You're not "mid/late game" if you're finding the cost of removing gear prohibitive :)

There is a good reason why removing artifacts costs silver. Otherwise you would only need a few pieces at all and swap them around your champions. Grinding gear is an essential part not only of Raid, but of all similar games. Your suggestion for free artifact removement would destroy that aspect of the game.

You could argue that each champ should have a "free shot" and the first piece of gear on every item slot could be removed for free once. That would make it easier to test your new champs in battle. But a total free artifact removement wouldn't be good for the game.

Yeah, if you're going to add or change a feature pertaining to gear swapping, add something like "gear profiles" that you can save and swap out much like the saved teams feature. No change to the cost, but an abitlity to create gear sets and/or label pieces would be nice 

As I said, it's only my personal opinion.

And i don't agree, you need many different stuff on many champ for all this great content, and with the drop rate and roll mecanic you have to farm and spend way more silver than the few needed to change gear in comparaison. And you usually need best piece in many artefact set to be optimal,  removing gear change cost won't affect the difficulty to achieve that.

But still, it´s wasted ressource (500 energy in spider farming for a 5 piece change) for what cost? Experiencing the RPG part of the game which should be free (like The key mechanics in doom tower).

Dunno if I'm mid/late game for you, I quit after I beat all dungeon 20, some 25, 2 key NM, 4 UNM, clear normal DT, and felt like the rest of my time will be auto farming stuff forever on. In gacha game, that's usually the part where you start having your RPG fun... 

Gear removal is not cost prohibitive, it's just  a useless part for me, make me feel like loosing my time. I spend way more time in FFBE for this only reason, and at the end when you like spending time on a game, you agree to spend money a bit, but again, just my opinion.

Agreed. I shudder to think of a version of this game where you need to regear champs multiple times per day. Gear for FW, then for arena, then for DT, then for dungeons. The friction here is actually good for the game.

Like I said - far from "late game". You haven't even reached "mid game" yet :)