As you guys undoubtedly noticed, running Tier 1 or most Tier 2 stages now is a waste of crowns. The immediate reason for this is that loot in Tier 3 just overshadows the loot from those tiers hence the current energy exchange prices effectively just ignores them.
But its actually quite an easy problem to solve: just create different energy markets for each tier.
How its gonna work is as follows:
o You'll still have the current main energy, CE, which will be used for crafting items and starting guilds, and is purchasable using crowns.
o Now to use elevators and energy devices inside of the Clockworks, instead of using CE, you have to use the type of energy corresponding to the tier you're trying to go to or playing in. Ancient for T3, Sedimental for T2, and Shallow for T1.
o The 3 subdivisions of energy are obtainable by trading CE for them, much like how CE can be obtained by trading crowns. Each type of energy will have its own exchange, and price in CE determined by players.
This way, we can charge players separately for running stages which gives completely different amounts of loot hence make T1 and T2 runnable again.
I have no idea how you think the energy subdivisions can be determined by the players unless you mean you can buy subdivided energy for real money, but then that would make whatever prices OOO set for the different types of energy the determining factor of prices. Please explain your third bullet point.