Admittedly, there's another debate on whether they've given up on lifeskills in general, but specifically with events..

Usually, there was at least one active event at any given time, cycling the lifeskills (except sailing/bartering, for no reason). In particular the 2x green thumb made gathering somewhat relevant, if only to max the level by underwater gathering or get rare stuff like delo essence, back when delo essence was valuable.

We've had weeks now of grind-only events. It's kinda important to know what the devs thoughts are on lifeskill events since stockpiling for a 100% exp event or -1s cook etc. is a thing, and the semi-regular rota from before at least made this somewhat predictable. More importantly, the events make it feel a bit more worthwhile doing a lifeskill, and given their current state, they're much needed. I think it fair to say the reason people don't lifeskill is more about the relative silver/h than 'bad content' - back in the day it was more worthwhile, it gave a lot of much-needed diversity to the game beyond running in circles. Going more and more towards a game that's purely about grinding a spot for crons, and doing events only about grinding spots for crons, seems a bad move.

I don't know what PA is thinking honestly, Since PA changed the way open world pvp happens it's like they are determined to drive on the one way highway that they know has a cliff at the end because the bridge has not been started and when the passengers say stop your going to kill us they simply make the ride a little more enjoyable by turning on the AC and the music ignoring the passengers screaming THE CLIFF THE CLIFF! The worst part is after the car finally plunges off the cliff they will be screaming all the way down asking the passenger WHAT HAPPEEND WHERE DID THE CLIFF COME FROM!.

There are videos on youtube, forum posts, twitch streamers, BDO partners everyone is doing their best to tell PA to listen and even as the BDO twitch directory is at an all time low they refuse to change course so at this point i have to assume PA doesn't care and they are intentionally trying to kill their game for some reason. Sad part is this is it BDO is the only game they will have that is successful, PA has burned the trust between the players and themselves and have shown a dozen times over they don't listen so once this game goes off that cliff anyone who knows PA in the future will most likely not give them a second chance.

The people currently playing BDO right now are invested by years of time and money, If BDO shut down tomorrow and PA announced BDO2 i don't know of many people if any that would give serious thought to playing a game where the developer has a record of refusing to listen, releasing content that either dosn't work or is announced and never added and refuse to acknowledge their mistakes.