I won't presume to speak for Avery, but I can say that knowledge in this game is what gives you the (major) upper hand. Anyone who has half of entropedia memorized, or is an old school player, can just rattle off what used to drop Eon, Angel, Shadow, etc. After the first few Eon discoveries were off of the ORIGINAL drop mobs for the original Eon, it didn't take much brain power on many peoples parts to realize the following (those that had the knowledge):
1. Eon SGA was dropping from original drop mobs
2. Haul ass fast and don't stop til you drop
You can read my discovery (Eon Armguards SGA M) to read the story. It's already been presumed that there will be probably no more than 1-2 sets EACH male/female, so a discovery pretty much ends the search on that mob. I'm assuming Avery already knew where Gokis were, so when he got his first discovery off neconu, it was literally decided what the next mob was going to be (atrox or goki... atrox was already being camped to hell and back by hundreds, so that left goki).
It wasn't just "oh hey, I'll go out there and shoot a few and loot it", it was a madhouse (talking about the goki spawn). There were dozens of people there, with more showing up continually. Anyone who had spare ammo was jumping in and slaughtering gokis after Averys discovery. Also do not discount that Avery has a mod merc (?) and has a kill rate 3:1 over the regular player, even those with decent L weaponry. He probably burned 5x as much ammo as I did in the same time period.
p.s. - unless I'm mistaken, Avery only looted ONE eon sga piece off of neconu - the second he got from a goki.
I agree that it was a ploy to force high volume of deposits. The biggest problem that will haunt MA (among many others) is that they put the highest end items IN the high end mobs, requiring at least high end gear to have a "real" chance of looting them. And no, I'm not just talking about MM SGA, or mod fap, or imp fap. I'm talking the OTHER stuff, stuff like 8A SGA plates, A204 amp, supremacy, some of the other uber armors that only dropped from things that required uber gear to take, outside of a team...
But, as someone else did (think it was JC?), they compiled a list of discoveries/looters in total and posted it. There are a hell of a lot less given 'to the chosen few' (posted, that is) than to everyone else in total. How many ubers looted a mod fap? Imp fap? Martial?
The exception to this rule would be martial armguards, footguards and 8A sga plates (which, IMO, was bullshit they ONLY dropped from warlocks and malcs... gave virtually no one else other than ubers a chance of getting them!) - which was campable by the elite 1~5% of the game *only*...
I also have been saying for weeks to my friends that I believe this will signal the end of any high end UL item drops, outside of UL SIB weaponry and event prizes, so you and I are in agreement there... regardless of Marcos statement how this tiering process is supposed to help restimulate the drop rate of UL items
.
Ain't no one in their right or wrong mind going to 'tier up' the stuff that REALLY matters (like his baldfaced lie of how excellent a tier 10 mod fap would be... we're never going to see one to find out!) so MA's idea of 'restimulating the UL drops' just belly flopped about as bad as a 500 lb fatman in a concrete pool.