Most players here are pve players
50% shouts are wts/wtb uniques so increasing rates will stop selling and buying for sure. Who will buy ring if can be farmed and refined easy? Noone.
Current state is more classic and reminds me old times, I didn't like super drop servers because they are become boring fast.
There are mainly 2 types of players here. Fighters and Farmers.
The fighters want to put minimal effort into farming and focus on fighting.
The farmers are 2 types. 1)The ones that do it without a specific purpose, just relaxing melancholic farming without caring of the outcome;
2)The second type are the ones who are mostly unemployed in real life and want to make real money out of farming.
First type of farmers will usually keep the drops for themself and eventually try to gear up all their chars, while the second type will ask ridiculous prices for their items, especially via paypal, items which regular fighters will not be able to buy due to low budget since their main goal is to fight and not to farm, and a very low percentage of the remaining fighters are willing to buy overpriced items, which creates an unballance between players.
Thats why you see in shouts, same names, trying to sell same items for a very long time, and same names trying to buy items for weeks and not being able to find.
The demand is high, the offer is low and overpriced, reason why the economy is stuck and is nearly impossible to get 3 slotted excellent uniqs for a resonable price.
As per above, this leads to the main issue here, "The Refinery" ( the entire proccess of it ).
I strongly believe that this is the main reason why most of the players left to play on other server or not playing at all.
This community has nearly same players since 2005 when archlord was released, back then we all were teenagers, now most of us are 30 + years old, with familly, jobs and so on, therefor limited time to play.
That's why i point out the fact that it shouldnt bee required such a big effort on getting the equipment needed, as most of the people literaly don't have the time to it.
Making it easier, will do the contrary of what you said, i am sure it will bring more people into the game, ready to spend their money on ecoins, that means more income for the Admin, which is good business for him and an active economy on the server for us.
We cannot let a few unemployed players to dicate how the drop has to be and how the refinery must work, just because they want to earn some real money out of this game instead of looking for a job.
I am sorry but this game is supossed to be fun and competitive, guilds fighting each other over who is the strongest and so on.
That's the way i see it, ofc you might have a different perspective, but in the end it has to be what the majority wants.
Regards.