I think the repair costs can prevent lots of players of playing the mod and make the game less attractive for lost of people, especially those who start and end at level 30 from the beginning... I'm not against repair cost, in fact, I do think they enhance the game, from my personal experience it's more fun having an advantage of choosing a lesser equipment other that attack and run speed...
But being so high? I must admit I'm a pretty combative gamer... I like big challenges, complex strategies and things that require efforts... I like when the fun is serious... but I'm pretty rare on my kind, almost every gamer I have met prefers to play without any effort of such. Having a very high repair cost requires somehow a big investment that will eventually run out and require another investment just to get back the gold it asked for repair... For example, anyone can tell me how you keep up with that Black Armor!??!? It must cost such a fortune to repair I wouldn't even figure out to buy one... I can't get positive gold from games with a Studded Leather armor over mail kit and some 6500$ weapons....
Anyhow the last patch has increased the repair cost when I had already received comments from friends that the repair cost was annoying or too high. It's my personal opinion that it was funnier when it was lower, now I'm getting crazy about how I could save money and taking very low equipment knowing that it will be very expansive to have a good kit without leaving the game to return to grind. So this is said, I'm saying more to think about the future of the mod than my personal fun as I'm planning to take a medium kit and I won't have to choose cheap equipment just to be able to play with my heavy one... But new players might be disinterested by the fact the repair costs are so high and maybe eventually less people would play the game... I wouldn' t remove the repair costs, but I was pretty surprised when I saw they got up with the patch... That's my thoughts.
Btw there is a bug that makes you repair items you pick up on the battlefield when autorepair is on, making me stop picking expansive weapons when mine is checked on.