Every time I try to talk about this my post seems to get deleted, but I will try again.
Its nearly impossible for newer players to get into this game and current players are being driven away. The expertise grind feels so incredible unrewarding and pointless and everytime a new weapon is relased, evey veteran player has to go through the same painfull grind again aswell. It does not need to be reworked, it just needs to be removed. Levling the weapon to level 20 should be enough of a grind to start using a weapon.
And then its the gearing, which is the games worst issue in my opinon. The economy in this game is completely destroyed by previous exploits and dupes which gold sellers are now selling, together with top companies generating “free gold”. It creates a incredibly unfair playing ground where some people are incredible rich either by exploiting themselves or buying the gold, or simply doing cheap buy orders and playing the market while the dupes where ongoing. A “BiS” item goes for 200k+, often 500k+asmodeum, meanwhile just 2 perk items can go for over 100k gold. This is not reasonable at all. There is no activity in this game that generates nowhere even close to those amounts. The only way to earn such amounts of gold is to either buy gold or play the market and sell to those that already are buying gold.
Example of prices on my server
And here is why the prices are so high:
As you see, SEVERAL sellers have over 900,000K in their stock. I just cannot fathom how this is even possible.
Im personally sitting on 30k and I have just compeley given up on getting any upgrades to my charatcter. I cant afford any items from the trading post and the RNG from the activities in this game is absolutely horrible. Ive done 400+ OPRs, 100wins in wars and lots of PvE and never gotten a SINGLE item that I actually use for my build besides the few good named items from expidtions.
More and more perks are being added to the game, and having full 3perk legendary armor is becoming stronger and stronger. The difference between someone in full resilient+shirking fortifciation+ability perks is incredible huge compared to someone in just resilient+ability perks. The “2% difference” people referencing are very outdated and did only consider the armor and attribute difference from being 600-625gs, not having full 3perks. With the previous bug to the shirking foritfy perk, one dodge would give you max foritfy with several pieces, thats not “2%” difference. And even whithout the bug, its a huge difference if one manages to stack it all as their 3rd perk.
I dont see how you can possible fix this ruined econony. The game needs a total wipe, but that would kill the game. The most important fix is to stop this gambling and RNG madness. One is nearly forced to buy gold if one ever wants to get decent gear in this game. Gear should be much easier available, atleast in PvP where one would think its should be as balanced and fair as possible.
The new PvP rewards will be a nice addition, but its still ridden with RNG. I could win 1000 arena matches and I would still have worse gear than somone that just bought some gold. Gearing is basicly pay2win at this point in this game.
Let us enjoy the game and target our own rewards. The faction vendor is already there, it should be possible to buy up to 600gs and then having it be possible to upgrade futher. Some people would say “Oh but that would ruin crafting!” And yes, it would damage crafting, but the current crafting system is one of the reasons we are in this mess.
As someone who has 1k+ hours in this game and for some reason hasnt quit yet, I want to play around with so many different builds, but its simply impossible. I cannot afford any gear and there is no way to target resilient+ability perks either. And even if I could afford some gear to a offspec, its incredibly hard to justify that when I should instead save that gold for a “BiS” piece for my “main spec”.
Instead of having the freedom of experimenting with different builds im instead just stuck with my one build thats both getting boring and outdated, and I end up driven away from the game.