Hi!! i very much agree with the things you said here, liloure....I unfortunately fall into the "increases bids by 200pc" crowd, but wanna explain that a large part of why I do that is also frustration with the auction house itself.

The long snipeguard is tiring and doesnt really deter a small group of people coming in and repeatedly bidding on last-minute auctions, so I tend to overpay bc 1) it'll likely keep those people away and 2) theres no other real pc sink, so it doesnt really matter if i spend a lot at once. (I don't regard super pixcoins as a worthwhile money sink so all i really spend my pc on is auctions)

It's also become nearly impossible to even get some of the limited items due to hoard times/large item pools in specific rarities, so when one Happens to come up on the auction house everyone goes ape for it (and in that case, it really is just pc and persistence and it suuuuucks, especially for new players)

The problem with having a purely auction-based economy is that you dont really Remove any currency from the game, but rather just generate more thru hoard returns/hoard selling and push it around between players (and in this case specifically, it's like three players on this site lmao) so i really do understand your frustrations, and im sorry your experience has been stressful.

tl;dr: The economy itself is broken partially due to the auction system being the only real way to get some items, the only people who even have a chance are people who got lucky or are already super established players and it sucks