I will get to the point: Materials cost next to nothing nowadays. Selling Materials used to be a major source of income for players at all stages of play. Additionally, players could acquire effective wealth without causing CR inflation due to the material market REDISTRIBUTING and not GENERATING currency. However, much of the player base has either quit or now has no need for materials due to being full 5*. Because of this, the demand for materials has dropped off.
How do we increase demand? How do we SUSTAIN that demand?
By adding a feature that allows knights to craft TEMPORARY gear upgrades that predominately require materials rather than CE or CR. Upgrade modules could for example allow a willmillion to deal Fire status for 50 swings before being depleted. Others could give defense bonuses for armor for x amount of received hits. Being usage based will require rich players to dump more wealth into the economy if say, they want to keeping using these upgrades often. The more wealth circulation, the better off all players will be.
Here is an outline:
Rich p2per wants to make an upgrade module.
He may not have enough CE on hand.
He purchases CE
He then trades said CE or CR to f2p players who have found valuable materials from running in the clockworks.
The p2p gets his boost and the f2per gets boost in wealth to help him progress through the tiers.
Everyone benefits
Due to upgrades being temporary similar to weapon slots, demand would not die very quickly if at all.
Valuable materials would:
Effectively increase level payouts without causing CE inflation
Entice players to buy more CE without making tier progression a huge grind fest.
Gives more players a chance to tap the massive pool of CE that is only traded around for rare UVed gear on the bazaar forum.
But remember OOO that the key point for this to work would be to make sure that such upgrades require lots of MATERIALS and not excessive amounts of CE. The the CR and CE prices for crafting upgrade modules should be much lower than regular gear.
This is just an idea and does not get into how the game would have to be balanced around it.
The first problem with this would be overlapping: something which normally does one status suddenly gaining the ability of another. Status affliction is also not always constant with all weapons, such as how element Brandish lines only cause a status on the explosion of the charge attack whereas Fang of Vog can burn on any basic or charge attack. The second would be imbalance amongst existing weapons without a status which do not have one to begin with because their existing mechanic is powerful enough to begin with, such as Nitronome. Imagine giving Nitronome fire. Not long lasting or high probability, any amount of fire at all. Imagine giving any rate of shock to Radiant Sun. Ionized Salt would be devastated.
The second problem would be pay to win. This is often used to title the act of purchasing CE for the sole purpose of selling it for crowns because the player is unable/unwilling to work for the crowns to begin with. This is done by all experience groups though slightly more often with newcomers. I know the balance between energy and crowns is fairly delicate, but think of the consequences: by having substantially more energy in the system, the Cr:CE rate lowers so less crowns are required. However, there is more energy sitting around. This means whatever uses energy is suddenly less valuable. Elevators require energy to run to obtain crowns, equipment, and materials. Energy is also used in crafting equipment. Equipment and material prices would drop even further, but at least the energy market would be cheaper, right?
I begrudgingly must admit a sort of cosmetic use for materials is in order. Most likely they would incorporate crafting into upgrades for guilds as seen here, crafting areas and furnishings for guilds to use to further guild utility rather than the current system of being a second friends list.