Had to remove like 3/4 of what I had to say for length purposes (up to 5001 characters), so niceties aside, here are changes I’d like to see.
<><><>Living Story Updates/2-Week Content<><><>
Since the game first came out almost 2 years ago we haven’t received any substantial new content. If I bring a friend into playing GW2 for the first time, what can I show him that’s new that wasn’t around when I started? Dry Top, Fractals of the Mist, a handful of weapon and armor skins, a burnt Lion’s Arch and a living story he wouldn’t understand. Most new content has been put up for 2 weeks, then brought down again at the end of the two weeks, leaving the game with nothing more than it had before. I can’t go back to the big toxic tower in Kessex Hills. I can’t even go back into the Super Adventure Box.
I don’t pay a monthly fee. None of us do. But, that doesn’t relieve ArenaNet of the obligation of providing a fun and interesting gameplay experience. If it did, no one would buy Gems and the game would run out of money and fail. New and interesting content is the key to keeping people interested enough to pay for Gems, which fund the game. With that in mind, what can I spend my Gems on? Some skins, some infinite gathering tools, maybe some mini pets, some boosters, etc. Why not create a brand new zone and charge me Gems for access to this new exclusive zone? That wouldn’t exclude anyone from parts of the game because Gems can be obtained via gold in-game which anyone can get. Why not throw up a new dungeon and charge me Gems for that? ArenaNet, you need money and I understand that. Let me give you my money by offering me something I would legitimately pay for. I completed The Dragon’s Reach: Part 1 in about 3 hours. What am I supposed to do for the next 14 days?
<><><>Legendary Weapon Acquisition<><><>
I’ve been playing the game, as I said, for almost 2 years. I have around 9400 achievement points yet I have no legendary weapons. Why? Because I don’t feel like grinding for hours on the same content for enough gold to buy either the legendary outright or the materials needed to craft one, when I know there are people who simply bought a few hundred dollars worth of Gems and instantly bought theirs off of the trading post.
A legendary weapon never meant too much aside from that you spent the time grinding out the gold or that you have a well-enough paying job to where you can afford to drop a few hundred bucks on Gems. Where is the prestige? Nowadays, I’ll see people with 3k achievement points running around with multiple legendary weapons and it makes the status of a legendary weapon that much less when everyone already has one. When you see someone with a legendary weapon in a dungeon, they aren’t guaranteed to be any good at the game, and that’s a shame.
I suggest making the legendary weapon requiring little to no actual gold input and instead require a TON of special items obtained through various game activities. Make them require a special token from each of the dungeons costing 1000 dungeon tokens each, in addition to 5000 Badges of Honor, in addition to…so on and so on. Make them prestigious. Metaphorically speaking, don’t make them Ferrari’s (speaking only of your ability to afford it) but more like Nobel Peace Prizes (speaking of your ability to earn it).
<><><>Berserker’s Meta<><><>
I’m not picking on anyone, I’m simply stating what needs changing. Berserker’s armor has become the gold standard for dungeons builds because of its ability to allow players to blindly run through the dungeons, stacking and blowing away bosses before they even have a chance to use their mechanics. A lot of players who use Berserker’s armor are terrible (again, not all). Why? Because they’ve been told in map chat that it’s the best thing to use regardless of the situation but no one has told them how or why to use it. They discover, on their own, that Berserker’s armor allows you to party with other Berserker’s armor players and steamroll a dungeon, illegitimizing the mechanics of the bosses. These players never actually learn how the bosses were meant to be fought or even what they’re capable of, in some instances.
My suggestion is to get to the root of the problem and fix how the bosses react to players stacking. Make them move, make them use more powerful moves or knockback, etc when players are stacking. Make the bosses’ AI smart enough to realize when players are stacked and attempt to move away or something.