I am sure that this has been said before but I wanted to write it just to ease my frustration...

While levelling, I didn't check repair cost, because new equipment was plenty and generally damage equipment was lower level, so replacing was easy. Also, when one particular piece was missing, I simply crafted it.

Now that I am VR3, I realised that armor is destroyed very quickly even when not dying! and believe me, except in dungeon, I die very little because I am very cautious, so it is quite frustrating.

The whole idea of high repair cost is, imo, only valid if it comes as a penality for death. I am an old EQ player, and I remember sometimes loosing level when dying (haa, the safety bubble), respawning naked miles away from your corpse (you had to loot yourself to get your equipment back). Your corpse was sometimes impossible to reach wityhout a full 6 men group and 2/3 hours to reach it, and if you were unlucky, loosing all your equipment because your corpse was only staying in the world for a limited amount of time. Corpse runs were fun! So don't take me wrong, I agree with high repair cost when dying, it is fair enough.

However, when not dying, you should not be penalised that much!

My forecast of what this impact on the game economy is that nobody will craft quality gear and sell it successfully because it will be destroyed too quickly. As a result repair cost will be huge for the buyer, or the cost of purple/yellow mats to craft replacement after each evening session will be unaffordable. The only yellow items that will have a market are the weapons because they don't suffer damage (up to now). Set items might have a small market but as green items only (maybe blue for the rich), but never as purple/yellow for the average player.

Also, there is a RP non-sense because a crafter can create an item but not repair it!

There are 3 options to improve that:

1) reduce by far the repair cost. (not my favorite solution)
2) the damage done only happens with death and decrease with the quality (which makes sense btw) so that a blue items is less subject to damage than a green, and ultimately, yellow items are never damaged. That would sustain the market, and push player to buy yellow items. (my favorite solution)
3) crafters could repair their own items with basic mats (not the "improve quality items), which would induce players to craft more.

Sorry if my thought have already been expressed somewhere else, but I also believe that only mass complains can have the devs move/listen because they never ever listen, even when sales of the games start to go down hill.