Are you fed up with the ever increasing cost of Canon gear?

Causio wrote:

Rock and Rollei wrote:

Causio wrote:

Anyway the main point of the post and my reply is more about Canon policy's itself. Back in the days there was low, medium, high priced lenses, now the medium category seems to not be considered anymore, it's either budget or premium.

You need to see things in the perspective of a much-reduced marketplace. You also need to consider that the optical quality of budget lenses is much higher than during the film era. Build quality is much better than later film budget lenses, too.

True, and that might be the problem. The gap is smaller than from the old nifty-fifty to the 50mm f1.2L, but I'm afraid it's not big enough to fill with another f1.4 lens this time. Switching from my EF 100mm f2 to the RF 85mm f1.8 doesn't feel like an upgrade to me, nor from my Sigma 50mm f1.4 non-art to the RF 50mm f1.8 even considering the Sigma's issue with evaluative exposure.

For me, the change from 85mm f1.8 or 100mm f2 to RF 85mm f2 has several advantages, and only one drawback, which isn't actually that much of an issue in the real world.
I've always like the old EF 85 and 100 USM lenses - small, light, fast focusing and reasonably cheap. But they're some way less sharp than the RF85, have much more fringing, don't focus as close and don't have IS. I would rather have USM on the RF lens, but after the first week of use of this lens, I've not had an issue with focus speed - just by remembering to use the limiter switch. Focus speed is fine for normal use, and also within close focus distance - it's when it's trying to focus throughout the whole range that it gets confused and takes an age. Also, although its a little slower than the f1.8 lens, light transmission is improved, so it only actually passes 1/10 stop less light. So I'm happy with this lens overall - feels a lot closer to an L lens in capability and optical performance than to what we might expect for the budget end. In fact I think that's true of many of the RF budget lenses, and that in reality, we have mid-range and top end lenses, but it's the budget end - in performance terms, at least - that's missing.
Another way to look at it is that it's possible to make an argument that for zooms at least, Canon long ago replaced the old middle ground with f4 L lenses, and that has been replicated in RF. I had a variety of mid-level EF zooms over the years - the Mk I 28-80 USM, 28-105 f3.5-5.6 USM, 24-85 USM, and then the 28-135 IS USM - which was effectively replaced by the 24-105 f4 L - yes, better-made, but very much in that family.