I find that I generally ignore most of the dialogue with non-quest related NPCs as this dialogue has very little or nothing that will affect quests or general gameplay which is quite a disappointment.
I’m used to playing many single-player RPGs where dialogue choices can have quite a significant effect on both storyline and character development. And I was quite looking forward to see how the Personality system would affect GW2 but it seems to be an unfinished or underutilized system.
What I would like to see is the implementation of some dialogue based quests.
These could be based in the major cities (non-combat zones) across Tyria. The quests would revolve around diplomacy and negotiating and your dialogue options would drastically affect the outcome of these little stories. These dialogue quests could be anything from stopping an impending bar brawl to rallying the troops before battle to reconciling a feuding couple.
And everything from your Race, Gender, Profession and Personality would affect what will be the best possible thing to say in the situation, as well as the reward you get.
Perhaps you’re a female Charr trying to get this couple back together. But he’s a bit of a chauvinist who doesn’t respect women and she has something against talking cats. So you’ll first have to find a way to get either one, or both, of them to listen to you before you piece together their relationship. Or, you may find, that your Ferocious personality gives you the option to intimidate them into overlooking their petty squabbles out of fear of you. In essence some quests would be harder for some than others and some choices that would end in success for one would end in failure for another. (a Charming Male Asuran couldn’t successfully intimidate the couple)
These Quests would be like Heart Quests; single player, once-off quests but some could be repeatable and they’re not necessarily always going to be in the same area or even the same city!
Another thing I would like to see is puzzles that are different from the jumping puzzles.
I am finding that I am actually enjoying the jumping puzzles a lot more than I thought but I really wish for some more intellectually stimulating puzzles.
I am playing Norn and I got quite excited in one mission where there was the promise of deciphering a Dredge code from a paragraph from a book, but in the end it turned out you just find the book and can keep pressing next in the dialogue window until the quest is over.
I would really like to see riddle quest that require you to remember a story or decipher a code and you have either a time limit or number of strikes before you fail at which point you have to start all over again.
Riddle puzzles would have to be once-off puzzles that once you get them correct you get the reward but can’t do it again. This way someone who gets it wrong first time won’t feel cheated out of anything but a little extra time.
Another type of puzzle would be combination, slide, move or Rube Goldberg puzzles that require a systematic look at the puzzle ahead to see which order the proverbial, and sometimes literal, cogs should fit together.
There is even the option of making these puzzle multiplayer puzzles in which you can’t complete it without a friend.
Obviously a lot of what I suggest here would be more common place in single player games but I find that Guild Wars 2 is doing a good job of catering to both MMO and Single-Player RPG fans. I think the introduction of Dialogue quests would help immerse players in the world and puzzle games would add another layer of challenge to players.
If you thought TL;DR then perhaps my suggestions aren’t for you. =P