[Shujin]

Ahhh...The old story!
I disagree on changing the Experience rates like this, I would instead like to see a whole green set (torso(30%exp)/hat(10%), toy weapons(50% exp, 0 power)) to make it harder but more rewarding, yes it does not solve the major issues but in my opinion? We should address the major issues instead of trying to band-aid patchwork the stuff every time.

-Koonies ideas with increasing exp rate from training is a good idea, it's basically useless for how much stamina it costs or well lower the Stamina costs so we can actually do it more often at least, there should be a fix exp boost of like 500-1000exp per level of the trainer at least, additionally. So I can bump level 1 characters over level 10 so they can trade.

-More kill 100 Quests for inks, that renew once a month or something as well. No one wants to go to the grind from 1-60 in a New Game+ style when the game is already pretty boring and only getting easier.

But ultimately the "I have 50 maxed character"- mentality is not good for any RP environment, no one can focus on so many characters and unable to focus on characters means that other characters can't focus on them either so eventually you get bored with them, drop the character and all the RP with them (and the people you RPed with have to do the same) and try it again...Repeat. 3-5 Characters are more than enough, put more effort into them instead, its more fun for everyone. Nothing is more annoying than to try to bond with a character and build some story, just to find out 3 weeks later they are gone and repurposed or something cause there was something new they wanted to test out. Because that's SO easy to do once you got some friends. So nah, the difficulty shouldn't be lowered. It should be more fun but not faster. Slower but funer. This will automatically calm down the "new character rate" of people a bit I assume, simply cause it's more time-consuming.

Also the "I have to be 60 or go home"-mentality. This is a product of the PvP heavy world, which is only like this because there IS nothing else to do. Besides RPing of course, which is also pretty much limited to casual, both because of this mentality and because there is nothing to really reach. And that 60+Max gear for the old dogs is about 2 hours of work, is not really helping with making the newer player feel less inferior-> Too easy if you have friends. So I think there should just be more things at the side that you can do. this IS a major issue for quite a while now, and I really hope we are addressing this next after the Trait-rework.
And no, clinic likes or diving is not really going to help anyone. They are just as boring and un-immersive, simply cause they need zero interaction with others. The world as a whole is pretty much dead and all narrows down to hunting in BDPs. Every Craft, every person (At least OOCly), everything needs to do everything in BDPs and rely on RNG. That coupled with how repetitive, easy and boring they are once you got the gist of it? I think this is what makes people feel the way they feel about wanting to SKIP the game. It does not help that the LE system tries to let us do it again and again.