20 consecutive tin ore +3 synths with over 500 quality each time: no +3 tin nuggets. My entire modern mining career's stock of +3 tin ore (I can't remember if I used any +3 tin ore for bronze, so it might have actually been every +3 tin ore I've ever mined), plus another batch from the wards, gone. I got like 24 +2's and 64+1s. That's all the cold hard data I need to vote to overhaul the HQ part system.
Assuming 10% of +3 mats you use actually make +3 parts, which is what the case is in my experience with pumping the parts to 300-600 quality with them: Four thousand iron ore+3s get synthed into one thousand iron nuggets+3 get synthed into twenty iron ingots+3 get synthed to two iron plate+3s. This only incorporates the number of +3's you make from +3's. You do marry up +2s and +1s, but again my experience is that 2/3 to 3/4 of my +3 successes come from all +3 mats using my own mined materials.
So four thousand iron ore +3s converts to four iron plate+3s. Four. Great. Maybe forty +2s. Ok I can take some good shots with those. Four hundred +1s. Ooookay those aren't really capable of making any +3 R40 gear, but probably enough +1s to glut the system and a half dozen +2s to sell decently. 1600 NQs. What am I going to do with 1600 NQ iron plates? Take em all to the bric-a-brac, that's what.
That's the reality of this system. A lot of people still want them that rare, but there are a lot of people who like the idea of poor gameplay keeping everyone else out of their activity. Some are crafters that can tolerate monotonous grinding. But most are RMT who will take to farming fallen mobs for +3 plates and dominate the market if the system stays this way. They drop iron plates and chains, and are completely saturatable by RMT because of their rarity and low spawn rates. Twenty RMT can probably lock down every fallen mob on the server.
If crafters can't make +3 plates and chains and RMT can lock down the mobs that drop them, it's only a matter of time before RMT buys crafters. Then makes the +3 gear that you can't. Then owns the entire thing.
The system has to change. Has to.