Quit playing months ago, is this game still just a mat farm to spend on the website?

Got tired I playing for hours and hours and not getting a single upgrade, only way I could upgrade was farming currency to buy stuff on the trade site. Is this still a thing?

Yes the endgame is still 100% a currency simulator. "Off the ground" upgrades pretty much don't exist except for jewels and maybe rings/necklaces. Forget about finding weapon upgrades unless your current weapon is truly laughable quality.

The game still drops ever increasing mountains of useless rare items such that you have to filter out everything wearable.

The "item hunt" beyond an early point has devolved into mageblood, cards that reward mageblood, and divinatino cards that reward mageblood or good currency. All other wearable drops are irrelevant.

Everyone is funneled into currency-heavy atlas league strats and everything else is ignored. This means ambush, delirium, harvest, harbinger, altar strats win and the rest is largely ignored. Scarabs just make the problem worse and most league mechanics are laughably bad in rewards with zero scarabs even with every atlas tree node dedicated to that mechanic (e.g. harvest).

It only ever was like that for those refusing to learn the game. Crafting your own items has always been cheaper if you're efficient about it. Especially midtier gear (10-50d range) is significantly cheaper to make in temp leagues.

If you enjoyed the game otherwise and are genuinely interested in it I'd suggest playing SSF and forcing yourself to learn the game.

No. It never was.

You can't even trade in ssf.