Maybe they didn't want people to buy a bunch of materials then be able to use the materials to increase their rank with a faction to quickly. I've never used my materials to increase my rank but I like being able to buy materials instead of spending like an hour farming helium filaments and come out with only 100 of the little shits, I have 2 times as much helium as I would spending an hour farming it lol. Not hating just commenting with my opinion