MA was greedy , did some mistakes introducing to many things that can make players super eco , players found a way to "exploit" this and drain all the peds out of the game , now MA simply is repairing their mistakes. End of story .
I can say only congratulations MA !
Well, what really happened the last couple of years is that MA was taking mu% for themselves. This left an extremely stale economy all around (hunt,mine, craft). The buff stacking and "purchase your own UL gun and chip from MA" programs allowed too many players to completely circumvent the economy. This was pacified by the uber equipped players being able to mindlessly grind away at over 100% tt returns. As we all share in the loot pool, this was an unsustainable system long-term.
The fact that pills, rings, and UL upgrade paths for both weapons and armor were all essentially bought from MA instead of dropped in hunting,mining, crafting caused a near pay to win scenario.
For sure, short term, these were good moves for MA's bottom line, but again something needed to change long-term.
So now we have MA reversing course, and Loot 2.0 could be just fine or better than ever IF they take it seriously this time around and focus on the E in the RCE. Great care must be taken going forward on the releases of UL gear and general game balance.
Additionally there are still many systems yet fully explored to add to the economy layers such as space, player housing, transport missions, color/texture revamp, taming, resource gathering, scanning, decoys.. there are plenty of rabbits left in MA's hat to drive activity and mu% without resorting to webshops and upgrade paths, mission galactica etc.
High mu% environment has worked before and can work again, its just going to take awhile, and for MA to stay on track