Guild Wars 2

Completely agree with OP.

Waypoint costs immensly harm this game at higher levels due to the sheer cost. It contradicts the “no content becomes completely redundant” philosophy, makes crafting a pain, and impedes freedom of exploration.

And to top it off, it’s a complete and utter failure as a goldsink by means of being entirely avoidable. (Defeated is moot due to repair costs)

Kill waypoint costs dead, or at the very least cap them at no more than 50 copper. If you’re so worried about inflation, why not just scale back the amount of gold you’re injecting into the “economy” to begin with?

I can understand why they went for the system they did, after not only having to balance all the skills GW1 had, but also the cross-profession combos.

That said, the new “weapon skill” system is far too bland and static. Maybe giving the ability to customise slots 2-5 with a small-ish pool of per-weapon unlockable skills would provide a nice middleground between GW1’s overload and GW2’s blandness.

Ultimately, having no dual profession system alone makes balancing far easier. So it should be easy to add a little more variety without requiring a massive overhaul of everything.