traditional clothing that keeps you warm and looks nice is not "$5000" (lol). also… Buryat, Sámi, and many other indigenous Siberian/Arctic peoples wear bright loud colors without being rich.

anyways: (a) sabotage is more interactive than milling, since the Corp can just trash bad cards (or even ambushes like Shock!) from HQ, rather than trashing unknown/random cards from R&D.

(b) Esâ's core damage triggers is finite & small (it's a countdown), even if it weren't limited to once per turn, while Noise's virus installation triggers are frequent & recurrable. it's easier to install-over two empty Imps, then Déjà Vu & reinstall them; it's harder to keep increasing your maximum hand size with cards like Marrow.

and (c) If you say "beginner players hate getting milled out" (true) but don't also say "newer players love building mill decks and milling out older players", you're ignoring how fun (for most players, in most games) alternate win conditions are. they're one of the best ways to help a beginning player become an intermediate player, by building their first jank mill deck. it's what I do when I learn any game, and it's what I see when I teach any game. removing all mill from NSG sets (or even just from intro sets like System Gateway, or even just all competitive mill cards, or so ob) would not necessarily make them more beginner-friendly, since it's not just about preventing very negative experiences, it's about providing very positive experiences. and (like it or not) beginners love milling.

This parka definitely costs a lot more than Draco’s yoga pants

when you buy Rainbow clothing as a tourist in bolivia, you pay the gringo ya,

when you buy rainbow clothing as a tourist in Bolivia, you pay the gringo tax. when a Bolivian person makes clothing with colors, or buys it from a factory, it's cheap.

an eco-extremist who's sabotaging Jinteki factories and research facilities, has thought about how to make clothing and grow food without Jinteki's slave-clone labor.

runners modding computers and their own bodies is accepted worldbuilding, but an environmentalist modding a parka to be warmer and more colorful elicits incredulity.

(a) There is little difference between milling cards from RnD and thrashing them from HQ. In both cases you are remvoing your win conditions.

(b) The damage you can do is finite, yes. But it is not negligiable. Esa itself can sabotage 6-8 cards each game. You can mill 8 cards in general with Chastushka. You can be a mini Noise with the resource. Time bomb is unprevenable, etc, etc. The deck also just builds itself, write x:sabotage and go to town. It's not interesting deck building nor it is fun to play against. It is apalling to me that the designers learned nothing after years of playing agaisnt Noise and DLR mill decks.

"Little difference between milling cards from RND or trashing them from HQ." I'm not sure on this. Esa is bad enough at doing typical runner stuff that I think an Esa deck is banking on a small number of runs on central servers winning the game. Giving the corp the ability to choose HQ cards instead makes sabotage weaker even if they use it relatively rarely.

Against Esa, I feel pretty confident throwing away HQ cards even if it SEEMS more inefficient than throwing away unknown R+D cards because Esa is bad enough on economy that I am confident that I will win if I can minimize the amount of agendas getting sabotaged. On paper an HQ card SEEMS more costly to give up (because I am giving up a resource that I have paid ~ a click for) but I like to think of this as me paying a click looking for a card which is safe to pitch against a runner who is desperately searching for agendas and has less than normal long-term viability. When I'm facing a runner besides Esa, letting sabotage hit R+D is my default option because non-Esa runners are more viable to win on sabotage value even if they aren't sabotaging agendas.

Worth noting that now Time Bomb is a thing, this playstyle is even more relevant. Esa is brutal.