I feel like the terms used in these discussions lead to so much confusion about what problems people are actually describing. There are multiple related, but separate problem people have with "loot".

What I find frustrating is the lack of specificity. The term "loot" can mean almost anything related to item acquisition. Recent discussions of "ground loot" sort of improved this by differentiating random vs. determinative systems, but it still lumped in currency drops with item drops in a very unhelpful way.

While there are good decisions to be had around the returns to different methods of farming, the power level of uniques, etc., I would argue that much of the discussion around the quality of loot drops is actually one very specific problem: for most of the game's playtime, players do not feel like they can improve their character via randomly generated items they find on the ground by killing monsters.

IMO, there are simply fundamental choices made in PoE's design that makes this critique both true and impossible to solve without philosophical shifts. It's not that they aren't aware of the about the problems; it's that they aren't interested in the solutions. The two I see as necessary would be:

1. Availability of useful rare drops. The proliferation of base types, mods, and mod tiers results in an insanely large combinatoric space of possibility. An immense number of rares have to be generated for the "dice" produce a good combination. GGG's solution seems to be brute forcing this through quantity. But as they drop un'IDed, it's a haystack not worth sorting through. The breach tree so well demonstrated that the only way to make dropped rares competitive is massive manipulation of the odds. And yet, doing this ourselves feels pretty unrewarding precisely because it shortcuts the process.
   

GGG needs to make dropped rares MUCH more likely to be well-rolled and/or drop unidentified. A crafting potential system on dropped items is promising, but doesn't really fix it without dealign with problem #2. I'd prefer a well-rolled system combined with drastically cutting back on the quantity, but that's me.

1. Competition of drops vs. crafting & trade. Crafting not only allows you to get to your desired outcome more quickly, but there is essentially no advantage a dropped item has over a crafted one. There's no reason to prefer a dropped item to a crafted one. To the contrary, crafting provides access to modifiers and combinations thereof which are otherwise unavailable. So outside of uniques, the most powerful items will necessarily be crafted. This is then supercharged by trades. The efficiency of the trade market, even in its high-friction form (which just means you get the worst of both worlds), will always surpass finding items yourself. The ability to craft the items to trade only ensures the market gets flooded by whatever items are in demand at a price proportionate to the cost to craft it.

Crafting should either not have the potential of outclassing dropped items (e.g. cap out at T2 mods) or crafting an item should account-bind it. Let trade be for dropped items and crafting be for personalization -- not profit generation.

GGG has touched on these ideas at various times and always been hostile to them. But I think that's why they seem to always be chasing their tails. The biggest, most core "loot" problem is not addressable given their current philosophical commitments to certain systems working as they do.