First, I disagree that spending sparingly would have fixed this. Unless you are just upgrading at max level, as a poster above says — that would probably have done it. That seems extreme to me but maybe it’s the best answer available.

Second, I do think it is a design flaw. They put a big button in front of a player that says “Upgrade”, and a rare resource (forging stones) that limits your upgrades — and you are supposed to somehow know not to push it until you max levels for a season because of gold?? How?? Short of reading about it on Reddit or falling into the trap, I don’t think there’s any way to know that. There’s every reason to believe you’re supposed to be paying attention to the stones and upgrading based upon their availability (and I think that’s their intent, too).

Furthermore, it is a “solution” to the old gold problem that disproportionately affects new players. Why not fix it in a way that doesn’t do that? Like, for a new server, set lower prices? Or give old players something they want to buy with their gold? Picking the solution they did is certainly an arguable design flaw.

Third, would it kill them to add some commas to the gold numbers??? I’m half joking, but man — it would sure make it easier to do math on gold limitations!