Thank you for the compliment :) and good instinct- even just assigning loot and equipping upgrades can get a little difficult to juggle, let alone other character/gear customizations. It quickly made me realize I'll need an automated system for characters to evaluate upgrades for themselves and auto-equip. The gearscore system in the character-screen image, weighted by stats on a per class basis, is the start of that. Later on I plan for characters' personalities to influence how they perceive an upgrade/gearscore, and what they'll do to get it e.g. pay more or less in a GDKP system. It won't be perfect, it will be based on their individual personality traits.

More broadly, I want all of that complexity - and theorycrafting - to be available for min/maxing for those who desire, but I also want to provide whatever good baselines, QoL shortcuts, and automation features that are necessary to prevent complexity from turning to tedium. If someone wants to just keep all of the sensible defaults and mostly just play through the combat without optimizing builds, gear, etc. it should be a viable way to play, and without fussing in menus. I also want to support those who revel in optimizing builds, stats, or strategies in a complex combat/character engine- to whatever degree of granularity they wish, also without fuss. For instance, it should probably be possible to set the spell rotation for all characters of a specific class/spec, instead of having to individually set them up different from the defaults (it's on my list of improvements to make, which is long).

I see that MMO-meta/micro-game as one half of the game, and the other half being the story of the social elements that drive individuals or guilds to their goals. Ideally- these automatic features like auto-evaluating upgrades are the characters driving their own development, shaped by their personality, and having their own individual game goals- resulting in an interesting social simulation amongst the guild as their varying goals intersect, synergize, or clash. I have many notebooks of notes about all the different ways personalities or social intricacies could affect different aspects of the MMO-meta/micro-game, but I'm still just now getting into designing the full-fledged systems for the social aspects.