Gear missions are the most important thing to look for every week. You can upgrade to epic quality ur few missing pieces on many important event crusaders. So far the missions were for crusaders who's events were gone only recently, e.g. Draco, Broot, Rakoon, Alien.

Unfortunately the new gear mission which just came out is for Larry who I have just unlocked with a mission and I have no gear on him. This could have been avoided if the criteria for choosing the crusader would be if it was unlocked from the event and not from a mission. This would ensure that gear missions would remain Epic for us everytime!

Then the most efficient strategy would be to skip new crusader missions, so that you keep your event crusader pool only to those u got from events. Gear missions are the most important thing in the game, crusaders from missions are almost worthless (because of no gear) and u only use for ep and gold missions.

Who are of NO use without gear

Plus, some crusaders are pretty good, even without gear. Jack O' is a great tank, even with only his base abilities.

How could a mechanism be ruined when it hasn't changed since its implementation? And to your first post: No, gear missinos are not the most important thing to look out for. CNE never intended them to be. Missions themselves are an add-on to the main game. To beat objectives is your main goal. How you deal with the prerequesites of the game is your responsibility not the game developers.

Now, to your easy fixes:

a) There is hardly any way to differenciate between crusaders unlocked during events or through missions. You do get an achievement if you unlock the crusader during the event, but that's it. I don't expect the game to check in multiple routines whether an achievement is there or not. Too many calculations during a game which needs your CPU-power for more important stuff like calculating the 1e100-ish DPS you need to beat late levels.

b) From my point of view, this would be unfair to gamers who didn't get rare gear during events. There are a lot of players who can't fill all three slots during events, let alone get rare on all. There are other suggestions out there, proposing to get a crusader with full uncommon gear during missions which I also find unfair since it disfavours those players who were new a year ago and still are with the game.

Yes, it takes a lot of time and yes, probably a good strategy would be not to run every crusader-hire-mission. But I'm with Teschio. Play the game for long - it is an idle game after all - and you realize, it's not a big deal. With new events, new crusaders come in being nearly as good or even better than the old ones. Focus on them and use the gear missions for what they are intended to be. A nice little add-on.

I had this long post done before I deleted most of the lines. Because I realize this doesn't help at this stage.

From my point of view, what it comes down to is this:
Yes, I accept the fact that you are not alone with your wishes and thoughts. My problem with this is the tone, though. I don't think it is wise to state so many opinions as facts nor do I think even 100 Players stating that they wish a change represents the majority of players.

I also agree that getting gear for event crusaders after the event is done is tedious and involves a seemingly endless amount of time. However, from my point of view this is not an issue. For me, the main driver of the game is to complete objectives as priority number one. This causes the need for good crusaders and high idol count, indeed, but - and I think this might be the major difference between our opinions - I hold myself responsible for doing it the most efficient way.

And I do care. I am very excited what is going to happen once we get to October and whether CNE repeats events or not. I am very excited about getting more content, new challenges, new epic items for my old crusaders. But I also care a lot about the game not losing its appeal it has on me. Not getting everything within a few months or even within a year is part of it and so are campagins and their objectives.

So, with this, I think we have exchanged our opinions whether stated as facts or thoughts or whatnot. The good thing is, CNE so far had a very good track record of adding/changing just the right content whether on their own motivation or due to wishes and I trust their ability to keep up with that :-)

Gear missions are NOT the only way to get gear for event crusaders; sometimes I notice that weekend events include chests for event crusaders. But that means paying for them often, which has its own problems. I agree that the current situation seems counterproductive; the more event crusaders you recruit, the better you are at missions, sure, but the harder it is to get gear upgrades for the event crusaders that NEED them. I am not certain what the solution is, truthfully; I suppose you can hold off on recruitment missions until after you've filed up the ones you have, knowing that sooner or later you'll get them all anyhow. I do wonder if there couldn't be a better mechanism, but I'm not overly put off. I am more annoyed by just how very difficult it can be to fulfill many of the big mission requirements. But time IS on your side.