. Obviously, some portions of those games require online play - PVP, raids, strikes. But, probably 50% of the content could be played just fine, as-is, without getting online. Strikes could also easily be scaled to allow for single player, offline play. As we move further and further into the world of online play, I hope developers will keep in mind that many of us either cannot, or do not want to play online all the time, and that they will make content that allows us to play the way that we want to play whenever reasonably possible.

There aren't going to be any loot boxes or micro transactions.  People had a hissy fit over the loot boxes in FM7 even though they where completely optional and only could be bought with in game currency they will be removed from the game this fall and they already said that FH4 will not have any.  Also FM7 doesn't have tokens and FH4 will not have tokens either.

"But they also found a way to make the online part optional"

But isn't the world completely empty then? My impression from FH4 at e3 is that they've removed traffic and the only other vehicles are players in the shared world? Is this wrong? Do you get normal traffic if you opt-out of shared world?

I played Forza Horizon 3 for 40 hours. Shared world could be really cool, especially if well balanced. I play mostly in single player but see other players run down the streets summed to the Drivatar during the races it's a plus even for single players. Playground games found a really good match for arcade cars games. Can't wait to see them on next gen console (Forza Horizon 4 in my opinion seems too much similar to FH3, but maybe i have to try it at Milan Games week to change my mind).

nah their are always cars but if play online they can be replaced by your friends and randoms driveatars.

I think Fable 2/3 did also a good job.

Ah, excellent! Would have got it either way but thought it was a strange choice.

I think its a great idea to allow gamers the option to play online or offline as long as the game is playable in those ways. For example Destiny should be allowed to be played offline, I have no idea why that game needs to be online. Sure it users a server but why not have an option where the game runs native offline? Hopefully Forza Horizon 4 sets the standard and other companies follow suit.