Given you can upkeep 10K-15K armours in most cases (unless you are some sort of expensive hybrid), and plate in some cases (with cheaper weapons)... well, truth be told it's only a problem of excessive pierce weapons which chew up any armour as if it wasn't there (see: throwing, some melee weapons with high pierce) which is made worse by heirlooming.
Of course, most people haven't gotten around to heirlooming armour yet - mostly because it's not worth it that much, of course, a good weapon is more important then good armour. But, say, a coat of plates with mail gauntlets is 56 body armour rating and you can bring it up with a silly amount of retirements up to 68 body armour - and I could upkeep that and a good melee weapon. Even 10K armours can be heirloomed up to 60ish body armour. But again... lots of retirements needed, and when you look at it so many things have high pierce values and don't care, plus mid-range throwing two shots 60ish body armour anyway.
The only place I found plate to be really useful was arrows, melee with heirloomed weapons slice it like you were wearing mail anyway.
Well you could heirloom black armor and heavy gauntlets for 84 body armor iirc, and still get oneshot by a str thrower
The problem is you would lose gold constantly unless you keep the multiplier at x5 most of the time, which isn't so easy to do or realistic to think it's even possible (i succeeded only once yesterday to do that with only 20-25 people on the server, also thanks to some players trying other stuff and having just retired), also it doesn't work if there's any decent player who can take advantage of how SLOW heavy armor makes you. Against light armored high athletic guys, if i wear plate, i need to keep away because it's flawless in their favour (backpedal ftw they can run backwards faster than i can run forwards). Plate was not an absolute advantage, it trades armor for speed, so this high upkeep cost is excessive.
Raskolnikov, it proves how many players disliked repair when it came out. A portion of those players now left the game, so a new poll would be biased. I'm still here so i can live with it, but it would be more fun if it got some more balance to it.
Poll