I have heard a lot of new players foolishly buy gold from Duke with their doubloons because they want to buy some cosmetic they simply cant afford because starter voyages pay so little.
Its a real jerk move to have such a love value reward for the doubloons. I feel like it was there for legends to be like well you dont need rep so you can always dump the doubloons on gold. Yet you get far more gold from doing a fort or an athena and you can never replenish the doubloons, once they are gone they are gone.
I think having gold as an option just hurts new players who dont yet realize how much they are going to want to buy the last reputation levels. I think even a notice when buying reputation levels that they should save them till higher levels just so you dont see poor kids buying lvl 10 rep ups. Its just one of those things people dont see in game how low value it is to use doubloons at certain lvls and how extremely low the gold payout is for the doubloons. If you look at the cost of ship cosmetics and compare them to how much they cost in doubloons and how much gold trading in doubloons would get you its clearly not even equal value in that regard. Younger players are impulsive and I feel the doubloon vendor right now kind of punishes that fact. You get to the point where I am athena 10, every cosmetic the vendors have to offer and sitting on 3 million gold. Seeing Duke offer 10k for far more precious currency hurts. Im saving my doubloons for the last levels of arena rep because I hate pvp and am not looking forward to that grind