Ironically, this stops the big mass buyers of ce from buying big masses of ce, since they want to buy equipment from other players.

And now they can't.

Agreed, it seems like they are trying to stop the people who buy a large chunk of ce once and then quit later, and are trying to promote everyone buying a medium size chunk on a regular basis.

The problem is, these players who bought a large chunk are looking for instant gratification, these same players are not going to buy a smaller chunk more frequently to craft it themselves they are just going to look for another game.

As for the players who were already buying small chunks occasionally, they feel screwed over by being forced to purchase ce more frequently to continue upgrading items. Combined with the fact that we can no longer sell crafted items for a large ce profit there are no options to play the game except to buy ce on a regular basis.

If they left the 5 star selling in, they would still get chunks of cash from impatient players. They could have left the crafting cost the same, and instead implemented a system like the elevator pass that people have recommended. That is like a 5 or 10 dollar fee that makes all elevator energy costs free, but one would still need ce for rezzing, gates, and crafting.

This would make it seem more optional again, instead of mandatory.

I'm new, but I can see right away what the change was for. One it Motivate play to level the items, which requires more CE for the elevators and other related activities. Requiring leveling, means the item is bound, which means they have to buy the recipe to do it themselves. This means that they have to maintain their playtime, which keeps them around to spend CE before hitting an Equipment Cap. People who max out gear are going to quickly lose their motivation since that is the motivator in this. Gear up, dungeon dive, gear up, dungeon dive, until you hit the bottom and also have satisfactorily geared up. Likely a player will leave around that time unless they have a great community behind them to keep them interested.

Now the other problem you have with crafters not being able to do so...
The problem with high end crafting being available as was previously the case, is that people who succeed at it acquire large sum of credits and CE. This skews the economy in a dramatic fashion and I'll explain how. What happens is the upper tiers being able to pay exorbitant prices for CE via credits, will push the economy sideways at some point. This problem would certainly resolve itself over the long term as nobody would pay for such high cost CE, but the damage would be severe and permanent to the economy in the long run, because players would certainly leave the game in a mass exodus.

Why don't you guys that are freaking out keep it in one thread? We get the point, you're butthurt and want your thoughts to be heard, but it's starting to get extremely disruptive to continuously make the same basic thread over and over and over again. Since you all want to make suggestions as if you know exactly whats going on with the game and what will "fix" it, why don't you do it in the proper forum (the suggestion forum) instead of clogging up general.

So do the people complaining about the people complaining about the people complaining!

The pot calls the kettle black!

(Does this make me someone complaining about the people complaining about the people complaining about the people complaining?)

I think this is my favorite new expression of all time! Butthurt! Butthurt! Butthurt! Butthurt!