8) Magic Find: I personally have no problem with people using magic find boosts in their build. There’s no perfect ‘right way’ to create your build, and the person who uses MF is making a conscious decision to limit themselves while playing. I’m perfectly fine with this – I have no right to dictate to someone else how to build or run their character, and if they want to dip some of their benefits to increase the chance of getting rarer drops, that’s their perogative.
7) Personal Story: I would like to see the personal story expanded on / continued. It would be great to see all the choices I made through the personal story and at character creation brought into play, and I’m optimistic that ArenaNet will add more over time. I’d love to have the option of joining the Seraphs or the Shining Blade with my character, or find out what happens from saying I was blessed by Dwayna.
Other: Grinding
My sister recently found out she’d have to do a dungeon at least 25 times to get an outfit she’s after. She’s only interested in the story mode of dungeons, as part of her personal story, she’s got no interest in grinding through it in exploration mode. Origianlly, we were under the impression you got one piece of armour each time you went through. Six times to get a set? Certainly, that takes a bit of work, and a bit of time, but that’s not too bad. But tipping over the 20 mark? That’s a bit… extreme. I think it would be nice if you were able to get top level things from exploring the game and seeing what the world has to offer – not grinding something repetitively and fixating on one specific aspect of the game. “Do this jumping puzzle 20 times, and you’ll get something good” would be a pain in the rump. Doing a 30-40 minute dungeon 25 times (or more if you’re unlucky) is horrific. I’ll admit, the fractals look cool, having only tried them out recently, but finding out that I actually have to grind fractals to get certain things? Seriously?
Other: Mounts
I really have trouble with the idea of mounts. Okay, admittedly it might be interesting to have something to race across the landscape with, but the thing that comes to mind quickly is that the amount of effort that would have to go into these would not be worth it – either from a design standpoint or from a game standpoint. First – there’s coming up with race-dependant mounts: What do the charr get? What do the sylvari get? What do the asura get? And norn? Second, animating these things, and then making them practical. Sure, you could use one to get from Point A to Point B, but is that seriously all you want from a mount? If a charr gets a combat bike, you know it would be designed with offence in mind. Having a human on horseback to travel might be interesting, but then I’d want to see mounted combat. What does it provide you when you’re attacking centaurs, and what about mounted weaponry? (Lance / spears come to mind, horse bows, guns…)
Next of course, what does it take to get one? If you say ‘grinding’, then forget about it. Honestly, anything a dedicated player has, a casual player should be able to get too. The only difference is that a dedicated player should have more of it. If someone hates jumping puzzles, they shouldn’t have to hit every single jumping puzzle multiple times to get a piece of candy (thankfully, there’s no need to do jumping puzzles until you’re blue in the face). Nobody should be forced to do dungeon crawls a score of times or more to get armour. Six times for a full set made sense, way back when they were talking about the game originally. That’s enough that people who hate dungeons could grit their teeth and slog through it to get the armour. Fractals are interesting, but I don’t see myself wanting to do the same fractals 6, 12, 18, 24 times to get ‘stuff’. That’s a huge investment in time I don’t have.
Other: Evil
Guess what? In Guild Wars 2 you’re playing a big kitten hero. You knew this when you signed up for the game. If you don’t want to play the big kitten hero, I’m certain there’s other games where you can be morally compromised. That’s like joining a D&D game, knowing the GM said ‘no evil alignments’, then getting ticked when he says no to your evil character. If you knew this going in, why are you complaining about it now that the campaign / story’s enforcing it? I get it, some people get their rocks off being the bad guys, but not everything has to allow you that option.