The suggestions in OP are pretty OK, but a little to stretched into unrealistic measures. IE, MA would never do so or even consider it.
As long as whatever happens, if it at all happens, I personally do hope they look into how the game "plays out" more than just "fix loot". Loot is kind of meaningless, but so is the entire game. I play because I like to just click and shoot stuff and hope for swirlies. But I really do wish that i could play for something else as well.
I mentioned in a different thread id much rather see them hardcore try to fix new beginner stuff first. then fix other things accordingly. Imagine a anew player dropping in now, you get shooed away for asking questions, you have to google yourself to more or less every answer, nothing makes sense, and you are stuck at a permanent lvl 1 beginner zone untill the end times unless you depo.
imo, the whole beginner experience should straight up be a place almost 1/4th the entire island, with different mobs of many kinds (a lot of brand new mobs as well. That has puny -> Old maturities, larger areas for mining, and a simple "find stuff and craft it" introductory systems to crafting. The mobs in this area should litterally barf loot at new players, it would not need to be valuable stuff ped wise.
And skill gains in these beginner places should have a hard cap, somewhere between lvl 5-10 perhaps in proffessions, once new players trying the game could join, play, see that there is stuff to do, the start has meaning, and they stick around to see the massive world outside, those interested will start to venture beyond these limits.
And only then, would changes to the rest of the system start to make sense, more sense at least.
Yes we play the swirlies, yes we all want better loot, i doubt anyone disagrees on that
But the focus, imo the more i read through posts and threads after poking my face back after years, the feedback hasnt much changed from "We want better loot" ( I was one of these too) to what we should focus on "We need to fix the introductory system to retain new players, and make it appealing. This way we can fix that, which in return will lead to fixed loot."