In my opinion a few aspectes of the game had much potential but weren´t fully used …
For example the Ascended Weapons and Trinkets. They could have done more with it … instead our characters just “learned” ancient recipes of ancient races by just mastering one crafting discipline.
Why do they not implement story dungeons concerning that matter? (Yes i know it´s much work … but they have the resources when they stop doing the living story … )
They could have implemented new explorable zones with special Dungeons, like new areas in the far shiverpeaks or in the east shiverpeaks where we find some old ruins of the long forgotten Dwarfs OR new explorable zones in the crystal desert where we find ruins with hints of completing the ascension.
What i wish the story is like:
After defeating Zhaitan we started searching for Kralkatorrik and in battle with his minions we noticed, that we can damage his minions but not destroy, thus we start looking for a possibility to destroy him and his minions. After looking for month we couln´t find a clue how to defeat his minions until Ogden Stonehealer remembers an old Phrase of the Tome of Rubicon how we can defeat the elder dragons and their minions with mortal weapons.
He is speaking of the ascended weapons and how they are forged. In fact Ogden himself does not know how to forge such weapons, but what he knows is that it needs a grandmaster of a crafting discipline (skill level 500) and old deldrimor furnace. Luckily he knows a few locations of such furnaces and shows us the way, after finding 3 destroyed furnaces in the south, west and north shiverpeaks we find a flawless furnace in an old ruin of the east shiverpeaks.
The last thing missing are the recipes. Ogden mentions that they have old libraries in which the dwarven gathered all their knowledge. While exploring this old ruin to find a library we get in touch with the destroyer and start fighting with them(story dungeon). After the fierce battle we manage to get a fragment of an old recipe, but then we realized that we are missing a few parts of the recipe and start looking deeper into the old dwarven ruins(explorable dungeon).
After completing the recipe we see what we need and how we craft the single materials we need for an ascended weapon. One of this material is the Vision Crystal, which needs one ancient material we can only find in the crystal desert: The Augur’s Stone.
The Crystal Desert, the home of kralkatorrik and his minions … so much dangers lies ahead and it seems nearly impossible for us … how do we get an Augur’s Stone that we need to defeat Kralkatorriks minions while they protect what we need to defeat them(such a nice sentence). After a(or more) Dungeon(s) we find an Augur’s Stone and start crafting with the help of the ancient recipes weapons that are able to destroy the elder dragons and his minions.
1-(In my thought the presence of Kralkatorrik makes his minions in his surroundings nearly invincible and his champion the shatterer(combining it with his revamp:P) they can make that he can only be damaged with ascended weapons and make an 20 people minimum instance and to enter you need an ascended weapon)
2-(they can fill like 20+ story line quests with what i suggested ^^)
PS1: English is not my native language so have mercy with me
PS2: Theses ideas are not fully developed but shall give a possibility to the current state
PS3: These are just some ideas of mine and i would like to know what you think about it and what your ideas concerning that topic and other topics(other items, dungeons etc) are. So that maybe Arenanet henceforth be more cautious when they add new content and reviewed whether we can build a nice story around it