If this idea has been proposed before I apologize.
According to the recent AMA by Chris Whiteside, as well as many other statements by ANet, the GW2 team wants, as much as possible, to eliminate the grind aspect of the game. I think this is directly contradicted by the current method by which nearly all of the best looking, most desirable weapon skins are obtained – namely, gather a large number of very rare/expensive ingredients (lodestones and ectoplasm) and toss them in the mystic forge.
No matter what way you go about it, this is a grind. You either spend a ton of time farming the items, or a ton of time farming the gold to buy the items. A few people are able to successfully play the trading post to make the money, but this is far from a sure thing. I would argue that for the average player, these items are completely out of reach. I myself play for what I’m guessing is a larger amount of time than average (~5 hours a day), and while I’m pretty well off, it would still take me a very, very long time to get even one of these weapons. If the intent is to make these weapons accessible only to those willing to farm their faces off, well, so be it, but I think even those who do go for them would say that the process of obtaining them is not fun.
I think there’s a better way, though, that will still necessitate that players put in the effort, but make it significantly more fun and rewarding to obtain these items. You have a wonderful system already in place in the form of the personal story architecture that allows people to complete a series of events and, at the end, receive a reward. Why not use that in areas of the game other than the personal story to facilitate rare weapon acquisition?
For instance, take the elementalist summoned weapons. The player could, at some point in their adventures, stumble upon a dying elementalist. The player helps this npc, who out of thanks reveals that she is part of an ancient order and invites the player to join her in her quest to stop the evil XYZ. Once that is complete, the player can become an honorary initiate of the order, and then has to complete more quests to move up in the ranks. When the quests are completed, the player ascends to the highest ranks of the order, and at this point is able to receive a permanent version of one of the summoned weapons as a symbol of office.
Now obviously this is a crude example, but the point is that this removes the grind aspect, and replaces it with something that requires just as much effort, but is actually enjoyable. Of course this would require a lot more effort on ANet’s part than the current scheme, but namely on the part of the lore/story creation folks. The quests could be set in current areas of the world (perhaps with slight modifications), and for extra difficulty could require a team similar to dungeon runs. It could even be across a large level range like the personal story, although without branches and multiple quests per level to make the design quicker and easier. The incremental rewards, other than experiencing the story, would be minimal, and the final reward would not be unbalancing as these weapons are still only exotic. It would not be easy to finish the quest line, but it would be fun, and would still allow those who complete it all to feel differentiated (again, as with the personal story).
As a side benefit, this would address what I feel is currently one of the games largest weaknesses – a lack of involved, meaningful, interesting quests/stories. We currently have the event chains in Orr and the personal story, but that’s about it. FotM is a great idea, and I really enjoy the various dungeons, but they’re pretty light on story. Dynamic events in the world, while fun for the most part, are also not a great substitute for a more structured experience, and by-and-large revolve around relatively menial tasks.
This turned into a bit of a novel, and for that I apologize, but I’d be curious to hear other people’s input on this idea, and why or why not I’m an idiot.
Tl;dr: Use the personal story system to develop an extensive/difficult quest line associated with the ultra-rare weapons (e.g. elementalist/mesmer/guardian summoned weapons).