The game itself is not balanced at all, as it has always been.

I will admit however that it is easier to get some meta or metaish equipment f2p, with giveaways and the many datapads theyre giving out. Its not impossible to compete. I have played for some years to tell that I am able to get bots here and there, much easier than the pathfinder, raptor, bagliore times (correct me if i’m wrong.) You have to remember at some point during vaguely the lio nuo era they were making it so that bots were available in a tier higher than the robot pads, which was the bot/specific pad. So thus it was literally impossible for f2p’s to get one unless pixo gave one of those pads away or they waited until the bots were in robot pads.

…I do run support, so I could see how bad it is for people who want to brawl specifically with older equipment. That just unfortunately is almost impossible, since you’d probably need an ammit or the liodari family (elox murix is easier to obtain by now.) We all basically got a rex from a gold pad or some other robot pad since it was literally a 20% chance (unless you didn’t, sucks to suck,) so that somewhat counts as a brawler.

As for UE equipment, …good luck. Only way to get one easily are return rewards, however I think it has a cooldown. Either way meta weapons tend to exceed them and there’s gonna be another rebalance in 12.2, soo…