This is the issue: your mindset is that only group play is “putting effort” into the game.
Open world players are mostly just asking for an engaging system that rewards them in a manner befitting the content they do.
For me, that’s a Korthia style gear ranking system in an engaging environment at end game.
Most open world players are NOT asking for mythic level gear. There’s nothing wrong with the ilevel we received from Korthia when it was current.