Gonna take this one by one:
1. Shaders have always been earned through gameplay.
2. It's great that you're adding more places to earn them.
3. Would you consider this flush? This is DGAF Everyday Math:
Look how many shaders! Wow!
Look how many are below 4.
It takes a long time to get to 20. And even once you get to 20 you're moving through gear at a fast pace. ZERO incentive to use shaders til you're at the very end game and have a stable loadout.
But what shaders come from where? The kiosk used to handle this. You can inspect some vendors to see, but this a real problem.
But that's still gonna be true if the shaders aren't consummable. You have 3 weapons, 4 armor slots, and a ship. And that's before you get into alternate load outs and other characters.
I gives me real anxiety looking at this (mine is similar):
I'm not good at picking out what colors go well with each other. And I am paralyzed trying to figure out what to apply to what. And the penalty for changing or undoing is so steep.
I hate this change. Only the consummable part of it. Keep 'em as drops. Just don't penalize me for experimenting and wanting to change things around.
This is like 2 years when class items had light and you had to wear the highest light item even if you hated it because it had the highest light.