tl;dr: release more challenging content so that people who have played for longer can feel a reason to keep going.
Guild Wars 2 has a combat system that is second to no other MMORPG in many aspects, and that alone makes the game extremely fun. However, I am starting to find that after reaching level 80 on my third character now, I am starting to lose sight of goals in the game as there is not much elitism in the game. I had a lot of fun leveling my characters straight through to 80, but now that I’ve done most dungeon paths and explored most of the map, I feel like the game is dying on me.
I’m in no way saying that I have done everything that the game has to offer, but I feel like I’ve seen enough to know what the end-game is like. Guild Wars 2 is a game that is extremely fun to pick up, extremely fun to learn.. and then not exactly so fun to master. It has gotten to the point where in order for me to find challenging things to do in this game, I’ve been trying to duo/trio some of the dungeon paths – and I don’t think this was intended by ArenaNet.
With that said, I would like to see more challenging content appear in this game. Challenging content that is much more rewarding, specifically. I never played GW1, but from what I hear from other players the mechanics were much more complex. For example, we could have “hard mode” dungeons by choice, where the difficulty is drastically scaled up and if your team wipes, you’re forced to restart the whole dungeon. This would cater towards newer players in a sense that they can still run the existing dungeons without a difficulty increase, as well as more experienced players who are up for more of a challenge, for a much greater reward.
We could also have dungeons specifically designed for parties smaller than 5 people, or have fixed loot for example. So if the dungeon was completed by 3 people instead of 5, they could have a larger share of the total loot available from the dungeon. I’m not talking precursors and stuff as that would affect the economy, but at least give us a reason to do things like that. It’s not that hard and we’re not asking for a lot content, we just want to see a more challenging end-game in GW2.
Another thing is – players also tend to get stimulated by getting rewarded for short-term activities. And although crafting a legendary is awesome and should by all means stay as tedious as it is right now, I feel that the game should be moving in a direction that provides adequate rewards for activities or tasks that are shorter in length. Generally this means, more activity, and less cosmetic grinding.
Lastly, I am aware that ArenaNet has said that they plan on doing something about the blue and green drops that do nothing other than fill up your inventory at level 80. I would like to see ANet decrease the drop rate of blues and greens by A LOT and replacing them with useful items of the same price range instead. For example, looting a dungeon chest could give a small amount of crafting materials instead of 3-4 blue items that were worth the same 3-4 silver that you would have gotten. This would make it much easier for us to manage our inventory, as well as give us more items that are actually being traded between players and not just vendored on sight.
Sorrow Night / Seven Truths