So, having reached endgame content and spent 34 hours ingame.

Condensing 100 levels into 10 levels =/= Making all the enemies in a sector the same difficulty. Remember, the Easy/Medium/Hard is gonna be (at least from how I've comprehended it) a generalized way to show the difficulty of an enemy according to the sector they're in. You're most likely gonna have planets marked as Easy/Medium/Hard rather than 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10, which in the grand scheme of everything, was just more annoying. This game doesn't progress like an MMO where you're going up 1 level at a time, everything fits into a generalized area because that's how these (Sandbox/crafting) types of games are.

I don't think you understand how the AP mechanic worked, which again shows how confusing the system is without someone breaking it down at every step of the way. It wasn't actually based on more armor or less armor, it was based purely on level. Every normal enemy had 100 health no matter what, but if they were of equal level to your weapon then that's how much damage they'd take from it. Have a weapon armor penetration 40 that does 25 damage? It'll do 25 damage to a level 40 guy, meaning you'd be able to kill him in 4 hits. This system allowed for a simple take on the number game since 100 levels would/will scale weirdly, but in its implementation it just saw everything become underpowered and overpowered way too fast. By shifting to a traditional "Weapons will always do the damage they say whilst enemies will increase in health the higher up you go" model, it removes the confusion that can be had and also allows them to do a lot more bad ass implementation of buffs on weapons + gear. Legitimately get more health while progressing rather than always just being at 100? Fantastic.

 

I've probably said this three times now, but the current system is far to easy to exploit, You just go over to the highest level planet fight a neat weapon the surface and start one hitting everything and progress to the next section of the game within an hour, it's far to easy, the system they're implementing is balancing it for both NPC's and PC's to be on fair ground, No one will be one hit killed anymore, unless you got to tier 10 right away to fight a boss.