In the beginning, up to year 2005 or so, it was possible to loot useful/fun repairable items. At year 2005, they stopped to drop silently, but MA still said "everything drops" (what they didn't say, was that items only drop if someone TT:s an old one). After that, it was possible to loot certain mid/low-level items, but it slowly dried out; I guess we all remembered when the a101 amps started to go high (before that, some smart guy fooleed beginners that a104 was "rare" while it still dropped, so most of us didn't realize it in time). "Junk" weapons like FranD Alpha regularily dropped from argonauts, for instance but at some that stopped. (It's still possible to loot fap-5/15/18 and such though.)
Then, some year ago, the loot system was changed. Before the change, a bad hunt was considered bad when you got 80% back - after the change, mobs like feffs (at the time having normal regeneration) started to drop HOFs like 10k PEDs - but more "no loots" came with it. As MA said, the total loot wasn't changed, just the distribution of it. Because of this change, the "loot swings" became bad, since it's now possible to get runs where you get less than half back. Because of this, as someone else stated in another post, to hunt a mob like argonaut you should have at least 2000 ped on your card to cover the "swings", and afford to stay floating waiting for next HOF to fill it up - if you "deposit as you go" you have to stay depositing to cover the bad runs.
After the "old" items stopped to dropp, MA was step by step replacing them with (L) items. For old players with high end weapons and tons of skills, this didn't mean any change - they could keep on hunting as they done before. For them, higher end (L) weapons was good for certain occasions - they can use slightly better/faster weapons for things like pk/pvp - but for hunting, they can rely on their mod merc and shadow armor, they don't have to go into the (L) area normally.
For beginners it wasn't any bigger change - they can still get entry level weapons (repairable) in trade terminal (but the problem for a low level player who supports himself by sweating is when he's about to leave opalo and realizes that next level weapon is 20-40 ped, which is very tough to get by sweating alone).
For mid level players, it's sort of split: If you want to hunt economically, you can use weapons like P5 and Korss 400 (handguns) under your skill level. If you want to use weapons at your skill level, like LR-65 and HL-14, since they're (L) you have to pay basically double markup and they also decay rather fast. (Higher level players don't bother, because for them a carbine like LR-65 is a pk toy and nothing to really use for hunting.) There is a commonly used BLP rifle, the "apis" - but to use it economically you should have a repairalbe "dante" amplifier, an item only one player ingame has the blueprint for, and for which materials rarely drop - this unfortunately makes the "dante" amp into something "resellers" thrive on. (There are (L) amplifiers for Apis also, but they typically cost ~200%.) Basically as a mid level player, you have to chose between "grinding" (using economic weapons below your level), and fun hunts paying 175% for a weapon where you spend 150 ped TT in decay.
Also, after the old items practically stopped to drop, this made the price rush in some areas; for instance in mindforce where wormhole chip has gone up from ~1k ped to 10k ped and resurrection chip from 3k ped (compare with the old "revival terminal") to 35k ped, and long range huntign rifles like ml35 which gone up from 3.5k ped to 27k ped (they have gone down a bit though).
From a mid-level player's point of view, it feels unfair that the current ubers looted items like adj fap, shadow and so on from mid-level creatures at their time, but now those items has moved with them, so instead of adj fap from ambulimax last drops were from eomon stalkers. Other examples are Gauss rifles changed (silently) from 23 ped Beacon missions to Mulmun Elites, mod merc from gokibusagi/feff to spider stalker, imp fap from molisk to spider stalker (not confirmed) and in some cases item is still on same mob but higher maturiy (Foreripper from Atrax Young moved to Atrax Stalker). The best a typicla mid level hunter can hope looting is a decent (L) weapon that will last for a week or so at most. (There are repairable new weapons, but they seem to for 50% of the cases go to ubers/spouses of ubers).
Right now I hope to loot somethign nice during SGA, but with 1200 items and maybe 35000 active players, the chance isn't overwhelming; say that of those 80% of the items would be "fun collector's item but nothign I would really hunt for" (for instance a single piece of Shogun SGA armor). Getting a piece of repairable martial SGA is also fun, but not that useful in the long run for me since it's only one piece and I'd need 6 more pieces to get a reliable protection (at martial level at least). Knowing loot distribution is as it ususally is, eg letting someone get 2 FAP-69 SGA (good because of eco) in same run, I think I'll mainly hunt what I usually hunt and some random mobs hoping for a miracle.
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