Yes, that’s why in the second paragraph I addressed pricing via materials. Then I appealed to both availability to imperial cataphracts and market capital. But instead of reiterating it, I’ll add more observations. The imperial elite cataphract is paid 21 denar as a daily wage (given the performance, sure). If we extend that to the some 100-ish day years in the game, it’s 2100-ish denars as an annual wage. The gear they wear is currently priced around 700k denars. If they went into debt with 0% interest to purchase the armor, thats about 333 years before they pay back the debt on the loan, and if you compound mortality risks... well let’s say whoever is paying for it is richer than faction leaders. Which means we must come to several conclusions—that the price charged for an imperial cataphract’s lamellar plate armor is either heavily subsidized, financed by multigenerational debt obligations (slavery with extra steps), or, more reasonably, our premise that the actual price of the armor set at 700k is false.
But if the premise being false is unacceptable, there are other alternative explanations that don’t have to do with materials or wages yet make it available. Namely, imperial village leaders may be secret armor producers or are loaded and pay for their children’s armor. Or perhaps most battle loot is being claimed by our troops to repay loans. Or even merchants are artificially charging high prices to players (in which case, why can’t I send an npc to buy the armor for me from this secret supplier?). Looking at these factors, I can only conclude it is unrealistic pricing