I've played for about 120hrs and am at lv63. Not once in all that time have I had a settler get kidnapped or received any type of reward for defending settlements. My brother plays as well and has had it happen almost on the hour of play time. He's also encountered brotherhood of steel and super mutants fighting multiple times as well as random people approaching him in the wilderness for small quests. I haven't had any of that happen.

I've even stripped my settlements of all defenses and not received missions, even when I ignore the 'defend settlement' notices.

I really don't want to start over but it seems I might have too. No idea why I'm not receiving any of the events and it's getting very boring.

Also, I'm on Xbox so nexus mods wont help. Does anyone know a way to fix this issue or perhaps a way to prevent it if I do start over? Ugh, I don't want to start over l:<

There are specific "trigger points" that you have to come near in order for random events in the world to happen. There is one where the road turns a sharp corner on the way from the Galleria toward the town of Morton (Milton? Marden?)... I happened to have a save point right before I approached that area, so I was able to reload that save and approach the trigger point, check out the random event, and if I did not like it, reload the save and try again.

It could be that you are simply not walking near trigger points and your brother is. Regardless of open-world events, though, you should be able to get missions from settlers in your settlements --- they rarely come right up to you, but some will appear to stand plaintively doing nothing until you approach them and talk to them, and then they offer a quest to save a kidnapped hostage, etc. If you have advanced the main quest enough to start building Sanctuary Hills back up, Preston Garvey should offer you three separate missions over and over and over (no more than three in your Journal at a time).

If ~that~ isn't happening, then something's seriously amiss, because it's near impossible to get Preston to shut up with all the offers of help he keeps telling you about.

I believe half the forum might want to strap you to a chair and torture you to death to know how in the world you managed to avoid those sorry excuses for a quest.

If you tune in to a certain radio station after a certain quest they will sometimes ping you with a radient.