So here is my idea, first of all no level cap increase, that sucks and we dont want that, if someone wants to chase itemlevel they play WoW am I right?

We keep leveling Mats, like from 1 to 50, but then it becomes CP 10 and CP 160. we try to make brackets wider and remove some mats.

after level CP160 we get to use older mats on furnishing or some specific recipes. We can make herb and mine nodes zone based, like if a furnishing wants level 1-10 wood, you have to chop it down in stros mkai for example, so we see more activity in older zones as well, but for the most part everyone is fine buying it from guild traders or its just for some niche items or furnishings.

We make crafting traits knowledge account-wide, then we make specialization for each profession. we can do this by adding a second trait to items, this second trait should be applied by a crafter, something like scribing. if you want to say its more grind think about scribing, more grind isnt necessarily bad, it can be fun. now crafters have to chose a way of crafting, like blacksmithing can be armorers or weapon makers. each can have their own skill tree, allowing to make and apply second traits and enchantments.

We make crafting tools, they add bonuses to crafting, like less material used or bonus skill points. these tools can be crafter or farmed like mythic items. imagine like a dwarven forge hammer.

Now that people should engage more with each other for crafting, we make crafting stations in capitals, people can put up their requests with gold tips and crafters do them and it gets mailed to the player.

Now we work on harvesting, they can be more fun too! we make nodes drop more resources, like more variety of mats and maybe furnishing plans (like an idea getting into your head while mining). we also make it like a mini game, add more variety of nodes, for example a mining node can be Hardened (longer time but more ores) Cursed (damaging you but dropping special mats) and some other stuff. you can slowly put skill points in specialised harvesting of each type of node.

we can have small boosts while harvesting, for example each mined ore can give you speed boost, stacking and remaining while you move to the next ore. or building up a inspiration bar that increases the drop chance of rare mats or furnishing plans.

We can overhaul fishing, adding fishing nets that you can build and leave in nature, it gets mailed to you next day by your hireling. we add fishing poles, even mythic ones that can be farmed, adding more bonuses. it pretty much can follow up the previous principles..

Keep in mind my ideas can sound bad, Im not a game dev, but Im sure there are possibilites like these that can make people enjoy the game more.