The down side at least for MA was that skills was getting out of control and the bigger skills went to people that had crazy gear (uber gear).
Isn't it pretty much the same? Just that there now is a new category of uberitems; the repairable SIB items.
If you're lucky enough to have a (repairable) Eredicator Type Four, you have much easier to skill plasma than if you have to use oldschool relatively slow plasma rifles, the snable-level Heatray, or the (L) eredicators that costs 140% or so and the biggest one is comparable to Korss.
Or gauss rifles, that dropped a bunch a few years ago to (mostly) to a few top-20 societies, a happy crafter got a few clicks on BP for repairable and asked 75k peds/each for them; and the only (L) one that shows up in auction is a reseller trying to sell same one again, again and again (with only difference lower TT each time).
Right now it's somewhat possible to skill using (L) mindforce attack chips (note, no higher level heal chips have been dopped, or resurrection/wormhole) - but in my experince, one day one or two repairable chips will be dropped, and then the (L) ones will be gone from loots. Compare with LR63(L) that for a while was common from ambus, but each time a repairalbe dropped, the (L) ones vanished from auction.
And it's still probably more efficient and economic to gain skills using IMK2 or simular weapon if you have access to one, than it is to use LR6x(L) bought from auction. Or ofc a repalrable LR is cheaper to skill with than (L) ones.
Not all (L) things are bad and expensive; the (L) faps like UR-125(L) has gone down to a reasonable level, and at the same time as the (L) faps came, price went down on EK-2600, making it an affordable option, so both the (L) faps and the repairable has gone down in cost.
The (L) items have a disavantage though: You can't rely on the calypso market (anymore) to get them if you are staying on another planet for a longer period of time. And even if there are traders, I doubt they will bring every level of (L) weapon and every level of (L) faps with them. If you have uber items (either oldschool uber or new repairable high level SIB weapons) you will have an advantage on planets like Arkadia because you will never run out of "weapon" (maybe enhancers, but if you have a mod merc+A204 you will still be able to hunt more efficently than someone who used up his apis from calypso and now has to resort to either the normal EWE-40+a103 or the TT weapons. And someone who wants to use rockets and have the repairable SGA launcher (and skills to use it ofc) have an advantage over those who can't get new ones above Detpil/Skildek-50 level.
To sum it up: You still need to have the right gear to be able to skill up in the longer perspective, especially if you're hunting in a closed market.
(Ancient greece is closed also, but it's designed to be that way and it's currently the same for everyone there since at least for now there are no real repairable uberitems that works there.)
