I will skip the introduction to save both our time, here is what I propose:
Slightly increase the pickup circle around the character for gold and give users to take part in special events and actions to increase the auto-pickup radius for their account. Use this as a loyalty reward, not something we can just get with talent points.
Copy-paste the functionality shards have, where if you pick up one pile shard, all shards around it will be picked up as well and introduce it to gold pickup as well.
Duplicate the same functionalities described above for Shards as well.
Introduce a Keychain feature where the user can store keys. Introduce the same functionality for keys as the gold and shards have.
At the moment, picking up stuff is a chore, your current growing success is partly attributed to the flexibility to modernise archaic features. Picking up is fun for the first hour or 3 from starting a game, but it becomes a terrible chore after that.
The devs want people to “feel” that they pick up items.
Which may make sense for gear, which people put a filter on to only see what they want - thus picking gear up should have some “weight”
but for shards most players DO NOT EVEN READ THE SHARDS, they just click the shard then later click the “send to crafting inventory” when the game tells them that their inventory is full(which happens frequently, as players do not register how many they are picking up). It is an extra click for something you will not even register as existing.
You can ask any player playing the game what shards they just picked up mere seconds afterwards and chances are they will have already forgot that they picked up shards at all.
I will allways say that shards should be autolooted. As they are equivelent to gold pickups in how common they are.
Less common things, like good gear and dungeon keys - things players will actually NOTICE when they drop, maybe LE would have a case for wanting players to “feel” picking them up. But this shard nonsense is like asking us to manually pick up gold.
Agree there should be some sort of loyalty rewards program that gives account wide quality of life and light character benefits. Something like Lost Ark did I forget what they called it but its an extra layer of something to work towards, benfit from and look forward to. Keys should probably stay pickup they arent an issue with the infrequency however they should absolutely go to account storage or at the very least be stackable in bank. Im a little unclear of what your proposing about gold pickup but anything involving clicking on gold is an absolute no for me if thats where you were going.
