Guild Wars 2

A bit of spoilers for HoT below, careful. This is also long because its something I’ve been concerned about since launch and have thought A LOT about.

TL;DR – The game’s endgame is too focused on gold. It’s killed the hype behind Guild Halls and Scribing. It’s splitting up players and causing new content to drain. Everyone thinks gold to work ratio first.

Now I’ve been playing this game for 3 years, since launch. I’ve loved every minute of it and I don’t plan on quitting. I’ve gotten more then my moneys worth and I think HoT is a good expansion for the game.

However, there is one issue that has always persisted and I’ve expressed concern about before, gold. Since launch the game’s endgame progression has heavily revolved around gold. What I mean by this is the amount of times you can either make gold off an item (so selling it) or having to spend gold. This did one major thing.

It created a greedy playerbase. Now this isn’t their fault, they’re just doing what gives them the most fun. I don’t blame them. However, they are all about gold. It doesn’t matter how many items you give them, the endgame playerbase will start thinking about the amount of work/stress/time they’re putting into a peice of content and the amount of gold they’re getting back. This expansion did nothing to fix this issue and it’s slowly killing the expansions content. I’ve noticed the people I play with have drastically fallen off in time spent doing anything related to HoT. A majority of their time is still spent in Tyria doing the world boss train, fractals, or farming dungeons. Lets dissect down the way this is appearing in maps

>General

In all Maguuma areas, you will see a lot of leeches. It’s not surprising either, since the game is very grind heavy. These players need a very specific thing. Maybe a mastery, maybe a hero point that’s locked behind something, maybe a vendor. However, they just don’t feel like putting in the enormous effort it takes to do these events. I’ve talked to a few, and a common theme was “There have been so many times where I’ve spent a ton of time and stress trying to do something, and it only fails. I’d rather just relax and do some random small stuff and if it succeeds then I’m there to benefit”. This is especially common in Tangled Depths.

>Verdant Brink

Right now the most common bosses I see killed are Matriarch and Patriarch. I don’t see a full map completion done. Axe master is also rarely killed, along with the rest. Why is this? They’re significantly difficult, especially with being tied to masteries. So people see the amount of stress/work, see the pay off, and go “meh”. People have either failed so many times or seen it fail so many times that they don’t even bother trying. They’d rather go farm dungeons/fracs/world boss train in Tyria and spend the same amount of time earning a lot more gold.

>Tangled Depths

This one is even worse. Probably the worse out of them all. People scoff and crack jokes at the mere mention of completing the META. The amount of stress/work/time that needs to be put into this meta event compared to the amount of gold you’re getting out of it is atrocious. The major reason people are bothering trying to do it now is for the Mistward helm. Once they get it, they never go back.

>Dragon’s Stand

This one is probably the least badly. Mainly because the event is fun, arguable the least stressful out of them all, and the rewards are good. The strategy for it is easy to understand and adopt. However, it still suffers from the above problems. People giving up before starting because it’s not an “organized map”, which I gather means a guild started it/organizing it before hand. The amount of times I see people jump into a map, ask “Is this an organized map?”, then someone responds with “no” and they leave immediately. A surprising portion of people just don’t want to put into the tremendous amount of work these maps take (relative to the rest of the game).

Populations will continue to decline. As players start getting that one specific item or gear they’re going for, they wont want to return to the maps. They’ll go to Tyria where the content is easier and the gold is better. At the rate I’m seeing populations decline among my guilds and friends list (as in how many of them are spending time in Maguuma) its already at about 1/4th of what it was that first week of launch.

Now this gold heavy endgame isn’t only causing people to ignore content that doesn’t meet the bar with work to gold ratio. It also kills hype towards major features that it shouldn’t.

>Guild Halls/Scribes

I know I’m not the only one on here that was majorly hyped for Guild Halls and Scribing. People were saying “Finally, Guild Wars has Guild Halls. Like it should’ve at release! I can’t wait!”. Then it was released and it was a disaster. I remember that first day my guild claimed the hall. Everyone had fun, we were ready. We saw the NPCs, opened up the donations, and then all that hype/joy/happiness went poof. We saw the price. We saw that to even get a Tavern that wasn’t some wood and tents would cost us 6,000g+ in materials. That it would take months before the Guild hall even looked cool. That to build decorations and even level up scribing, we would have to fork over thousands in gold. I mean a Bar Table was posted on reddit earlier that cost what, 2,000g+ to make?

Any creativity, excitement, and guild pride that existed while we claimed that Guild Hall went away. It was replaced with either people who stopped caring or people who would rather sell the materials for gold (again, promoting a greedy playerbase endgame). It’s been over a month since release and these feelings haven’t changed at all. I’m in 3 different guilds and each one is the same story. 90% of the donations are usually done by 5-10 people. Even the guild I’m in that has 300+ people have the same amount of people as the 130 guild donating. That’s not good. Guild Halls are supposed to encourage guild pride and teamwork. Instead what we have are people who (rightfully so, might I add. I don’t blame them at all) taking advantage of the horrible inflation and making tons of gold. Who knows how long this might go on. Now I understand inflation goes down over time. But planning with that in mind will destroy a MMOs popuation. MMOs rely on hype. If people start assuming oh “for the first 1-2 months of release don’t even bother trying to get it” since the prices will be inflated so much, that’s not good. That’s huge time delay of gratification for core features of your expansion.

I mean I can’t imagine the disaster will be with the release of the next expansion. Not in the new content, but the old. How the hell is anyone going to do anything Maguuma if an expansion the same size (or bigger) is released. We may see easy things like a Patriach or Matriach kill done. But Tarir? Gerent? I can’t imagine. Right now you have the playerbase split between the insanely easy Tyria World Boss Train, Orr World Bosses, and Maguuma World Bosses. That’s a lot of content that requires a large amount of people to work together. Naturally they will gravitate to the easier ones. Throw in a new expansion zone, it will further split the playerbase. I mean hell, I don’t know anyone that has completed a three headed wurm in over 5 months. They don’t even bother trying because the work to gold ration from it. This should’ve been a huge warning flag for future events.

>Solving It

Solving this issue is hard. With the current state of the game and how Anet has conditioned the playerbase, we can go two routes. One is the redo the entire current game’s endgames to be more considerate towards the splitting of playerbases. You’ve already tried doing this on the small scale and it ended with quite a few people upset. You nerfed Dungeon Rewards around the time of HoT launch. If dungeons were still as reward as they were and as easy, it would’ve further drained HoT of players. So doing this is probably not only expensive, but also very “bad” PR risky.

The other route is that all future content is either void or heavily absnet of reliance of gold. There are little to no items that you can sell on the TP. Everything from Guild Hall upgrades, Scribing recipes, armor sets, weapon sets, etc; all of it is acquired through playing the content. Not just farming 3 year old content for gold. However the issue of gold reliance still exists. There are still legendaries, the old content, and other things people will be trying to get. So I think you should put in a new scaling system to account for this. To account for much smaller populations doing Tangeled Depths Tarir, and all that hard content. Honestly if you release a new expansion (and a new living story season) following a heavy content reliance designed that I outlined above, you should probably install a scaling system that will allow at minimum 5 players to be able to successfully do this content. A year down the line people will not only be tired of HoT and played the heck out of it, but they’ll be focused on newer content and a new expansion.

I really want to enjoy this game like I used to. I still play it and enjoy it. However the community that I knew is disappearing. All those good people, fun and relaxed times we have during leveling. The niceness and feeling of freedom and exploration. Its been replaced by time tables. By a “gold gold gold gold, give me gold” outlook. Nobody seems interested in playing the game for fun. It’s all bout meeting a time table, like a job. They’ve got to do X dailies, build Y time gated content, do the world boss train and acquired Z gold, etc.

Also, I know this wont be everyone’s experience. These are just the actions/attitudes I’m seeing every time I play.

I didn’t read all this but I’ll share a secret. I made most of my money just selling legendary.

And the journey of making legendary means you can play every part of the game. From doing map completion, doing wvw, farming karma and skill point.

So really, you don’t need to do the same boring farm every day.

laokoko.7403:

I didn’t read all this but I’ll share a secret. I made most of my money just selling legendary.

And the journey of making legendary means you can play every part of the game. From doing map completion, doing wvw, farming karma and skill point.

So really, you don’t need to do the same boring farm every day.

I’m not saying they need to offer more gold or more variety. I’m saying they need to take the focus away from gold. Gold is connected to endgame and I feel like it’s affecting the game poorly (I expanded on it more in OP).

I, basically, agree and the only other reply you received, so far, says it all.

It assumes you are struggling to make gold and very kindly gives you advice on how to make some.

The only problem is, as I always feel forced to point out, this isn’t a sub game.

If it was, it would be so much easier to criticise their decisions and suggest new ones.

As it is, we all know everything they do has to revolve around trying to get people to part with their RL money, at least to an extent.

As such, it’s very hard to suggest anything, as most of the suggestions to make the gameplay experience better, would involve people not feeling the need to pay to skip it…

Basically, it is in the interest of non-sub games to make their content, or at least their most in-game currency profitable content, so unenjoyable that you will pay to skip it.

…and it is in their interest to make gold (or some other type of in-game currency) the focus, while at the same time not providing much of it, so you will hopefully pay to buy some.

With that being the case, how does one make suggestions to improve the game, without (essentially) asking them to work harder to make less money?

Of course, it’s true that if people don’t like the game enough to play it much, they probably won’t pay much for gold, either…

But, still.

I think I’m pretty much done with MMOs…

I’m not (and never have been) interested in the TP mini-game and the only sub one, I’m aware of, recently lost the plot…

All the other MMOs (that I’m aware of) are non-sub, so will inevitably suffer from the same type of issues.

Gold is something I consider a necessary evil in this game. It funds the game. There’s no sub fee, but some people buy gems to trade for gold. Enough people so that Anet doesn’t have to charge a sub fee. It’s the business plan. You either find away around it or you don’t…because I don’t see it changing.

Vayne.8563:

Gold is something I consider a necessary evil in this game. It funds the game. There’s no sub fee, but some people buy gems to trade for gold. Enough people so that Anet doesn’t have to charge a sub fee. It’s the business plan. You either find away around it or you don’t...because I don’t see it changing.

I was wondering about the necessary evil of gold and I did some theory crafting. Yes it’s one of those conspiracy theory type of things but I couldn’t help but notice the huge difference between GW1 and GW2 income.

Back then with Guild Wars 1 there were no sales when expansions were released, at least until all of them were out and special editions became available, or when the game was available on Steam. This means that the average GW1 player to enjoy the entire game had to pay 50 (Prophecies) + 50 (Factions) + 50 (Nightfall) + 40 (Eye of the North) = 190$ over 3 years. That’s equal to 5.27$ per month as a subscription. They "disguised" this cleverly by making the Campaigns standalone which meant players didn’t have to buy all of them to play, but they were missing a lot of content.

On the other hand, to enjoy everything GW2 has to offer (content wise) over the same 3 year time span you have to pay between 50 (Base Game) + 50 (Heart of Thorns)=100$ (if you started at release) and as low as just 50$ (started after the game went free, buying only Heart of Thorns).

We can all see that the payment model of GW2 results in far less revenue per player than the payment model of GW1, so where is the rest of it going to come from? The GEM store of course. Using the 100$ over 3 years as base, it results in about 2.7$ per month of equal subscription. If they intended for the payment model of GW2 to bring the same amount of cash as GW1 did (per player), then it means they have to make the game in a way that generates a LOT of cash.

Of course as I said earlier not everyone got all GW1 expansions, much like not anyone got HoT, or not everyone started playing GW2 at release, however my opinion is that they made the GEM store in a way to artificially force players to pay as much on the GEM store as they did to buy the initial game. In order to have an income similar to the one in GW1.

Otherwise their GEM store payment model was a failure compared to an expansion-based one.

The difficulty in HoT zones is fine, only rewards need buffing to be proportionate to the effort. I switch between Orr, Teq, and the occasional HoT but mostly just gather these days since spirit wood probably isn’t going to be over 12g forever.

Deified.7520:

Populations will continue to decline. As players start getting that one specific item or gear they’re going for, they wont want to return to the maps. They’ll go to Tyria where the content is easier and the gold is better.

Not just easier, and I couldn’t care about the gold. The term I’d use for what I prefer about central Tyria is “unrestricted”. Tons of content there that’s not tied to a clock. Not dependent on dozens of other players.

And about the HoT rewards: there’s absolutely nothing I want from HoT. Not a single skin, not a single piece of equipment. No motivation to play there, no fun to be had either, for me. I’ve given up on the jungle already. Maybe I’ll return there someday to finish the personal story.

I understand where you’re coming from with the Gem stance. I’m curious though, on how many people actually transfer golds to gem. I’ve always felt its never been worth it (considering how much stuff cost in ingame gold compared to how many gems you can get for 10$). I more then often just buy stuff off of the gem store.

However, I still think its an issue that needs to be solved. Tangled Depths is a joke right now in terms of the Meta. I keep going into that map and seeing all those issues I listed. Everyone just seems so depressed when it comes to the subject of even attempting it. The reward is so small to the amount of work/time that needs to be put into it, that nobody bothers attempting it. I think the root of the issue is the reliance on Gold.

I mean, I don’t know what else to replace the gold with that would satisfy the issue with Gems/money. But in my guilds and friends, the hard meta events, guild hall, and scribing didn’t do much for them endgame wise. Mainly because it cost so much gold or is so hard compared to the reward you get (as in its a bad reward for the amount of work it requires) that they don’t bother.

if they keep the gold, at the very least make things like Guild Halls less reliant on it. Then increase the amount of unique rewards from the meta events. And put in proper scaling for future problems. With the hardest event in the game (Tangled Depths and Three Headed Wurm) they have like 1-4 “unique” items to them, some achievements, and thats it. It’s not enough to convince people to work towards it.

If there is a focus on gold, it’s because the player puts it there. Anet has designed this game so you can use the same gear for all level 80 content, with a few exceptions. That minimizes the need to ‘focus on gold’ in the endgame and simply allows the player to … play the game. The gear that you need to do this content that allows you to focus on playing the game is obtained through a reasonable amount of activities and gathering, including leveling up to 80.

Tigaseye.2047:

Basically, it is in the interest of non-sub games to make their content, or at least their most in-game currency profitable content, so unenjoyable that you will pay to skip it.

Yeah, this seems extremely common in non-sub and even hybrid-sub games. I see these games making the grind in their gaming activities painful enough that you’ll buy items in their stores to relieve the pain of the grind. GW2 seems to limit gold acquisition to accomplish the same thing other F2P games do with items like accelerators, for instance.

F2P and B2P games are terrific, but there’s definitely a trade-off. Usually found in the design of the grind and its relationship to in-store offerings and/or controlling rewards and currency acquisition.

Obtena.7952:

If there is a focus on gold, it’s because the player puts it there. Anet has designed this game so you can use the same gear for all level 80 content, with a few exceptions. That minimizes the need to ‘focus on gold’ in the endgame and simply allows the player to … play the game. The gear that you need to do this content that allows you to focus on playing the game is obtained through a reasonable amount of activities and gathering, including leveling up to 80.

Yeah, the players have created it and its been that way since release. I personally don’t think its good for the game in the long run. What ever hype or game time extension Guild Halls and Scribing could have offered players has disappeared because of the endgame gold focus. They’re just so expensive that players stopped caring about them.

Well, i agree 100% with OP. There’s nothing more to add really…exceeeept for one thing :
“leeches”.

They’re not really leeches, they’re the ones that want their HP points or some event done so they can enter and finish map completion. It’s very understandable, and it shows how badly the setup in HoT really is. TD being the worst map ever designed.

For the rest, you hit the nail right on the spot.

Sthenith.5196:

Well, i agree 100% with OP. There’s nothing more to add really…exceeeept for one thing :
“leeches”.

They’re not really leeches, they’re the ones that want their HP points or some event done so they can enter and finish map completion. It’s very understandable, and it shows how badly the setup in HoT really is. TD being the worst map ever designed.

For the rest, you hit the nail right on the spot.

Yeah, no kidding. People playing the content that’s there and completing maps are not leeches. That’s just ridiculous.

They’re just so expensive that players stopped caring about them.

Scribing ? I’m not even 75 scribe and i’m the highest in guild. No one cares for something so utterly pricy and rediculous. No benefit at all. Players just go in there to collect stuff and start the weekly guild missions, who coincidentally are bugged like crazy.
I wonder why not more players complain about the bugged guild missions. Ah, yes, i forgot. No one cares.

Deified.7520:

Obtena.7952:

If there is a focus on gold, it’s because the player puts it there. Anet has designed this game so you can use the same gear for all level 80 content, with a few exceptions. That minimizes the need to ‘focus on gold’ in the endgame and simply allows the player to … play the game. The gear that you need to do this content that allows you to focus on playing the game is obtained through a reasonable amount of activities and gathering, including leveling up to 80.

Yeah, the players have created it and its been that way since release. I personally don’t think its good for the game in the long run. What ever hype or game time extension Guild Halls and Scribing could have offered players has disappeared because of the endgame gold focus. They’re just so expensive that players stopped caring about them.

You might not think it’s good for the long term but the record says otherwise. People said the same thing about how expensive it is crafting Legendaries, then Ascended Weapons, then Ascended Armor, now GH and Scribing. You will see the same about Legendary Armor/back items and crafted precursors. Yet, here we are 3 years later. I’ve seen better games last less time. As long as this is F2P and relatively casual friendly (much of it still is), Anet can take a few risks with the game without it falling apart, like HoT.

The fact is that the people that REALLY want these experiences don’t care about gold because they don’t think as gold as a goal to achieve these things; the difference between means to an end or end to a means. They just do them and get satisfaction from getting them done. If anything, GH and scribing expense is more shared by the guilds than the individuals.

“It created a greedy playerbase.”

I’m sorry, but this IS “Greed Wars 2”. ANet promotes greed, because they want you to blow money on gems for gold conversions. Its just how it is. And if the game is geared towards that, then whats wrong with a greedy playerbase.

PRO: GW2 has the friendliest playerbase.
CON: GW2 has the greediest playerbase.

Honestly, nothing will change. ANet LOVES where things are right now, because they are making good money with the gem to gold transactions. Just except the fact that either is a 1+ year grind, or you spend RL money to do it faster.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Sthenith.5196:

Well, i agree 100% with OP. There’s nothing more to add really…exceeeept for one thing :
“leeches”.

They’re not really leeches, they’re the ones that want their HP points or some event done so they can enter and finish map completion. It’s very understandable, and it shows how badly the setup in HoT really is. TD being the worst map ever designed.

For the rest, you hit the nail right on the spot.

Yeah, no kidding. People playing the content that’s there and completing maps are not leeches. That’s just ridiculous.

I mean if you need something from the Meta event, why not help? Why go off and do something else? The issue is that when one person does this, that’s not that bad. However if a pretty sizable portion does this, then it creates problems. Because then you don’t have enough people doing the Meta.

However, the main target of that statement of mine are those who go afk during the metas or go and “hide”. Usually I find 5-10 who are just chilling inside the map waiting to see if it will be completed. Not doing anything excepting afking.

Deified.7520:

I mean if you need something from the Meta event, why not help? Why go off and do something else? The issue is that when one person does this, that’s not that bad. However if a pretty sizable portion does this, then it creates problems. Because then you don’t have enough people doing the Meta.

However, the main target of that statement of mine are those who go afk during the metas or go and “hide”. Usually I find 5-10 who are just chilling inside the map waiting to see if it will be completed. Not doing anything excepting afking.

Well, my main problem with this attitude that no one can play how they want during a meta is it doesn’t take into consideration people that don’t have a long time to play and don’t necessarily want to spend that time doing a meta they may have already done enough times to be sick of it. Maybe they don’t “need” anything from the meta.

Or a meta that fails more than it succeeds and so wastes their short playing time.

Or any of a dozen other valid reasons for wanting to have the freedom to choose what they want to do with their own gaming time.

The problem lies not with the player. The problem lies with the scaling of a meta that does not adjust itself to the number of people actually doing it.

Celtic Lady.3729:

The problem lies not with the player. The problem lies with the scaling of a meta that does not adjust itself to the number of people actually doing it.

It can’t scale it based on that because there’s no viable way for the server to ‘know’ how many people are ‘doing it’, it only knows about people in the zone and I guess the numbers who’ve damaged any mob associated with the meta, which I would argue is no better since those mobs are likely also being killed by players doing something else that just happens to be targeting the same mobs as the meta.

The only kind of open-world events that servers can scale with any degree of accuracy are the single boss fights like Teq, where there’s little to no chance of ‘unrelated damage’ being done by people not ‘doing it’.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Deified.7520:

I mean if you need something from the Meta event, why not help? Why go off and do something else? The issue is that when one person does this, that’s not that bad. However if a pretty sizable portion does this, then it creates problems. Because then you don’t have enough people doing the Meta.

However, the main target of that statement of mine are those who go afk during the metas or go and “hide”. Usually I find 5-10 who are just chilling inside the map waiting to see if it will be completed. Not doing anything excepting afking.

Well, my main problem with this attitude that no one can play how they want during a meta is it doesn’t take into consideration people that don’t have a long time to play and don’t necessarily want to spend that time doing a meta they may have already done enough times to be sick of it. Maybe they don’t “need” anything from the meta.

Or a meta that fails more than it succeeds and so wastes their short playing time.

Or any of a dozen other valid reasons for wanting to have the freedom to choose what they want to do with their own gaming time.

The problem lies not with the player. The problem lies with the scaling of a meta that does not adjust itself to the number of people actually doing it.

Yeap, I agree 100%. I want to say that I don’t blame any of the people I’m talking about in my post. I see completely why they do what they do and understand it (except for those who just AFK sitting in a meta event. That’s not nice).

It’s one of the major reasons I think they should put in proper scaling. Map wide meta evenets are still kind of a new thing for Anet. They didn’t really come into play (we had large metas, but not map wide) till Dry Top. So it’s still a new concept.

But they really really need good scaling. Like you said, having a proper scaling system will be hugely beneficial in allow players to play how they play. But again, AFKers are still a concern. If a group decides to send 90% of the zerg away from the meta so that it will be easier to complete, then they all jump in at the last minute to get the reward, it’s an issue. They’re going to have to make some kind of better system that can more easily detect how much a person contributed. Like for every stage you get some kind of flag on your account that tells the code that you did that stage. If you have flags for all the stages, then you get the best reward.

Another major benefit is that the content will be done when it most likely has huge population decreases in future expansions. One of the major reasons that Core Tyria world events are still completed is mainly because they’re a lot easier then Maguuma. So those will always be the easy ones. However, if the introduce another expansion with world events that are equally as hard as Maguuma…I don’t see the populations in Maguuma doing well for itself. So having a proper scaling design will greatly help anyone who decides to actually play these zones in the future.

Deified.7520:

Another major benefit is that the content will be done when it most likely has huge population decreases in future expansions. One of the major reasons that Core Tyria world events are still completed is mainly because they’re a lot easier then Maguuma. So those will always be the easy ones. However, if the introduce another expansion with world events that are equally as hard as Maguuma…I don’t see the populations in Maguuma doing well for itself. So having a proper scaling design will greatly help anyone who decides to actually play these zones in the future.

Yeah, I worry about the HoT maps’ sustainablity long-term as they operate now. And I agree about AFKers. Those rewards you get every time a new stage of the meta kicks in depending on your participation? They’re nice, but they don’t help with the AFK thing since you get these whether you’ve recently done an event or not.

Interestingly, before HoT, I never once saw anyone pitching fits in map chats about people doing other things on the core maps than the meta or the bigger events. (Not talking about AFKing here.)

I suspect a lot of this bad behavior is due to how often metas in HoT fail. I mean, it’s still not an excuse, but it’s not helping.

The issue that the OP raises is a complicated mess that’s grown out of many design decisions and player preferences. Some, but by no means all, of these are:

1. A portion of the MMO player-base plays a lot, and by a lot I mean many hours per day, most days. These players burn through content fast, achieve goals fast, and are often vocal if there is any lack of carrots to pursue. These people need something to do, or they downgrade the game on fan sites and forums as “has no endgame” or similar accusations. Bad publicity is bad publicity.
2. MMO development takes long enough that the novelty of new content seldom lasts long enough to hold interest on its own merits — at least for a sizable portion of the player-base. This has to do with both the physiology of fun and the psychology of human beings. 2 and 1 combined lead to the necessity for a rewards-centered game and a rewards-oriented player-base.
3. GW2 touted itself as a game that was meant both for MMO enthusiasts and those who hated MMO’s. By and large, with regard to rewards, ANet’s approach to this dichotomy was to have most rewards be largely incremental (collect a bunch of stuff to make X) rather than serendipitous (get X as a lucky drop). Legendary Weapons 1.0 were both, but there were/are very few other rare drops. Anything else was earned via getting dollops of stuff. This allowed ANet to spread those components across various content types, allowing people to get what they wanted by playing what they want.
4. ANet knew that there would be players who needed long-term goals, so they set up really long lists of components to craft Legendary items. When that proved not to be enough to hold interest, they created more items with long components lists.
5. ANet wanted there to be a functioning in-game economy. They hired an economist. For an economy to work, there have to be sellable things that others want (stuff), a medium for exchange (the TP) and something to exchange. Gold is a fantasy game trope. Ask anyone who has played D&D. No surprise, ANet used gold as the currency. If it wasn’t gold, it would be something else. The fundamental issue though is the need for currency, plus supply and demand.
6. ANet used a system where anyone who kills a mob gets a chance for a drop, coupled with scaling group events that spawned large numbers of loot pinatas. Now, in other games, only one person would get a drop from each mob. Not so in Gw2. Maybe in those other games, players would spread around more and each be getting drops from the different mobs they’d kill, but in few games (other than Diablo II and its ilk) do players get to kill so many mobs in so short a time. That’s a lot of loot.
7. Spreading most of the possible loot out to most of the game meant that the drop tables were huge. Bigger tables mean a smaller chance to get something one might want.
8. ANet has tried to address the issue of currency proliferation. Karma was abandoned as a currency for the most part except for the occasional Karma sink as one of the components in those long lists. ANet has also added more and more currencies and account bound items as a means to entice players into specific content. This approach has a drawback though, that the OP has pointed out — once the desired item is obtained, players don’t return.
9. Over the life of the game, there has been a general call for harder content. Some players want to repeat hard content because its hard. But even hard content on its own gets old. I can no longer find the quote, nor even remember the guy’s name, but I remember the Funcom Exec who was brought on to turn AoC around saying something like, “Our surveys and demographics tell us that while players may ask for and play hard content until they get what they want from it, what they tend to repeat over and over is the easier content.”

All of this stuff is interrelated. I’m not sure there’s an easy fix to it. I’m pretty sure that if they tried, they’d basically be starting over. There’s also the issue of, if they do try to fix “it,” they might create other problems. Let’s not forget that the design of HoT evolved out of their attempts to fix perceived problems with the vanilla game design.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I remember the Funcom Exec who was brought on to turn AoC around saying something like, “Our surveys and demographics tell us that while players may ask for and play hard content until they get what they want from it, what they tend to repeat over and over is the easier content.”

All of this stuff is interrelated. I’m not sure there’s an easy fix to it. I’m pretty sure that if they tried, they’d basically be starting over. There’s also the issue of, if they do try to fix “it,” they might create other problems. Let’s not forget that the design of HoT evolved out of their attempts to fix perceived problems with the vanilla game design.

Yeah, there never is an easy fix for most sizeable problems, eh? And MMOs are complicated creatures.

I find the quote interesting. Their results don’t surprise me at all. A game needs that “easier content” that draws people back long-term. And this includes new easier content not just constantly replaying years old stuff.