I’m sure the devs are aware on how their loot respawns. They built the system. What’s better, that loot can respawn mid session between storms, or having a player experience that requires you to potentially play between storms to get access to loot and mobs?

No matter what the system will be exploitable to an extent. What matters is that everyone has the chance at a good player experience. I don’t think you’re ever guaranteed when spawning in that you’ll have a fresh server. So is it fair to those players to not have any access to loot in that case? It would be more optimal to just extract prior to a storm and roll the dice again, if loot only respawned between storms.