Runes suggestions

[Addah]

I've edited a few of the options

best way to slow down progression is to just remove all runes from gold shop and remove the upgrade rune scroll. down grading is fine as it means you need a hr to be able to get what you need. upgrade makes runewords ptw for early game.anything in the cash shop should be purely cosmetic.you could also cap all drop rates at the 8 player game rate so you can have 64 in game but drop rates wont be effected. imo this will draw out the game experiance enough for the time between resets.

The runes only really matter when the ladder resets because nobody is going to spend 800 gold on a Ber rune.

Upgrade scrolls aren't as overpowered as you say because you could upgrade items regardless with the cube recipes excluding superior items, also ethereal armor can't be enchanted so long-term you only want ethereal weapon. If there was an "add X amount of sockets" scroll then that would be pay to win.

I agree cap all drop rates at 8 players would get the job done but it might be better to cap at 20 players instead so people don't set such a low "player limitation" on the games they create, and games rarely get over 20 players now without people stacking their mules, unless ladder is fresh.

The same thing with drop rates I could see helping with XP rates to moderate progression a bit more and help with long-turn objectives.

Having Rune Downgrade scroll cost 1 gold would hugely benefit Rune trading and value at lower levels.

remove exp gain via spectator mode and rushing possibility or just turn it off

Disabling it is a bad idea because it means a very unique feature is removed from server advertisement, but nerfing the XP gained by 50-75% or removing it would give players enough incentive to go out and actually play to level up after a certain point.