[Aetherblades CM]

I like the fight. It is fun to do for the first times and it feels good to get punished for mistakes, but I also think it still has problems.
In my eyes the main problems are:
1. the exposed debuff that accumulates if a mechanic is failed, gets removed on down. So heal scourge/other rezz classes invalid that mechanic.
2. The bomb/cricle phase is on a hard timer. It is a nice puzzle for the first time, but once you understand the mechanic it is always the same and staying around for 10 or more seconds, waiting for bombs to explode is not fun. I also really dislike that it does not matter which bomb gets killed, as it makes the whole phase as brain dead as the normal mode one (well I guess the people with the special action key have to think a little bit).
3. The Mai Trin phase feels useless. The part is not hard. It is just annoying as she dashes around and doges attacks.

So, it probably does not become my most favorite boss over time, but I have faith that the next CMs are going to be great if they are as big of a step up form the NM as this one (well the last two, I have little faith for ankka).

[Constructs and Mechanics that lead to the Death of the Game.]

@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

Edit: Also as a continuation of the above thought, is that there should be places that you would expect there to be a higher population density than what is actually present in the game. These are places like The Human Starter area for example, which, according to some statistics, is the most commonly picked race among new players. However, this location, although it does have slightly more people than other surrounding areas, is drastically lower than what one would expect it to be. You can actually compare this to other games where it actually matches with the expectation like WoW's Goldshire. The two places don't seem to be any different to each other in design, in fact both seem nearly exactly the same...with a tavern, a few houses, and an outdoor centralized square...except one of them is completely devoid of interaction and people, while the other is so crowded it's hard to understand why there is such a massive difference between these two, seemingly similar starter zones.

This is rather obvious. Other games don't have tomes of knowledge. I would say tomes are a way better example of a mechanism that is "bad for the game" as tomes are one of the reasons that the population in leveling areas is really low. This obviously makes it so that you have less social interaction in Gw2 during the leveling process than in other games (lower density= lower interaction).It would be possible to argue that less social interactions in these areas results in a lower retention time (of new people) and is one of the reasons the game is "dying". I would still say that tomes are great because the leveling experience is not fun in my eyes.The question anet has to ask themselves is " Is reworking the leveling experience worth it or is a item that circumvents the problem of a bad leveling experience a better idea so we can focus on other aspects of the game". I think this is true for almost all of the bigger convenience aspects in the game. Waypoints are a shortcut to making a world that is always engaging, rewarding and fun no matter where I am and at what time. The later is incredible hard to do and I think no game has managed to do it.

[Expansion: make or break?]

@"WorldofBay.8160" said:Story Meta Achievements have ALWAYS been casual/semi-casual and accessible to the vast majority of the playerbase. In the early days of Living World Season 1 they were used to provide players with a sort of "guide" towards completing the short segments of "every 2 week story" with a moderate/good reward at the end of it. Back in those days most of the achievements were doable with enough time played during the two week segment. There was nothing truly egregious about them and they generally had multiple pathways to complete the overarching Meta Achievement. Move on to Living World Season 2 and it became very much the same thing, with nothing incredibly grindy and only some achievements requiring a moderate level of skill. At this point "Story Meta Achievements" solidified themselves as a staple within GW2's reward structure as something that was attainable for nearly all players provided a moderate level of commitment was put in. This was so much the intention and perception of Story Meta Achievements that In Living World Season 3 Anet even removed the Heart of Koda Infusion collection from the Story Journal and put it into the Collections tab simply because the cost and effort required was monstrously disproportionate with what is usually considered a "story type" achievement. LS4 introduced added grind for some of the achievements, BUT all of them had many different pathways that could be taken to finish the Meta.

Claiming that a lot of casuals complete these or do them is far away from the truth as not even a lot of the more invested people do them. I know a lot of people dislike using GW2 efficiency for comparisons, but it makes a lot of sense in this case as completing them requires a lot of time and GW2 has a lot of the people with high playtime. According to GW2 efficiency almost no one completes them.Just one example:The Completion rate of the Achievement "War Eternal" Mastery" " is 4.2% whereas the completion rate of the raid "Key of Adashim" is 6.4% . Both were released at almost the same time (2 weeks apart with the raid being released later).This shows that less people do these achievements than people clear raids (and raids are not flooded with people). It is obviously vastly easier to develop such achievements which means they should still be released, but claiming that they are casual or anything similar is absolute hyperbole.

I didn't quote the rest of your post as I agree that the achievements that you have to do for the mastery point in this season are indeed more grind heavy.