I was talking to my mates about the same thing, it would be like coming across groups of marines in Halo. They're not significant enough to dramatically alter the game, but it gives the feeling there is more than 16 guardians protecting the City. The way the story plays out, that only your character appears in cutscenes even when in a team and the fact the Stranger takes an interest in your from the moment you get your ship sometimes makes it feel you're the only guardian capable of actually doing anything. Anything to dispel this illusion and give us even a hint that there are other guardians out there walking their own paths could only improve the game. We could then see new patrol missions that involve assisting a titan team throw back an assault, or retrieving supplies and delivering them to a garrison. There could even be missions to rescue a trapped hunter pinned by enemy fire, or assisting a warlock recover an artifact. We know there are thousands of guardians out there because the lore tells us so, but where are they? At the very least we should see them on Earth, the one planet where the most guardians would be at any one time, defending our homeworld. Hell, I'd be happy just seeing regular, non-guardian humans out there on Earth trying to make a difference, but apparently they're all too busy slacking off in the city while we do all the fighting. We can't really be the only warriors left, surely there are people capable of fighting that don't have the ability to "wield the Traveler's light as a weapon". Are they told "sorry, you're not special enough to defend your people", even if they happen to posses skills that would make them beneficial to the war effort? Currently, the closest we get to feeling like anything is being done beyond out own efforts is that some guardian re-captured an accelerator on the moon and then wandered off and got himself killed because nobody thought his victory was worth following up with a team to hold the facility. I guess the policy the City has for victories beyond the city is that if they can be done once, they can be repeated later, rather than taking advantage of them now. The AI's don't even need to be there all the time, while we're making gains, we could also be suffering losses. Perhaps Bungie tracks patrol mission data and sets a target for how many times the community needs to complete a given task related to these AI's in a week, and if we don't reach the target, that instance is removed for the following week. Using the example given of a team reclaiming the colony near the Hellmouth, failure to reach the target would result in the colony being lost again in the following week. This would give us a reason to do patrol beyond farming materials, completing bounties and building faction rep, we'd become invested in protecting certain areas as we'd actually be accomplishing something.