I disagree with this theory when it come to present pyrite situation. Before the VU last year that introduced the Next target thing in pvp. Pyrite was quite easy to find and many globeled on it including my self. Including my self, then not long after I noticed it was extremely hard to find and needed a much deeper finder to find it. It had fairly low mu before that VU and then after raised quite rapidly 130% to over 300% before MM.
I have mined loads over summer (never got higher than Considerable since VU) stocked up and sold on Caly AH. a lot has been used over MM and there has been no difference in finding it. I have spoken to over PVP miners and they agree with me. Its not like Raging Daikiba Bull Blood Sample that's has one use, it has unversial use that is need in many different bps. I may only be noob miner compared to my peers, but others also do not buy in cap on pyrite theory.
It raised rapidly due to very targetted resource manipulation. The group(s) responsible have methodically targetted one resource after another. It's also very simple, the three things in the game which can be guaranteed to be regularly consumed are pyrite, dianthus and ESIs.
This is how I feel as well.
Would be silly for Mindark to allow players to hoard and completely stall supply of ores/enmatters.
Then again when I look at the dunkel situation, I almost believe it.
Putting it on/off wave and lowering the general distribution would make the most sense.
It could be that rare weapons such as ep-41 / amps etc work differently and actually do have set item caps. But that's no reason to believe that mineral resources work exactly the same way.
People are still occasionally looting things like supremacy armor, shadow armor etc, does this mean someone TT'd some uber armor recently? Probably not...
It is a bad system but MA need to retain full economic control and this is one of the only ways they can do so. Unfortunately they (or rather, regular players) are being strong-armed by a certain group.
Items (unique ID) and resources (ores, materials, (L)) do work in different ways. Items are defined by total number in-game, which resources are defined by total TT in game.
The fact that you can still loot a random rare armour part means nothing, for 2 reasons - firstly, loot frequencies for those items (or rather, timing segments for those items) are very low. Secondly, MA can alter the item caps at any time (balancing manager). Want to drop an IMK2? Just +1 the item number, and one will turn up (on a Longu unless they change the loot tables).
Why do you think newly introduced looted / mined stuff always, always follows a positively skewed distribution curve? It would, if the only function was loot frequency (timing segment), tend to a flat distribution (one could argue slightly positively skewed due to activity).
As I said, MA are stuck between a rock and a hard place because if they raise item caps, the hoarders will just market dump their stocks and we will see a complete crash, with a very long period of instability. If they leave it, one certain group (NO NAMES LOL) will continue to seize resources.
I wonder what people will feel like when the only lootables are ammo, shrap, lyst, oil?