I have high hopes for 4.0, although I joined at the tail end of 2.55 and reached lvl 60 right before 3.1, so I never experienced the 2.0-2.55 cycle. I basically did all of the mandatory content, and went straight to HW, so HW end-game is literally all I know. Maybe people were disappointed from HW's "decline in quality" because they had been though ARR end-game, but for me it seems like my expectations will be set lower if HW si really worse quality than ARR.
That said, I am still disappointed with how barebones gear is. Without glamour there would be alot less illusion of choice, you'd see everyone wearing the same statistically better gear instead of a progression system where you choose the gear that would fit you the most. And even further into this, the game was not built with horizontal progression in mind, it would require a major overhaul on rebalancing every enemy, boss, encounter, to work with a new horizontal progression system in mind. I don't have too much hope for this kind of thing but i do believe we can still get at least SOME form of choice over "increase main stat" gear.
I would love to recreate jobs so that end-game gear has several variants and that those sets give skill bonuses to get the same job done but in different ways. Set skills could change rotations based on the new effects of moves, or maybe go even further, add in specs and skill trees too so that there isn't just one way to play a job anymore. With all of this, there could be several very diverse ways that you can mix and match skills with and still be as efficient as anyone else if you know how to use and control those skills
This is all pretty much a pipe dream though.
