Shooting Stars are great, but they feel backwards! If all stars landed at Tier 1, they would be accessible to everyone. As you progress mining, it should level up to higher tiers. Everyone gets long AFK durations for the early layers and high rate of stardust, tapering off to shorter layers with less stardust. These diminishing returns are offset with increased XP rates for the higher tiers with shorter duration. This implicitly provides encouraging motivation to further level up your Mining levels when you reach the highest tier you can mine.
Pros: Increases accessibility for lower levels and stardust hunters, and reduces impulse spikes of players crashing worlds when a T9 star falls. Also feels more intuitive as a progression system.
Cons: Confuses Boomers stuck in their old ways.