Guild Wars 2

This is it! The solution!!! I know you won’t do it, but I can’t sleep and thought I’d try to make a difference!!

Exotics should be the top-tier items stat-wise. I’d revert that immediately, brozies.
Ascended items should be re-designed to have some sort of horizontal progression (ie: full set of ascended means 50% discount on map travel! you get a free pony! whatever, there are tons of ideas. Make them worth grinding for if people want that extra bang, perhaps beyond just cosmetic but still not vertical.)
Option to run dungeons in agony-free mode (this level is separate from agony level) – this keeps skill, not gear, available as the main factor in how far a group can get. Reduced drops (50-60%) compared to agony-enabled mode so there is still incentive to gear up for that… OR, agony resist gives you magic find in agony-free mode, to compensate. Now everyone can play how they want, and the grind is still worth doing.
ANY stats on infusions only work in agony-enabled content (ie: not even in the original dungeons, open-world, etc).
Obviously fix reconnecting
Provide a solution to differences in player fotm levels, giving incentive to help others with lower levels or a ‘sidekick’ mode or something.
Re-enable blast finishers (nerfed, fine) on ele trait.
Communicate with your players, admit you did some stupid stuff and what you are doing to fix it.
Focus on bugs and class issues (frankly, most ele traits need a re-design). Both the class and the game itself need to be acceptable for the game to be enjoyable… one doesn’t ‘boost’ the other.
While I’m making a wishlist, add some new modes to pvp, and expand on wvw.

BEST GAME EVER! Now I’m going to sleep.

/standing ovation

I think there are some real points raised here.
The most important of which in my opinion is the horizontal progression of ascended gear.
I am a LvL 80 Guardian, and I had to grind karma for over 3 months to get the best in slot at the time exotic Orr Temple armor set. I felt a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment when I bought the last piece of armor, and for the first time since starting to play the game, I really felt like I could start to play for fun.
The next thing I began to focus on was cosmetics, and I chose to go for the Tier 3 Sylvari cultural armor because I think it looks awesome. But upon hearing that a new tier of armor was being introduced, I immediately felt like all my accomplishments and achievements up until this point count for nothing, and that I would have to, in essence, “start again”, to build up for the ascended armor.
And on top of that, I can’t play the game at the moment in a fun way anymore because I don’t want to put in the effort to save up for Tier 3 cultural armor to transmogrify my hard worked for Exotic Gear when I feel like it doesn’t mean anything until I have ascended gear.
The entire point of this was to try and illustrate to Arena.net that ascended gear should be a horizontal progression from Exotics, very much similar to the way wevrs.5960 has stated in his post.