Soulbound items are killing this genre for me.
This. BoE/BoP have had such a massive influence on the genre that it's pretty unreal. The implications of it have reached far beyond, I think, what most people expect.
Personally, I'd like to see a strong mix of contested and uncontested content. The carrot for the contested stuff can simply be superior drop rates when named do spawn and that the items dropped will
notbe soulbound or BoE, and won't have min levels. Let the items from contested content be huge economic boons, really valuable because they are so fungible. Leave the option open to do an instance version of the dungeon, but have it so you get far less drops overall, and the drops are BoP--so there is less economic benefit to do those dungeons, but there is still a way to do content and improve your own character when everything is camped.
In other words, make killing contested content socially valuable (Through selling items) and make uncontested content personally valuable (So people who only have an hour can try and make their character better).
Combine the above with very rare gear, and "soft cap" like advancement systems, so the rewards for doing things are character specific (Gaining experience in the dungeon) and you can have instanced dungeons where there isn't a "fore sure" chance to get loot but still make it so people won't feel like they've wasted their time, because they have advanced their character (Through soft cap experience gains). Hopefully this would give further incentive to do the contested version because of the higher consistency of drops (Combined with, as said, more fungible rewards--being able to sell and twink with them.)
Anyway, I really don't see why games had to become "one or the other". Develop a system that works both ways. But actually
developthe system to give incentive to both. Don't just plop in contested vs uncontested and wonder why no one ever does contested (IE reward the larger social difficulty of contested spawns.)
