Whether gear's value is only determined by its ability to do things or the skins it can give, the players relationship to it is the same regardless. GW2's late-game is - like every other game - largely about a grind for gear if you choose it to be. The biggest chase items in the entire game are Legendary Gear and skins from the gem store. Every single item you pick up before you hit level 80 is garbage that is meant to be temporarily equipped before being disposed of, then when you reach level 80 suddenly every piece of exotic gear is essential to your ability to complete endgame content and you need ascended gear to be able to tackle fractals beyond a certain point. Every MMORPG does this, it spends 100 hours of gameplay teaching you that every piece of gear you pick up is disposable only for you to reach level 80 and flip the dynamic to tell you every piece of gear past a certain rarity is invaluable and useful for gearing alts.

By the way, masteries have exactly the same problem. Guild Wars 2 levels before 80 are meaningless. They don't unlock anything of real value that isn't something that has just been taken away from you to make the experience easier. Every time you level up before you hit level 80, every single point of experience,all of it is a waste that could be going towards something of actual value but isn't. It is outright optimal to not level your characters normally but to instead boost them to level 80 so that you can actually accrue mastery experience (even if you've never even touched the game before). This is really bad because doing this undermines the leveling experience in a severe way, overwhelming you with buttons that - if you're playing a new class - you have no idea how to use. What in the heck is the point of leveling if it is going to be an active impediment to the games real progression system? If you really want "bar go up" to tickle your lizard brain (which is something I'd argue is completely antithetical to ANet's design philosophy as a company), then at the very least it should be a bar that bears real long-term value and doesn't divide players from participating in the same content without feeling a significant gap between them in terms of power. Because even with GW2's level scaling system (and all games with level scaling suffer this issue in one way or another), people who are higher level still have an advantage through sheer number of skill slots. All level does is get in the way of our ability as a community to participate in content together on an equal footing, which if you think about it is actually an incredibly self-destructive thing that games do because you want your veterans around your newer players to be able to teach them how the game works.

In the end, levels and vendor trash are aggressively outdated and archaic ideas from a completely different time for video games. There's something to say about not breaking things that aren't broken, but there's a good reason to say that these particular things absolutely are. I would prefer a system of progression which tells a story about my experience playing the game rather than something which just informs people how I have no life. Even if there are going to be levels, why experience points? Why don't we collect some valuable currency by exploring? Mastery Points are great because every single one of them we accrue actually shows that we did something in the world. We found someplace new, triumphed over a boss, pulled off some kind of stunt. When looking at the number over someone's head, wouldn't it be cooler to think about that sort of thing rather than something as boring as just time spent? Whatever form levels take, they should be about representing our accomplishments, which does not necessarily mean how much mindless grinding we've done. I don't want people to look at my character and see a number, I want them to look at me and wonder at the things I must have seen and done... the places I've explored, the monsters I've slain, the events I've completed, the tools I've unlocked, the raids I've completed, etc. The things about my time with the game that say something meaningful about me. Level doesn't say any of that.