New content suggestions

[Gluttony]

First off I should state that I am a new-ish player and have only been part of PL since the Winter Wonderland campaign. I started this thread to throw out some ideas about where I believe the game should be heading and just want to put them on paper (so to speak).

1) New campaign Balefort Sewers. First off is the lack of loot/gold, since everyone is trying to reach the elite level 56, most people are doing strict xp runs mostly in Bandit's Hideout and skipping Gold Fever. Many people have done the math and this nets you ~100 xp and maybe 300 gold per run, with the potential of no loot what-so-ever. Skipping the boss means you are not guaranteed any loot, making these runs a giant gold sink hole with the use of even the cheapest xp pot. Even if you do happen to get a pink drop on a mini-boss, no one has the gold to buy it!
Solution: Make drops more frequent. In Alien Oasis repeat Keeper runs were tedious, but at least I could liquidate all the drops I received in the run to cover the cost of a pot. There should be mob drops, mini-bosses should drop for all members of the party and so should all bosses.

2) Level 56. I think the move to add an extra level and create an elite bracket of players was perhaps a good idea; however I'm not sure that's what was actually achieved here. The prize for reaching the Crown of Persistence, which has decent stats, but forces players to choose between the new level 55 gear and breaking up their level 50 gear (which just received bonus set stats). I thought the crown would be a vanity item so the "elite" players could wear their crown with pride!
Solution: Make the Crown of Persistence a vanity item. This could motivate the people who don't want to break up a different set to actually want to level up to 56.

3) Crafting hiccups. There are a couple of craftable items that I seem to have no use currently: Fine Chain Scraps/Sheets and Basic Magician's Wand. Fine chain scraps are awarded as for completing the Kidnapped quest. The recipe system seems flawed, since the recipes are so hard and then they are consumable?!
Solution: Create a new armor that uses the fine chain, change the enchantress wands (Gemstone Wand, Gemstone Shard Wand) to be crafted with basic magician's wand (fixed in 1.7 Content Update 56585). Make recipe drops added to a "permanent" crafting list, so the recipe isn't consumable.

4) Consignment Store (CS) issues. There are two slots in CS that seem pointless (one more than the other) and that the rings section and the vanity section. Since rings are currently only available through platinum purchase they cannot be sold or traded and will never actually appear in CS. The vanity category is filled with numerous colors of one item, the Hooch Hat.
Solution: Remove the two sections from CS, make rings available through drops/crafting, add new vanity drops.

The top three issues are the top things that cause me to log fewer and fewer hours on this game. I do enjoy it to a point, but BS can really be a downer sometimes.