I want to echo OP’s voice in losing interest from a player’s perspective, and the bigger possibility of losing player player base with a two cents (well, short story) of mine.
Myself and two other close friends run a tiny guild, yes, just three of us. We all have family of our own, some with one child, some with two. We work standard 50hours week, so we’re your typical casual gamer and plays an hour or so on average on weekday. Perhaps 6-10hours during weekends. We have in our own ways purchase gems for our pleasure (at least $100 each), so no big problem there. We get it that with our play style, it’d take us some time to get anywhere. No issue there,totally enjoyed taking our time, enjoying the well crafted landscape.
But why, after playing since pre-release, there is this requirement to must have a team a of five to finish the last chapter of the story? It’s taken us six months to get there, and to be greeted by this requirement. Cruel is probably an understatement.
Cool to have dungeons or legendary weapons for those that like that type of stuff for endgame. For us, it’s a matter of playing another profession to enjoy the game. But eventually we’d hit the same problem—endgame chapter that has this group requirement. So what’s there for us to enjoy?
So here we are, six months later, four level 80s amongst the four of us, none of us completed our story. We tried with the three of us into Arah, needless to say we didn’t get far. Sure we can LFG, but being dungeon green and tight with time, hardly able to find a group we can join.
Sure we can play PvP, but maybe we don’t have that of interest? Sure we can play WvW, but we don’t have the luxury of time to sit and wait for a group.
I’am the most active player amongst our group. I have kitted out my level 80 with exotic. I have probably amass 40g in my bank. I am not aiming for legendary. I just want to have fun..the simplest of completing the game….but…WTF? (This echos the issue of big kitten health pool with one shot mechanism). Feels like Anet is telling us “we got some of your money and that’s good enough, you can go now.”
I’m fairly sure we are not of minority in comparison with dedicated players, but surely we are at least half of the player base? Just saying Anet, have a think about it. 