COF is worth praise but Merchants Guild feels... underwhelming?

I want to preface this long write up by saying I think CoF system is wonderful. Everywhere I look, people are so excited to play CoF, to rank up those juicy bonuses and drop god tier sh*t. I'm truly happy that SSF enjoyers don't feel like they are knee-capping themselves by not interacting with trade. But I personally enjoy trading (no, not the stupid camping + asset flipping trade). I enjoy knowing what people are looking for and the dopamine of dropping something that's worth a lot on the market which when sold allows me to push to buy a BIS item worth squillions.

But right now, l think Merchants guild doesn't feel great. In some way's its better than competitors like PoE and in other ways its not. The bazaar system is definitely a huge step forward compared to using third party sites and whispering 10 (likely afk) players for an item or interacting with bots to trade currency. But other than that... it's generally more limiting. 2 steps forward, 2 steps back.

Firstly, all item's are not retradeable which is intended to discourage market-flipping gameplay. I think the intention is good and pure. LE dev's want you to play the game, not play the bazaar. And I believe its completely fair to discourage pure flipping based sales (just sniping and re-listing with no added value).

But the late game fantasy for a trade leaguer (which is what also keeps the market going) is crafting, selling and buying juicy juicy BIS items. To craft a BIS Legendary you need an exalt and a unique with LP. Currently, if either of those are bought from trade, the resulting legendary is (correct me if I'm wrong) untradeable.

This makes crafting in the end game using the faction mechanic of the bazaar an economically underwhelming activity as the only way you are going to put a juiced legendary on the market is to drop both components yourself, craft and then sell it. Doing all this without the massive buffs of CoF and for an item that is probably not relevant to your class which means you need to know exactly what the market is looking for. Why would anyone engage in this when they can just go CoF and target farm exactly what they need? Trade players should feel rewarded for taking the time to know what other traders want and providing it to them.

I believe there should be a mechanic that allows items you've crafted with components from the market to be sellable. Maybe to sell it, the forging potential needs to be 0 and you need to perform XYZ missions/tasks to acquire a token of sales. If this mechanic proves a bit too/not effective enough, LE already has the Favour mechanic which can only be earned through gameplay which the Dev's can tune to ensure people aren't just sitting at the bazaar trading/crafting/selling all day. It would encourage actual economic activity at the end game and provide a chase goal for trade league enjoyers (whether that's buying the components, crafting and selling BIS legendaries or buying them from selling other stuff). I believe it's the endgame fantasy of trade players that is currently missing.

Secondly, the faction rank ups don't feel good and Trade has no cool 'mechanics'. CoF has such amazing mechanics with the prophecy system and lenses and those juicy rank up bonuses that make you feel so much stronger every rank. Comparatively, in the Merchants guild, I just feel like I'm slowly having my trade ankle-weights removed. I understand their reason is so that trade players don't reach act 9 and immediately begin 'bazaar gaming'. But LE already has the fairly punitive Favour mechanic and non-retradeable mechanic to ensure this isn't an issue. What is the point of restricting me from selling the one unique with LP I found while campaigning?

They could condense current rank 1-10 into the first 5 ranks (I'd get rid of them entirely tbh) and then add bonuses and gameplay missions for interacting with trade from ranks 6-10. Something like a dynamic bounty/favour discount for dropping/selling uniques that are currently high in demand or side-missions to protect a trade caravan that grants you a 'sales token' that allows you to trade a crafted legendary or get a favour discount on your next purchase.

It also doesn't help that players are encouraged to 'trade' to rank up their faction. But at rank 1, what are you selling to rank up? Who is on the market for a blue/yellow campaign item? People just started listing random sh*t at 0 gold, praying someone also looking to rank up will waste their favour buying it. I'd argue you can't interact with the entire trade system at all until at least rank 3-4 as that's when you can begin listing anything of actual value and also have earned enough favour to actually buy anything of value. I believe the Favour mechanic is already punishing enough and there's no need to restrict people from selling stuff. Dev's can always tune favour costs to ensure market activity is where they want it. Why restrict people from buying/selling stuff they find until mid-late ranks?

Thirdly, this is a minor gripe but having 50 bazaar vendors is not a great experience. I get the 'gameplay experience' they were going for by making item categories different vendors but mostly its a hassle to remember which item vendor is where. It's especially annoying when you are trying to sell. For example, I dropped a unique quiver mid-map I can't use with decent rolls. I need to screenshot my item. Take it out to the bazaar, go to the right vendor. filter for my item, pull up my screenshot, compare the prices for comparable rolls. Figure out what's the right number and then close the vendor screen go back to the listing guy and list. This actually makes me miss the third party PoE trade websites which allowed me to easily alt tab and pull up any comparable item and immediately know the going rate, even mid-map as soon as the item drops. Third party POE websites also conveniently let me know what is considered 'hot' and 'valuable' at any time so even without knowing all the 'meta' builds, I could enjoy the dopamine hit of identifying a high market value drop. Right now in LE, unless you check every vendor and memorise the high value items, that dopamine hit on drop doesn't exist. You often genuinely have no idea if the item that just dropped in front of you is worth inventory space until you take it back to the bazaar.

TLDR: Merchant guild faction mechanics (there are none) and rank up bonuses feel bad compared to CoF progression. Auction house and sniping/asset flipping restrictions are a major W, but restriction on trading crafted items severely hurts end game fantasy. And lastly, there needs to be some sort convenient price checking/tracking/collating feature for the auction house to feel complete.