I don’t know who I’m writing this for more: the players or the devs. I hope it finds a home with both.
One of the major differences, if not the major difference, between GW2 and traditional MMOs is the fact that PvE is totally cooperative, with 0 competition. You don’t race to kill a mob to get credit for it, you don’t race to farm a node before the other one gets it, etc… This is one thing which is a total success. Everybody enjoys this and nobody has ever complained about it. Great innovation!
Almost all features being requested and proposed by players have to do with established ways/methods/mechanics/content of MMO’s: gear progression, raids with leet loot, more grinds… This game is not that. And the constant focus on established type of content by the players, is making the developers lose sight of the “revolution” they sought out to create, and keep on introducing long term content that is making this game more and more similar to what they were trying to avoid in the first place.
It seems as if a completely different group of people designed the content we had on release, and we now have traditional MMO designers creating all that is new. Thinking out of the box requires some effort. The moment you rest on your laurels you’re back in that limited place again. And players demanding things they’re used to in traditional games, aren’t helping. I wish the devs would continually ask themselves: “Is this that different from what the others have made/are making?” And only go ahead if it really is.
Cooperative gaming is simply contrary to any sort of grind to obtain combat enhancements; that’s competition. Because everybody is entitled to a full-stat character. Content of varying challenge level is fine and even necessary for people to improve, but it should not reward stats or competitiveness in PvE.
As for lack of content, this game already has tons of it! If players were encouraged and rewarded for playing different classes and experiencing the game differently each time, they would perhaps get the feeling of accomplishment and rewards and variety some mono-class players may be missing. You learn; you improve; all the time! Sure, some or event most mono-class characters master their class and get enjoyment out of it, but they shouldn’t pretend that there’s no content left if they chose to leave out all the rest of the fun stuff. And those who choose to focus on PvP and one class shouldn’t complain about lack of PvE content, obviously.
252,000 karma to get the level 80 Exotic armor, and about 20-30g to get jewelry and weapons, for each character, is a good enough effort which gives the feeling of having earned and accomplished something. The problem is that this price is still too steep, prohibitive even, if you want to try other builds, meaning changing your stats and having to get whole new sets because of the choice of attaching stats to gear. But having to wait a full month to get one piece of ascended is utterly ridiculous when you have multiple characters. You also see people nowadays who just log in to do the daily and loot boss chests once a day. Something is going very much the wrong way.
The economy is also utterly broken. You do need gold in order to equip your characters. Crafting will not save much, if anything. The declared “hope to maintain a high level of equality” end of August 2012, is a total failure. I’m almost certain that today, 85% of the wealth is in the hands of 1% of the players. You cannot start to make money to get gear except by farming for hours a day. Impossible to leverage the effort and time you put in crafting, for example. A virtual economy can never be realistic, simply because the actors are either too ignorant to survive in a real economy, or don’t have much to lose by acting contrary to their interests (witness the prices). It should be regulated in order for it to make any sense for everyone, not just the handful who spend hours grinding or farming.
In the end, the only sure way to stay true to the original plan is to create new content (even paid, of course) of the same original quality. Bring back the people or mindsets who designed that. Not stat grinds which break the core concept of this game.
Oh, and please continue to believe in what you sought out to do, because what you were able to do then is indeed enjoyable and revolutionary.