I came to this thread to see a compelling argument as off why ED maps and/or the vah sword drop rate of them should be increased. Unfortunately, all I got to see so far was some incoherent rant in the lines of "my content is contested and I'm too lazy for the alternate route" and some circlejerking. Voted 0/10, would not want to read again.
Amazingly the title worked as a lure. If you need to hear why this should be reworked you are really not paying enough attention.
1. There is no "fishing economy" anymore so you cannot just buy maps. This in itself marks a need for an alternate way to get a sword, or a boost to drop rates(?). If an economy really existed here you'd see people rise to meet the demand, but sadly the ED map rate is too low to make it worthwhile.
2. Prison is killed pretty much on spawn for archaic frags and ED maps which are an extremely low drop rate. You might see a map once every 6 clears. This forces players into an almost endless cycle of killing low teir raid trash, which already needs to be done in other raid zones for: Archaic, Ancients, Combine, Faction Augs, Other Vah pieces, Clickies... etc, etc, etc. Yes, we get it, its "ever-quest" but having this same old mindless grind at every point in the game gets stupid really fast.
What is the benefit the staff sees in keeping the drop rate on ED maps so low or not adding the sword to anything else? The staff has put in a wonderful effort to reduce some of the major pain points that currently exist, however the difficulty of a single drop for no other reason rather than to make the Vah take more time to complete is uninspired and one of the most bafflingly lazy quest designs. Maybe back in the day when t6-8 was real hard frickin' content and killed constantly this was viable, and its silly to summon up a few people to farm t6 garbage, get people together for a map, and not get a sword to drop (in total at least 4+ hours of work for over 3 people).
I'd like to throw out the "at this point in SoD, with all this content, we should be reducing some of the grind that is entailed with newer players getting up to the t10-t11 mark" conversation, but I think thats obvious.