I agree with most of the points in this section (not sure about #9), but loot in arpgs is supposed to be rng with crafting & other systems existing to help ameliorate the rng.
If that was the case then players who didn’t want to trade would feel either left behind or forced to trade. MG does need quite a few changes (the use of gold being one of them), but forcing everybody to use trade if they don’t want to be left behind isn’t one of them.
I think the random encounter versions could also do with being somewhat smaller, akin to PoE’s vaal side areas, with fewer offshoots.
Apparently both factions are being reworked in the next season.
Very hard disagree on this. I absolutely hated PoE’s trading before they introduced the merchant tabs (& IMO, these should just have been the previous public/sales tabs converted & available much earlier in the campaign.
Bartering is an abomination that was rightly left behind by humanity thousands of years ago & having to whisper a person to meet up for a trade is just hideous 'cause unless they’re playing the trade lord class, they want to be killing mobs & if they are playing a trade lord then the don’t want to be dealing with chavs who can’t afford multi div items.
Using gold as the currency is part of the problem MG has, as is insufficient numbers of players going MG, inflation & a while host of other things. But forcing trade onto people who don’t want to trade isn’t a viable solution.
While I think the addition of a crafting faction is reasonable, I very strongly disagree with your implicit assertion that it serves as an alternative way to get loot compared to CoF. CoF/MG are trade/non-trade dichotomy, CoF isn’t for people who don’t want to play with others (though it is the only faction that makes sense for them), nor is it a faction for people who don’t want to craft, it is merely a faction for people who don’t enjoy trading.
Also, how would your crafting faction handle the universal pain point that is legendary slams?
I agree with most of your other points though