So I just got the new update and went back to working on getting my Butter to platinum. I then find that all of the requirements for crafting gear has been reduced dramatically. I was able to get Butter from gold 0 to gold 3 with just one energy refill. Is this a glitch, a test, or is this supposed to be happening?
Yes, Gear requirements are now lower but will be less common to get from now on.
What do you mean by less common?
Example, not true numbers: gold throwing knives had a 1/10 chance yesterday. Today they have 1/20.
However instead of needing 20 gold throwing knives to craft the gear slot, you now only need 6.
So it’s a nerf/nerf…
I’ve updated this for all the items, essentially there has been a massive reduction in items needed to craft all items. Obviously with a huge decrease in items needed, your not going to have the same rate as before when finding the parts.
By massive I mean a change from 40 > 14 fragments for platinum items.
But the item will be more difficult to get?
Less gears needed to upgrade your heroes, but the gears itself will be more rare to get from missions ?
Items will drop way less often now, essentially putting the advantage in veterans who already have a ton of items saved up.
from what I understand, it’s a net positive (where it’s still easier to get than before).
Hmm… i wonder if the dev will be decreasing the gears from co-op raid like Gorgon, also…
have anybody checked it?
So lucky me who prefarmed about 300 knives, stars and canisters is now able to upgrade masses of heroes? 
I believe it is a net efficiency advantage to upgrade heroes from green and up to gold, where the lowered gear requirements outweigh the adjusted lowered drop rates (measured by effective stamina cost per gear item).
However, after gold (ie at Plat and Plat +) the slight decrease in gear requirements does not make up for the drastically lowered drop rates for plat items.
Probably yes, up to Plat zero. I don’t know if you farmed Core Mk 1s, Core Mk 2s and Core Mk 3s because those seem nearly impossible to drop now.
No I did not, just prefarmed the stuff to upgrade the new heroes to Platinum fast.
If the amount of throwing stars and knives available to buy from gauntlet and alliance store doesn’t change then this is HUGE positive change, regardless of mission drop rates. Likewise if the canister rewards from raids are unchanged.
From what I have noticed so far drop rates are worse - but not terribly much worse. So so far, it’s all good change.
I had 2400 stamina saved up from the last 2 weeks and blew the lot on Min - got her to Platinum I’m not sure how much stamina I usually spend to get someone from Green -> Plat but definitely more than 2400, no? Yes?
I think they went to far with it. A platinum hero is the upper end of leveling up your hero. Now it is just laughable easy to gain. A little adjustment on knives, bronze canisters and stars would have been enough.
Gold grenade belt fragments, gold throwing knives and gold sniper rifle fragments, all of them drop rate are so so worse that i spend more than 300 stamina to get only 6 fragments of three each.
Dev. Team please improve their drop rate.
Not sure what you’re seeing, but my experience is much like what @ULFPAM said, I didn’t have to use all that much stamina to get my Min up to Platinum within like an hour or so of updating my game. So to me, the drop rates seem like they’re fine, (I definitely needed to a bunch of Gold and Plat frags)