However at level 80 you are essentially just doing it for the purpose of the activity itself.
Oh no, you mean people playing the game to enjoy the game instead of playing it to improve their characters? Heresy!
You clearly are failing to understand the point I am making. People can enjoy an activity when it accomplishes dual purposes (the activity and the leveling) but not enjoy the activity when it only accomplishes a single purpose (the activity). When a player plays a game the reason why they play it or the thing which leads to their enjoying the game might only be the dual purpose and not the single purpose. There is nothing wrong with that anything more than there is something wrong with enjoying the game only from the single purpose. It is simply the recognition that different people gain enjoyment from different things or in different ways.
Therefore playing the game solely for the joy of seeing your character grow stronger is just as valid a purpose as playing the game to watch the particle effects when doing DEs.
And I agree that a lot of the DEs are very dull (especially the long escort missions, YAWN!) and for the most part the heart quests are extremely repetitive and pointless, and exploration becomes a chore when you are forced to go above and beyond just admiring the scenery (which gets repeated between zones so it ceases to be novel).
That’s like saying I play chess because I like the way the pieces look, rather than why the game is actually designed.
There are games, grindy games, where the entire game is pretty much leveling afterwhich you embark on some kind of end game. And there’s nothing wrong with those games. This isn’t really one of them, though.
Playing this game, you’ve got a couple of options at “end game”, but for a lot of us, we love and enjoy the world. If all you want is advancement and that’s all you care about, this probably isn’t the game for you. That’s the bad news. The good news is there are dozens and dozens of games that you can ride the gear treadmill as high as you like.
This game was designed for people who want the other kind of game…and it’s one of the very few that offer an immersive open world experience as something to viably do at max level.
I mean even the marginally higher stats of ascended gear have sent half the population into a tailspin, so obviously this game isn’t about that kind of progression.
If you don’t like that, nothing anyone can say will make any difference at all.
Your both wrong.
The game has great ideas like the heart quests but once they’re done they’re done. I mean there is no reason to go back to an area once the heart quests/vistas are done. If they created reasons then yay that be awsome.
They could for example add a ‘sword in the stone’ idea after a long and difficult DE. Basically we all get a semi decent looking item for playing the DE for 2+hrs.
And they could fix ascended gear. Honestly people LACK THE TIME to throw 2 hours into fotm. They just do. I know there are people who have time but there are aload that don’t. Why not cut the time in half which means then aload more people could play fotm.
Ascended Gear was implemented so poorly, Idk how Anet deleyed Gw2 3 times (09,10,11) and did not have this ready.
Thats why post 80 is boring. Simply put once I get my gear what then? Grind for a legendary weapon that will take me at least a year to get?