The grind to get an item to level 20, when you factor in how many materials you need to farm for in total serves little to no purpose and is just filler for the sake of filler.
The material cost to level up your expertise really shouldn't be a thing at all, even if it means a slightly lengthier grind to get each weapon and gear piece proficient, as 99% of the playerbase is going to get an item to Proficiency level 2 or 3 and then go right, that's a waste of time.
You're looking at up to a 1000 hours of grinding those materials just to get yourself a full inventory of level 20 proficiency items/gear, especially if you aren't familiar with material farming routes and if you weren't sick of seeing the same 3 places before, you sure as hell will be with this addition.

Just remove the material cost for levelling each tier, keep the option to donate materials to contribute to the initial levelling process and if it feels to fast, lengthen that a little rather than forcing people to grind ridiculously unrealistic amounts of time just to get one item to Proficiency Rank 20, because you're only going to see 10-20 people actually bother with any of this.

The only way this would make sense would be if there was a single currency, like phoenix credits that we used to grind for to optimize our gear rather than having to get a ton of all this random junk that nobody has an interest in like printer filaments and carbon fibre. More of this single currency for harder difficulty missions, rewards you for playing harder content and also helps you progress with levelling your gear. It's as simple of a solution as that.

This is either a clear cut case of time being grossly undervalued, or an expectation that people who have already sunk 2/3000 hours are willing to sink another 2/3000 more just to get a 10% boost to performance. The cost/benefit analysis is a big nope for most people, I like the idea of the proficiency ranks but it's hard enough getting back into this game after spending a few thousand hours in it. (Across multiple platforms) There's absolutely no chance that I'm going to spend another 1000 hours running material grinding routes and am almost certain plenty of others will express that same sentiment.

@f_stormhammer I'm skeptical of another 8 player gamemode too as a large chunk of the community hasn't even touched the raids, but lets at least give it a try first no? We won't know how much coordination is required until we've played it. My bigger concern is the time element, especially if certain bugs start creeping in again.
Slightly off topic but it was infuriating playing through Outriders Endgame content and being 5 seconds away from a gold time reward because you're stuck in a cutscene or an ability bugs out and you can't move, so I really hope time is more of an external factor as it just isn't fun when you're trying to explore and appreciate every little detail put into a map yet you can't because there's a finite amount of time and people are screeching at you down the mic to get a move on.

If I were a betting man, I'd bet time will be the main thing people take issue with here. I just hope the gamemode is fun enough to play through and doesn't feel the same every run or it will lose traction within the first couple of days.

@noxious81 While I can see your point, even if it's not designed for casual players it serves as a reminder that not only do these things not get tested properly, it assumes that people who have been burned out on a lack of new content for the last year and a bit are going to be eager to jump into the EXACT SAME content just for the additional power creep, that was the point I was trying to make. I am not against the grind, I'm against the method that they're forcing us to grind by. Why make us do all this trivial garbage with printer filaments, exotic components and all that crap when it could be all tied neatly into one currency that you could also use to respec your points with? The materials have always been a useless addition to the game and to this date crafting is still as pointless as it was on launch.

With the current rate, maxing out one set of gear takes longer than the average player will play this game for 4x over and I can't see any justification for that. As I said before, I have thousands of hours across multiple platforms, and I talk to friends and people about their thoughts on the PTS often. I'm not against a grind, it just has to be tidied up and worthwhile.

I'll address a few of your points though;

1. Yes, it is optional, but if you're trying to revive a game that has had nothing new for the last year this isn't how to go about it. "Here, grind everything you've already been grinding for another 1000 hours" is like asking someone to watch paint dry, have them tell you they don't want to watch it dry anymore and then say "But this is new paint, it'll dry faster you should watch it."
2. I offered a solution to removing the material costs entirely, a new currency that is gained by completing missions/pvp whatever way they want to introduce it kind of like how phoenix credits worked in The Division 1. This has nothing to do with personal entitlements grow up, I live in the real world where time isn't infinite and people have these things called jobs which the majority of people do. I'm simply using logic to point out that every last friend I have spoken to about this has said they are not looking to spend another half a year farming for an extra 10/20% or whatever the number is bonus to a couple of pieces of gear.

As I mentioned before, I'm not against the system itself just how they've paced it. If this was introduced at the start of the games life cycle I would be 100% in favour of it, but it's way too late down the line to be forcing existing players into another grind when the only new thing we'll have is 1 gamemode. They say new Seasons are coming but they offer the absolute MINIMUM when it comes to anything new. A couple of new sounds, a couple of slightly different acting gear pieces, yet we're still running the same damn missions over and over again.

Also sorry but there's no way they've been working on the system for 18 months. It's the absolute bare minimum for a levelling system of gear where everything gains the same bonus for levelling it and should have been in the game from the start if they wanted to make it this huge grindy mess that it currently is.

I've read all the support forums, I've tried reinstalling, verifying, changing DX versions, fresh Windows AND Graphics card installs.
This is just horrendous to run now, it's impossible for me to grind for this apparel event because I can't stay on the game long enough to actually pass through a mission, 6 times I've had a hard crash to desktop right before Extraction on Countdown now too and it's getting on my nerves.
Does anyone by some miracle have some off the book fix because this is beyond a joke at this point?

-Also I understand that it's part of your job but PLEASE do not redirect me to the support threads with the obvious fixes, I've tried all of them multiple times and would not be here if it were one of those fixes.

@n-o-u-s Some snow. I'd play through the whole 1-30 a 6th time if we just had some damn snow. Lol

@ron4ldobr It has a custom store, it just didn't have a person standing next to it so it was a lot harder to see because it was just kind of slapped in there.
You could buy Exotic and Named Caches, and it also had some other random stuff.

First off I'd like to state that while Delta Errors are occurring as frequently as I blink, this will not take that into account as the main game is more stable.
I'd also like to note that I have Asperger's. If I come off as harsh then I apologize, I'm just giving an honest opinion of what I've played so far in addition to some feedback I have gotten through talking with friends who play the game.
This thread may be updated as I play more.

COUNTDOWN - Summary;
15 minute bursts of powering through objectives, with or without your team in a mostly casual setting. Easily achievable timeframe, decent loot, very repetitive.
While it misses the mark for me, if you like Summit you might like this, though at this moment in time Summit has more appeal.

The Pros

-Enemy Health;
Enemies do not feel like bullet sponges, more like challenging difficulty enemies in a group of 4. While they hit hard, they don't destroy tanks in 1 hit and are fairly quick to take down. While not for everybody, it's a much more casual setting for when you just want to grind loot or XP and aren't in the mood to sweat out Legendary missions. I'm assuming this is because the difficulty is set to normal as others have pointed out, however the regular enemies themselves feel great. Hunters need a health boost however, even if only by 1.5x their current amount. I also didn't see one heavy minigunner, not sure if that's by design but it was baffling.

-Map Layout;
While the mode feels repetitive, it has quite natural pathing and having 4 people split right and 4 people split left only to meet in the middle at the end to help each other extract felt natural as that happened every match. Once you've learned which routes are dead ends the flow of the game is rather smooth and you'll see consistent loot pouring in.

-Simplicity;
While I will talk about this in the cons also, at it's core the gamemode is simple and does not try to be something it isn't, like how the Raids add puzzles that don't really add anything of value. This also means nothing will lead to frustrating situations like trying to co-ordinate with 3 other randoms to try and pull levers at the same time. With more variety and perhaps difficulty settings, this could be a good gamemode.

-Pacing;
While briefly touched on in the Map Layout, the pacing does feel right for a 15 minute loop. While personally I don't like the idea of having to leave after 15 minutes as load screens are fairly annoying in this game, my concerns that cutting it close to the 15 minute mark and having one little bug ruin your time are at ease. You can achieve the 15 minutes easily, but I will also address this in my concerns.

The Map as a Whole;
The map its-self looks great, I'm enjoying the atmosphere of it and when I have the chance I'll be seeing if there's any easter eggs hidden anywhere in there but for now I'm just looking for things that break the game and places to get stuck.

The Cons;

Time Limit;
I believe that the time limit in this gamemode adds absolutely nothing of value and is instead a hinderance rather than a feature. There is no sense of urgency and even with a broken hand I have been able to quite comfortably power through this mode both solo and in a group. HOWEVER, after seeing how poorly Outriders was received for its Time-Based endgame content they reversed their decision and just let players have fun within the mode, I believe that would be the smartest move in this instance.

Enemies;
I was quite excited reading the description about having enemies with advanced tech pursuing agents, however disappointingly neither of those things are present. Enemies feel very samey and there is no sense of being chased, no urgency and you can quite comfortably farm the enemies at the extraction zone until your timer is almost out. I think we were all really hoping for something new within the gamemode and to just see your bog-standard Black Tusk units roaming around felt incredibly underwhelming, especially the named enemies as 95% of the one I've encountered were just your standard grunt with a fire grenade and more health.

Variety;
While I like the map, the variety within the map feels very limited. 3 matches in I'd already felt like I've seen everything and the activities that are present you can just go do in Summit without a timer being forced on you. Nothing feels new, activities feel very underwhelming to complete and it's incredibly easy to miss the reward crate as people are in that mindset of "Only 4 minutes left, lets go to the drop zone!" (I've seen many people completely run past it despite being openable.)

The Map;
As a whole I love the map, however there are a bunch of turns that let you walk down for 5-10 seconds only to be greeted with a dead end and nothing else there. Some doors feel like they should be openable or just not there to begin with and until you learn that X leads to Y it can be incredibly irritating going down the same wrong path multiple times because you find yourself following somebody else. The pathing for the map also seems to be leading you off weird routes currently, hopefully that is fixed in the future.

Incentive;
I can only assume that buying an exotic crate with the currency is a temporary thing, however if this does stay I am absolutely 100% in favour of it.
The gamemode for me struck a huge miss in terms of reason to play, while it's fun in 2-3 session bursts, I feel like I'm just playing it for the sake of playing it and everything has that "I feel like I've seen all this before" vibe about it. I have no idea if you plan to tie exclusive exotics and cosmetics to this mode, but that would at least be something more desirable than just mindlessly blasting through objectives and extracting for points to buy crates that will likely give worst rolls than your current gear has.
In short, there's nothing to work for and as there's no difficulty or modifier settings, there's nothing to progress towards, no saying "I've finished this on X difficulty" or any sense of accomplishment really. At least with Summit you could say you've made it to Floor 100.

Pacing Pt. 2;
As I mentioned, I feel like the pacing for this mode is great for a 15 minute playthrough, however the bigger question is why does it have to end at 15 minuteqs? While I can appreciate the developers efforts to try and make something that isn't a clone of Survival, Underground or Resistance, this mode just feels like Summit with a timer slapped onto it. What's stopping new objectives from appearing? More bosses being introduced at a given time, something to make it more interesting and keep players hooked?

Creativity;
I want to give this mode a fair shake but it really feels like I could summarize this mode by saying look at Warren Gate Power Plant in Division 1. Not the entire mission, just the part where you're rushing to the end to stop the powerplant melting down. As someone that ran that mission on Legendary difficulty hundreds of times, to me it just feels like I'm running through that but with 8 players and less challenge. It offers nothing new to the game other than the map (Which I love the look of) and unfortunately I can see this being something people dive into 3-4 times and then going back to what they usually do. While this isn't for me I'm sure there will be some that enjoy it, however I can't say it has any appeal to myself.

My Concerns Regarding Countdown;
I understand that things are subject to change, however this is an AS IS review. If more is added or tweaked within the mode, I'll absolutely come back and review it again.
Putting this bluntly, if the gamemode stays like this I can't see myself coming back to it when it's officially out. Having had discussions with friends they have also felt the same way, it just doesn't have the magic any previous gamemodes have, and appears to have even less variety than Summit did when it first came out.
Here is a small list of things that came up within that discussion;

-First, it feels very repetitive, that is something everyone I've spoken to so far has unanimously agreed on. Once you've ran through it twice you've basically seen it all, in 3 hours on a voice call with 14 other people I never heard anyone say "This looks cool" or even just a "Wow", we all said the map looks nice but other than that it just felt like another day of grinding.

-Next comes the issue of value to the player, sinking your time into this doesn't feel like something worth-while, for new players maybe but for a large portion of the playerbase we've already min-maxed most of our gear and even if the addition of an exotic being tied to the gamemode were introduced, once that exotic is obtained people would likely stop playing once they've gotten it just like with the Raids.

-Reusing the same enemies time and time again is very tiresome, unexciting and in some cases just down-right offputtingly disheartening. My initial excitement for the gamemode was fairly high, as were some friends however after playing a few runs through it feels like we've seen everything. The use of Hunters could have been exciting but not only are they incredibly easy to kill, they bring nothing new with them into this environment. They don't feel like they're chasing you, it feels like YOU are hunting the Hunters while their pants are down.

-The timer, this came up tons. Most common thing that was discussed about this was why it was even in the gamemode to begin with, it's so out of place especially given that there is no actual sense of urgency. It's more like an annoying reminder that you have 5 minutes to pick everything up and leave once you're done. The only difference between this and Warren Gate Power Plant was that it actually felt like there was a need to hurry with Warren Gate, the environment was shaking, bits of fire were falling everywhere and you had an alarm blipping in your ear as enemies were rushing towards you.

-Aside from having to Alt+F4 because of the current infinite loading screen issues, it also just felt like a "Well, is that it?" kind of situation once the mode was over. The next two runs had at least two of the same objectives and where the map is rather small it limits the availability of activities to do. By the third run I was fairly disinterested in the mode and by the fourth pretty much everyone was off doing other things.

-Hunters were incredibly underwhelming encounters, and often we'd kill them only to realize they were a hunter after we'd gone to pick up the loot. They've been completely stripped of that "Something to fear chasing after you" mentality in this mode unfortunately.

I have yet to dive into the Expertise system, however that alone will likely not hold a lot of people over for too long. Once I've levelled up a good portion of guns and gear I will write a review for that also as that is where my main interest is now.

Suggestions:
As of right now the only things I can suggest are the obvious ones that others have suggested, hence reluctance to put them in here but here are a few;
-Time limit should go, it only takes away from the experience.
-Difficulty options / Targeted loot settings. Without this, Summit has way more incentive to grind through.
-Actually being pursued by the enemy. I was really hoping there'd be a reason not to look back and soldier on to the extraction, but there's nothing to fear ahead or behind you.
-More variety within the objectives
-Additional, more impactful random directives. It feels like every match I had 75% damage to enemies within 15 metres and 75% damage to enemies over 35 metres, which also had 0 impact on me rushing in and melting them.
-More chaotic sound design, especially if the time limit is staying. The designer did an amazing job with the track but it seems to feel really out of place at times. Most games the beat would randomly pick up and sound all dramatic while nothing was happening, then I'd get into a gunfight and it would be all calm and mellow again. Not sure if this is just my experience with it, would love it if someone else could give their opinion on that?
-Obstacles blocking unnecessary paths OR opening the paths. There's a few turns you can take that lead 10 seconds towards absolutely nowhere and every time you run down one it's more of a "Well that's a waste of 20 seconds" situation. Even with the ability to clear the time limit and have 5 minutes to spare, it just becomes increasingly annoying and doesn't add to the pressure of needing to rush to the extraction.
-Some kind of random events happening within the gamemode its-self to keep you on your toes and make it more exciting. Anything, acid rain, a swarm of rushers with bats, just something to break the monotony.


So with this I'll leave my closing statement;

This game has an incredible community behind it that know what they want, I've seen some incredible ideas in the past that aren't just "Bring back Survival, Resistance or Underground" and we want nothing more than for the game to do well, however this feels like an inferior copy and paste of Summit on a new map with a 15 minute time limit and a far less intuitive transition into the next run of Countdown.
Summit had it's own separate lobby, more variety in objectives & enemies and had some replayability to it, this on the other hand, as it stands does not.

As a long time fan of the franchise I just have to say please, going forward use the community to your advantage. Nobody would ever ask for a gamemode like this when we already have Summit, it just doesn't make sense and isn't fun after 2-3 plays through, adds nothing new other than the map and is completely deprived of inspiration.

-I'm also well aware that the new weapons and gear are not yet added into the game, however you can only add so many new guns to a game before playing the same thing over and over loses it's appeal. We've been starving for a new gamemode and sadly this just isn't it.

@arthurfriend I did suggest an alternative to completely removing the material cost, which would be grouping the requirements into one currency that is rewarded for doing everything within the game at tweaked rates depending on how long and how hard the activity is. I'm assuming you did not read the full thing or chose to specifically hone in on the removal of a cost entirely, which fair enough is the stupider of ideas, but the material grind is the most tediously overplayed thing out there. It adds nothing of value to the game and gives that incredibly false sense of "Look at me I'm scavenging for materials" when in reality if you're looking for the most efficient way to get each material you're forced to play the same things over and over again because the rates that you gain materials are stupid amounts more efficient in some missions.

Introducing a single currency not only makes the ability to tweak the pacing of progress far simpler, it gives the player far more freedom with the way they play without having to rely on the quickest way to gain materials, you play what's fun and you gradually build up towards that level 20 piece of gear, whether it takes a month or 3 months.
Then moving on from there you can then add things like dailies and weekly objectives that reward a small lump of this currency, encouraging you to not only play other missions and experience the full game, but also encourages people with less time on their hands to keep coming back daily because they know they'll still be able to make X amount of progress and not have to run the same damn mission every single day for maximum efficiency.

It's a progression system tied to the whole game.
You also missed the point I was making with the amount of time an average player makes, the amount of time it would take to complete this is so far out of the scope of sanity that you're only going to see maybe 10-20 people ever maxing all of this.
I WANT this to be a grind that you feel like you're progressing through and gradually working towards, I just don't want them to keep relying on that garbage material system.

@commander If it's not showing up on your list try closing out of Ubisoft's launcher entirely and opening it back up again.
Then, you can locate the PTS by searching for it in the search bar (See picture for reference.)

@ukkenny As some people read and start typing before reaching the end, here's a slightly shorter summary;

I did propose removing the material cost altogether, HOWEVER I was not advocating for it to be a quick and easy grind. I never once said that and I'm not sure why people keep jumping to that conclusion, I still believe it should be something you have to work your backside off for. I just see no benefit to forcing us to go into material grind mode for a third time, it's so monotonous and you're forced to run certain missions on repeat if you want to maximize the yield.

The thing people that are criticizing my idea are either completely missing or ignoring (I'm not undermining their criticisms they're still valid concerns) is that I also suggested an alternative to farming for the materials.
This would be adding a currency that you grind for like phoenix credits that are tied to difficulty/length of missions. The currency would be given for playing all activities but would be given in an amount tied to how difficult and lengthy the content is, this would also mean if they find people are progressing far faster than intended they can tweak the rates much easier than having to adjust each material individually.

Now if you're wondering what the difference is between farming for a single currency tied to all activities and farming for individual materials, if you want the maximum amount of materials per hour you are forced to run certain routes or missions because they are far better for farming than others, forcing those that want to grind into doing the same monotonous task over and over again. If you have the single currency, you can run any mission and they can be balanced to reward around the same with time taken to complete taken into account. This makes all activities worth grinding and allows you to play how YOU want, rather than being forced into that terrible material farm loop that has plagued this game since the start.

@justinstyles Sadly yes I've tried this too but thank you for the suggestion, hopefully that helps more people who are having similar issues.

I've read all the support forums, I've tried reinstalling, verifying, changing DX versions, fresh Windows AND Graphics card installs.
This is just horrendous to run now, it's impossible for me to grind for this apparel event because I can't stay on the game long enough to actually pass through a mission, 6 times I've had a hard crash to desktop right before Extraction on Countdown now too and it's getting on my nerves.
Does anyone by some miracle have some off the book fix because this is beyond a joke at this point?

-Also I understand that it's part of your job but PLEASE do not redirect me to the support threads with the obvious fixes, I've tried all of them multiple times and would not be here if it were one of those fixes.

@ukkenny As some people read and start typing before reaching the end, here's a slightly shorter summary;

I did propose removing the material cost altogether, HOWEVER I was not advocating for it to be a quick and easy grind. I never once said that and I'm not sure why people keep jumping to that conclusion, I still believe it should be something you have to work your backside off for. I just see no benefit to forcing us to go into material grind mode for a third time, it's so monotonous and you're forced to run certain missions on repeat if you want to maximize the yield.

The thing people that are criticizing my idea are either completely missing or ignoring (I'm not undermining their criticisms they're still valid concerns) is that I also suggested an alternative to farming for the materials.
This would be adding a currency that you grind for like phoenix credits that are tied to difficulty/length of missions. The currency would be given for playing all activities but would be given in an amount tied to how difficult and lengthy the content is, this would also mean if they find people are progressing far faster than intended they can tweak the rates much easier than having to adjust each material individually.

Now if you're wondering what the difference is between farming for a single currency tied to all activities and farming for individual materials, if you want the maximum amount of materials per hour you are forced to run certain routes or missions because they are far better for farming than others, forcing those that want to grind into doing the same monotonous task over and over again. If you have the single currency, you can run any mission and they can be balanced to reward around the same with time taken to complete taken into account. This makes all activities worth grinding and allows you to play how YOU want, rather than being forced into that terrible material farm loop that has plagued this game since the start.

@arthurfriend I did suggest an alternative to completely removing the material cost, which would be grouping the requirements into one currency that is rewarded for doing everything within the game at tweaked rates depending on how long and how hard the activity is. I'm assuming you did not read the full thing or chose to specifically hone in on the removal of a cost entirely, which fair enough is the stupider of ideas, but the material grind is the most tediously overplayed thing out there. It adds nothing of value to the game and gives that incredibly false sense of "Look at me I'm scavenging for materials" when in reality if you're looking for the most efficient way to get each material you're forced to play the same things over and over again because the rates that you gain materials are stupid amounts more efficient in some missions.

Introducing a single currency not only makes the ability to tweak the pacing of progress far simpler, it gives the player far more freedom with the way they play without having to rely on the quickest way to gain materials, you play what's fun and you gradually build up towards that level 20 piece of gear, whether it takes a month or 3 months.
Then moving on from there you can then add things like dailies and weekly objectives that reward a small lump of this currency, encouraging you to not only play other missions and experience the full game, but also encourages people with less time on their hands to keep coming back daily because they know they'll still be able to make X amount of progress and not have to run the same damn mission every single day for maximum efficiency.

It's a progression system tied to the whole game.
You also missed the point I was making with the amount of time an average player makes, the amount of time it would take to complete this is so far out of the scope of sanity that you're only going to see maybe 10-20 people ever maxing all of this.
I WANT this to be a grind that you feel like you're progressing through and gradually working towards, I just don't want them to keep relying on that garbage material system.

@snoopy1914_ger And that's an absolutely fine way to look at things, I'm not saying the system its-self is bad but the grind as it currently stands is so long winded you could play through the entirety of something like World of Warcraft and still have time left over before you have 20 items with a 20% boost within the same amount of time. I think they should tie it all up neatly with one currency that's rewarded for doing pve and pvp content, giving you more for the challenging stuff like Legendary and Raids, kind of like how Phoenix credits works. This let's everyone progress by doing what they like and you can control the pacing far easier than with relying on 6 different materials that drop inconsistently, so making tweaks becomes a much easier task.

@gnarlyatol1793 Sadly if you're looking for harder content then this isn't going to be what you're looking for. It's incredibly easy to level, it just takes a long time and is disgustingly grindy. It's going to make Legendary and Raiders even easier than they already are and I don't know if that issue is going to be addressed or not. I've been desperate for something difficult to do myself, which is why I find it harder and harder to come back to this game.

@noxious81 While I can see your point, even if it's not designed for casual players it serves as a reminder that not only do these things not get tested properly, it assumes that people who have been burned out on a lack of new content for the last year and a bit are going to be eager to jump into the EXACT SAME content just for the additional power creep, that was the point I was trying to make. I am not against the grind, I'm against the method that they're forcing us to grind by. Why make us do all this trivial garbage with printer filaments, exotic components and all that crap when it could be all tied neatly into one currency that you could also use to respec your points with? The materials have always been a useless addition to the game and to this date crafting is still as pointless as it was on launch.

With the current rate, maxing out one set of gear takes longer than the average player will play this game for 4x over and I can't see any justification for that. As I said before, I have thousands of hours across multiple platforms, and I talk to friends and people about their thoughts on the PTS often. I'm not against a grind, it just has to be tidied up and worthwhile.

I'll address a few of your points though;

1. Yes, it is optional, but if you're trying to revive a game that has had nothing new for the last year this isn't how to go about it. "Here, grind everything you've already been grinding for another 1000 hours" is like asking someone to watch paint dry, have them tell you they don't want to watch it dry anymore and then say "But this is new paint, it'll dry faster you should watch it."
2. I offered a solution to removing the material costs entirely, a new currency that is gained by completing missions/pvp whatever way they want to introduce it kind of like how phoenix credits worked in The Division 1. This has nothing to do with personal entitlements grow up, I live in the real world where time isn't infinite and people have these things called jobs which the majority of people do. I'm simply using logic to point out that every last friend I have spoken to about this has said they are not looking to spend another half a year farming for an extra 10/20% or whatever the number is bonus to a couple of pieces of gear.

As I mentioned before, I'm not against the system itself just how they've paced it. If this was introduced at the start of the games life cycle I would be 100% in favour of it, but it's way too late down the line to be forcing existing players into another grind when the only new thing we'll have is 1 gamemode. They say new Seasons are coming but they offer the absolute MINIMUM when it comes to anything new. A couple of new sounds, a couple of slightly different acting gear pieces, yet we're still running the same damn missions over and over again.

Also sorry but there's no way they've been working on the system for 18 months. It's the absolute bare minimum for a levelling system of gear where everything gains the same bonus for levelling it and should have been in the game from the start if they wanted to make it this huge grindy mess that it currently is.

The grind to get an item to level 20, when you factor in how many materials you need to farm for in total serves little to no purpose and is just filler for the sake of filler.
The material cost to level up your expertise really shouldn't be a thing at all, even if it means a slightly lengthier grind to get each weapon and gear piece proficient, as 99% of the playerbase is going to get an item to Proficiency level 2 or 3 and then go right, that's a waste of time.
You're looking at up to a 1000 hours of grinding those materials just to get yourself a full inventory of level 20 proficiency items/gear, especially if you aren't familiar with material farming routes and if you weren't sick of seeing the same 3 places before, you sure as hell will be with this addition.

Just remove the material cost for levelling each tier, keep the option to donate materials to contribute to the initial levelling process and if it feels to fast, lengthen that a little rather than forcing people to grind ridiculously unrealistic amounts of time just to get one item to Proficiency Rank 20, because you're only going to see 10-20 people actually bother with any of this.

The only way this would make sense would be if there was a single currency, like phoenix credits that we used to grind for to optimize our gear rather than having to get a ton of all this random junk that nobody has an interest in like printer filaments and carbon fibre. More of this single currency for harder difficulty missions, rewards you for playing harder content and also helps you progress with levelling your gear. It's as simple of a solution as that.

This is either a clear cut case of time being grossly undervalued, or an expectation that people who have already sunk 2/3000 hours are willing to sink another 2/3000 more just to get a 10% boost to performance. The cost/benefit analysis is a big nope for most people, I like the idea of the proficiency ranks but it's hard enough getting back into this game after spending a few thousand hours in it. (Across multiple platforms) There's absolutely no chance that I'm going to spend another 1000 hours running material grinding routes and am almost certain plenty of others will express that same sentiment.

@ron4ldobr It has a custom store, it just didn't have a person standing next to it so it was a lot harder to see because it was just kind of slapped in there.
You could buy Exotic and Named Caches, and it also had some other random stuff.

@n3mb0t You're also able to put a muzzle attachment on but can't modify the sight, so you can have a suppressor clipping into the suppressor.