Well, this is about what one would expect from a drop rate nerf, though I have to say I am saddened by how this is going to end up.
I am an on and off player, and this account is probably one of the older ones around (since before the release of even pirates, I believe.) To be honest, the main issue the entire time was... well, time. The difference between a dedicated player and a casual player is wildly skewed. Drop rate isn't even the start of the differences between dedicated and not; potentials, mesos, star forced equipment, especially tyrants in GMS. A casual player will stuggle to get a high star tyrant equipment piece, a dedicated player can get a cape up to 10 or even 12 stars within a few days, should they spend enough time meso farming.
I like the idea of shutting down the requirement for needing drop rate, but how it's being implemented really won't work. The end result is every item becoming more expensive, and illegitimate ways becoming more common because of the difficulty spike this will provide. Nodestones and Arcane River Droplet Stones are already hard enough to find, and a minor boost to nodestone drop rate isn't going to be enough since the sheer number of them that you need is far beyond an extra one or two an hour. Not to mention droplet stones are being left untouched; in the current game it's said to take an hour per droplet stone to find. That's with the current drop gear. Casual players are completely barred off from even finding one droplet stone, and dedicated players are going to struggle to find more after this change, due to the fact that you need not a few droplet stones, but 240, just for the weapon alone. You need 160 for any piece of equipment, and just the weapon plus one piece of equipment, at the current rate with drop gear, is 400 non stop hours; which is far more time than many are willing to put in, even some dedicated players will get turned away by such low rates.
I'm saddened to see that drop rates will not improve at massive scales, allowing dedicated players to finish things quickly when it comes to nodes and arcane river droplet stones, while casual players will at least be able to see what a droplet stone looks like in their inventory because they aren't a once in a lifetime drop.
All of this is only concerning level 200+ characters as well. Players of lower levels are also being affected, and unlike nodestones which get a minor boost, they won't receive any benefits either.
I'm not against dedicated players getting drop rate equipment, in fact I'd like to say that they should be rewarded for doing so, but the simpler solution would be to boost the drop rates of items so that casual players have a shot at farming instead of knocking down those who put in the time. Many people simply don't have the time for farming all the nodestones, arcane symbols, and droplet stones that end game requires, not to mention anything lower than that also gets pushed down. I just want to see a time where even a casual player can see the end of the game instead of artificially raising the difficulty by means of drop rate. Having incredibly low drop rates will not make players want to farm them, it would push them to leave, since the odds are not even in their favor to find the item they're looking for.
