So why bother with alternate weapons?

Back in those times the whole reason of making a str dit was for the looks/availability of the Angelic betrayal. It was dropped at MDT's and cursayer was the best looking weapon (arguable against the DT). However a clean cursayer was half the price of something like a blood dagger. The point of my objection was players, although unfortunately not the majority, don't make DPS their highest priority, in fact look at the bigger scale of things such as efficiency. To an axe vs a sword the DPS will have a negligible difference. Nothing that would say, result in a bf war auto win each time. Just like there was an insignificant difference between a str/luk dit.

I'm still of the opinion that player psychology is largely directed by the path of least resistance (which has been around since beta). This path includes economic efficiency, as well as leveling efficiency. DPS and costs are just a subset of factors that influence player decision making. While the split is still around, you may notice that DPS overrules weapon efficiency and several other factors that go with it; one opens the possibility of nicely scrolled items for cheap, but they have to deal with a terrible damage formula, and extra time and effort just to still lose to swords (even to cheaper and badly scrolled swords) in the end. It's not as simple as the DEX-STR example for bandits which mainly involves hard stats, and therefore cannot explain why so many people have gone the sword path for so long. So it's not just economic efficiency, it's also those extra factors that go with the split removal. The path of least resistance should be a good working model as long as you don't involve Nexon's carrot-stick paradigm, which actually encourages bad decision making and perseveration as opposed to having fun. Finally, the point of the thread is that the split removal and weapon changes, while they do enable certain advantages to players such that many will choose to use the alternative for cheap, does not actually change the end motivational state of players. Instead, it consolidates the two motivational states from before, and whichever motivation is stronger wins overall.

Although I already conceded many of the points that have been brought up (such that the removal of the split was not pointless, etc), it needs to be emphasized that the debate can still really go either way, as I'm sure Nexon will eventually release the next generation of higher leveled weapons. This is one reason that I believe the buff is unsatisfactory; Nexon can just reverse their decision at any time, and it's really too early to make conclusions. Currently, and at the time of expected patch release, swords are two talking points ahead of alternates, while alts mainly have that one talking point of economic efficiency that really has always been there. All of these talking points are subject to dramatic shifts at the whim of Nexon, but it's good that players no longer need to waste their ability points on this crap anymore.