Please read: No it isn't. No they don't. Yes, why are you finding this difficult to understand? Your argument is flawed, because it demonstrates a fundamentally flawed view of how Trials works. You are assuming that talent is EQUALLY distrubuted and that everyone who enters the contest has an equal chance of running into someone that will beat them. Simply not true. Matches are made based on CONNECTION SPEED. So who you play is a product of who LIVES near you, and thus has has a similar ping time. So you could live in densely populated area and have a high chance of running into a buzzsaw....or in a sparsely populated one, and a lower chance of doing so. Plus as players get their gear, most good players will "cash out" and move on to other parts of the game....or comeback to "backpack" lesser players. So ANYONE who plays late in the week will ALWAYS have less of a chance of running into a team that beats them. The gear that is dropping in Trials is OPTIMIZED for pvp. The "Adept" versions just have elemental damage thrown in, in case the owner wants to go play end-game PvE and not have to change gear. This is not about the Lighthouse. It is about a small subset of VERY good players that are ALREADY better than most....THEN being given gear that then MAGNIFIES that gap. You will slowly create a situation where others can't compete. That is why sports league don't let last year's champions go FIRST in the draft. Which is why professional sports leagues sho more parity and more competitiiveness than their college sports counterparts. College athletics employ a winner-take-all approach....which is why all major college sports are DOMINATED by a small number of programs. That hand the championship hardware back and forth between them. Trials is headed in that same direction.