If the new players need those OP then they can team up and take control over these OPs. I've seen other nation take over OPs near the other cities quite a few times during my FFXI career. Fortunately I have every single OP collected from a long time back, but taking over the OPs is all a part of co-operative play. I don't think SE really needs to fix anything here unless they tweak it to make the control gain higher with less work, yet it would be nice if some of the same co-operative play still stayed intact.