As of recent announcement we have learned that Arenanet has no plan to release a new dungeon anytime soon. In fact Arenanet is asking us for fixing and improving dungeons, but with drastic experience an skills between casuals and organized group/guilds, it is really hard to find the common ground.
For instance, with upcoming FGS nerf, which I think it should have been fixed, the skill difference and the time it takes to finish a dungeon between PUG group and organized group will only increase the gap. Many dungeoners in this group knows the ideal spot, strategy, composition class, skills, utility and even dps rotation to maximize damage, but in PUG groups even asking for Berserker’s gear is too much nowadays.
The clear distinction between PUG group’s difficulty vs Experienced dungeoners’ difficulty is Arah. It is not about soloing Lupi the fastest, or meleeing Lupi. PUGs are already afraid of Arah because of skipping mobs (Deadeye), Lupi, or amount of time spent in the dungeon because of trash mobs+difficult bosses. Seeing that Arah is still a challenge to more than handful of dungeon runners that I know, I think difficulty of dungeons are fine. Its just that us dungeon enthusiasts burned out the new content.
Now for fractals, once you go past 30s, you wanna go all the way. I know there was few ideas such as fractal chests, leaderboards and many more, but none have been implemented. And its difficult to balance fractals even more because of demographics and gateways to high level fractals such as infused rings and ascended gears. Also the time and effort one invest to do high level fractals doesn’t justify the lack of quality rewards.
Arenanet cannot balance the dungeons solely on this forum’s feedback because then dungeons will get way too difficult for casuals, the majority of player base, and they might just quit. But then arenanet cannot only cater to casuals because then we will leave, and all dungeon guides/teaching will eventually stop, and by that time it is too late to bring the quality players back.
Give rewards to players via title, skins, minis, and even golds to satisfy both casuals and hardcore dungeon runners. Hardcore dungeon runners are already satisfied with having many legendaries, so give them new titles that properly demonstrates their skills/ability in regarding dungeons. Also release the 6 human god armor skins as dungeon token rewards, or place them in high tier dungeon exclusively so that more people will learn to do Arah/COE. Or release entirely different set of dungeon armors so that people can actually collect those armors.
For fractals, give us a way to buy fractal skins but nothing crazy like 100 pristine fractal relics, but more of 10 pristine relics just like rings or 500 regular relics. Please do understand that people don’t do dungeons for RNG drops anymore. We want new skins or new incentives to play dungeons. Give us a long term goal that can also cater to casuals and bring the player base skill to higher level.