Well c-rpg is not all about skill, but also about having good items and character build, that's where the "rpg" part is.
Was about to go to town on your post, but you wrote "not
all about skill," and that's something I agree with completely.
`~`
On another note, here comes an old man rant: This mod, as much as the new guys aren't happy about it, is pretty scaled down in terms of difficulty. Those purchases you're complaining about? The OH SO unattainable expensive armor, advanced weaponry etc etc that you're incessantly insisting is REQUIRED for the equal footing of combat, used to be far worse.
People are getting 500 gold a round. A ROUND. Shit is cash, is what it is (literally). Stop complaining.
We used to fight 7 god damn minutes PER ROUND for a measly 34 gold. 40 gold, if we were lucky with a fully populated server (about maybe 50[? someone help me out] people back then). That padded cloth that people don't even look at anymore was my first major purchase in the game at 340 gold at the time (currently 588). I grinded for a month to get my Milanese plate, and my Cataphract took longer (I'm so sorry I ever sold you, Keyarna. Those were hard times, but I found you again).
Heirlooms were unheard of, and battlefield leviathans ruled supreme (Fedor, Crymoar among others) Our weapons would do nothing, and standing against them was generally suicide. We saw fighters leveling as far as 48 (I was 44 myself at the time of the rebalance)
Introduce the heirloom system: All of a sudden, the playing field is made more equal (for the most part) because we see more retirements, and more "super weapons" come into play. The heirloom system was made to balance out the levels, and the increase in damage/defense of items and armor was a fair price to pay to deny insane amounts of leveling (of course, that brought its own problems *coughKeshcough*).
Heirlooms in the form of weapons and armor serve their purpose; they make good weapons better, and allow cheaper, weaker weapons to compete with the big guns in addition to limiting mad leveling.
Raising the floor and lowering the ceiling means a smaller deviation of item stats. The demand for heirlooms will go down, prices will go up, and the market floods with pointless surplus weapons that no one cares about. Gold will be hoarded, the market will stall, and then we're back in the shitter with weapons and levels again. What's the point of retiring if there's no incentive to do so (unless you're fond of getting shat on at levels 1-5)?
It'll be like the old days of high leveled combatants who don't care to retire anymore (albeit level 35, 36 as opposed to higher). Except entry level people will get shit on (just like The Golden Era of the Bah Mace and Rape Train). This person will look back to now, and think "shit I guess keeping the incentive to heirloom shit might have saved us from this," as an arrow storm of the Clan Longstride demolishes his meager cover.
Riders of Stratia will tear through the ranks. The Murder Ravens will clash with Astralis of the Shadows, sweeping all the new players aside without a second thought. And the Occitan of Frisia will bring castles down killing and burning all in their way. Naturally EU is used to monarchies and dynasties and shit, so they're really business as usual (NA drama thread, anyone?) except with superpowers being supererpowers.
Actually, that sounds fun as nuts. Let's do it. +1 op.
tl;dr The future is bleak for new players if we bring the heirloom stat ceiling down and the floor up. Stop complaining.
edit; spelling and syntax
edit2; tl;dr is more reflective of what I intended
