Availability.I feel this is the main thing the the devs should address. As much as all weapons should be available, the game still needs to make money and the current idea isn't a bad idea. It's just too extreme.
Superiority.This is pretty much another way of looking at availabilty. Those who don't have the rare items can't compete with those who do. If we made the items more available it would make the game fair. However the game can't make them too available, else nobody will bother paying for the item boxes. As it is right now, even buying the item boxes with red tokens is a risk, and this risk is too high that you won't recieve anything.
Level cap.I would like to see the level cap reduced to say 15. Right now there are two levels you can fight at. Level 22 and level 30. Another thing I'd like is for the bounderies to be reduced (so a level 20 can only face level 19-21 mechs). That way you could build quite a few builds between levels 20 to 30 without having to worry about the higher level mechs being too strong for you.
Resistance and Shields.I feel shields are too high, and the singular put a post up saying they've reduced them. I haven't had a chance to check yet though. However I don't think there's anthing wrong with the resistance modules.
As the calculation goes it's:
(Initial damage-Resistance)*damage not absorbed by shield.
So two situations, with one high resistance, one low.
Initial damge: 50
High resistance: 15
Low resistance: 5
Shield absorbtion: 60%
1) (50-15)*0.4=14 damage (high resistance)
2) (50-5)*0.4=18 damage (low resistance)
There isn't all that much damage between the two. At least not enough to stop the long winded games we have now. The problem is more the high absorbtion rate of the shields right now.
Fusion core.I'm going to totally contradict what I've just said above, but oh well. I feel the damage gained from fusion is enough. Like you say, matches are longer now so you get at least 15+ attacks in per game. If you have +1 on all your items, then by the end of the game you get 15 damage (assuming you get 15 attacks) you wouldn't normally get. If you have +5 (which is where I'm up to now on all my weapons) you'll get +75 damage, which is basicly a free attack from a legendary weapon at level 30.
The torso level is also okay. If the torso gained say +10hp per level, then by level 5 it would have +50hp, meaning all that work on fusing all your weapons would only deal +25 more damage. Right now level 5 is only +25hp so your weapon damage is still doing +50 per game, still fairly high damage output.
Sorry if this is confusing, it's kind of hard to explain however I feel fusion is fare.
Switching stuffWhat I'd like to suggest once this patch starts to settle down is a auction house. If you get an item, that you alrady have or that doesn't fit your build you're able to sell it to other players. This also means if you get a rare item, other players still have the chance to buy them, however someone still has to work (or pay to the game) to originally get that item.
Degrading swordsIs good. No more getting your damage in and then chilling on the corners of the map fighting with droids. With the old mechanics, if you started an engage when a player was in the corner and they had a double sword, you always came out worse. Now it's a lot more fair, so you don't have to worry about sitting in the corner and having a droid battle.
Price MoneyI'm unsure on this. If they fixed the item boxes, I think the income is fine. It takes me 35 wins to buy an items box. If I use spend the money on lvl 1 legs for fusion instead, I can jump from level 5 to level 6 on an item, at the same price as the items box, so it's not all that bad. Since I'm winning the majority of my matches though, I guess it doesn't feel like grinding much to me. However I can understand how people could get frustrated. In this case, it tempts you to buy a supporter boost to gain money quicker. The game has to make money itself to run and it's got to tempt the players that could spend the money somehow