Yeah.

Actually, there used to be a pretty lively crafting market years ago, before they made it so crafting items had a level requirement, forcing you to equip + bind them.
Crafting costs were also cheaper, and there was no cost to level up items (no forge system).
The only 'requirement' to play any tier was to have met the gear requirement at some point.

I guess at the time, it made progressing through the game (progress defined by how much content you could access) way too quick. After that, you'd only see a rare 5* item in the AH from treasure box drops.

Now, generally the equipment found in the AH are items with valuable variants. Their cost is mainly unbinding price + a bonus for the attached UV.

Weird quirk of the game, as it is now lol.

it's designed to be a deterrent from people using SK like a giant game about trading, it also forces people to commit to a weapon decision

i rather like it

I'm not fond of it at all. By making you commit to a particular item or armour, it means you've wasted considerable amounts of grinding (or money) and resources if you ever find out the item you wanted sucks or if you change your mind. The tremendous unbinding cost makes most items unsalvageable, meaning the only thing you can do is sell it to a vendor and start again. It's not a pleasant experience.

I'm not talking about profit, I'm talking about getting a reasonable amount of your money back so you can start over with a new item on a stronger foot

Trying to stop the game from being "a giant game about trading" isn't smart. MMOs usually have a massive market for gear (and everything else)... the problem here is that the only high-level weapons for sale are ones with relatively decent UVs or are event-type gear (BKC, OC, etc). It is pretty much an unusable market to the very people that would want to buy those un-UVed 5* weapons, 4* players. I always found the unbinding cost ludicrous, and that it really hurts rather than helps the game. Should be cheaper if they must have it.... I'm mean, if you talking solely about CE before the Orb update, a 5* would need 800 CE for crafting, and 5 times that, or 4,000 CE, to unbind... pretty crazy.

Because there are no skill builds or player level ups, the entire game revolves around gear and gear choices. This makes weapons not just something you make and buy, but also a very core component of your player altogether. This is what makes SK different than other MMOs which separate player development vs weapon improvement.

This makes the market for high tier equipment harder -- they know that unbinding isn't worth it unless the gear has good UVs/accessories, and they know vendoring is a rip off. They really want you to just keep your gear. The game would rather encourage you to build a large, varied arsenal, because buying/selling off your weapons is the same as modifying your skill build in other MMOs.

I have my own opinion on this (ie. some weapons are much more useful/versatile than others and discourages their use except solely out of boredom) but I get why they're making it difficult to get rid of equipment unless it has some real value (good UVs or good accessories).

Well, 4000ce isn't really equal to the cost of crafting a 5* item.

I see your point there, but while grinding for the cr to craft the next star level, surely you would find fire crystals?
I'm sorry for not being accurate, but I just think that fire crystals shouldn't play that much of a part.