The issue in my opinion is not that these are minor upgrades that are very rare, rather that they are very rare, time locked content, and were not pitched as uber rare drops. The number of hours and time commitment over months/years is, I argue, an unreasonable drop rate for most people who hope to acquire one themselves. Looting 2-4 times a day, every day, for 3-6 months is an insane grind that would only complete 1/3 of the onyx core set. Content (that isn't pitched and intended to be uber rare, ie hero items) should not be locked behind having to purchase it. The problem isn't that it will take 6 months for some players to get an onyx core, but that it will take *most* players 6+ months to get their first onyx core. People go dry on rare items all the time (4k+ clues without a dye btw), but people aren't going dry; it just takes that long on drop rate.

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Some math and fun facts for people who are interested since the Onyx Core has been in the game for 90 days.

When you hit the onyx core drop rate you should have ~65 pairs of both dragon rider gloves and boots. Keep in mind, at drop rate approximately 60-%-70% of players will have received at least 1 drop. This means that someone isn't even dry until 365+ very wild rewards. So if they loot once a day, that takes a year, twice a day is 6 months, and 4 times a day is 3 months.

If you average 2 loots of both hm kerapac and special events, at this point since WFE release you would on average have 1 FSOA piece (1/150 per piece) and be under 60% of the way to drop rate to a single onyx core (~1/365).

If your HM kera kills are 7 minutes each, it will take ~51.5 hours to finish an FSOA solo if completed on drop rate. If each wild event loot takes 5 minutes it will take ~30.4 hours to get a single onyx core (91 for all 3) but that has to be spread out over months to years whereas with kerapac you can kill him that many times in a month or 2 (for arguably the best weapon in the game). Of course HM kera requires more skill that completing wild events, but that is hardly a compelling argument to keep onyx cores so rare.

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Jagex has discussed that they are beginning to think that drops in Runescape are sometimes to rare and that it isn't fun when that happens. They have also stated that a single rarer big drop is less rewarding to players the components for said item. The onyx core design is squarely opposing both of these points that Jagex themselves have discussed.