Absent Elementals

The elementals have not seemed to work in the same way that other animals do; for example they don't grow in number after their initial appearance and they don't move from their standing stones.

GM ThunderCat made a comment in chat to the effect that players have plenty of elemental salts in their inventories, so the developers do not seem to be concerned by the "developments" in elemental locations.

This of course ignores the fact that the players with salts in their inventories may be largely or even completely inactive or even abandoned and that they are little help to the other active players.  If the markets were efficient, then increasing prices for elemental salts would induce people to release them from their inventories.  However, the markets are not efficient, and there is no special reason for people not to hoard these items.

The amount of silversteel in player inventories must be truly astounding by now; have the developers compared the amount of silversteel in player inventories with the number of elemental salts?  This is relevant because making pretty much anything with silversteel requires elemental salts.

The "there is already plenty in player inventories" logic also falls on its face when you consider things like the spawning of basic resources, food and gold on the map.  Players have plenty of those in their inventories; have the developers considered stopping this resource spawning?  Hopefully not, since the players who are interested in collecting them are generally different than the people who already have loads in their inventories.

As it is, basically the game is penalizing people who actually use elemental salts in favor of the people who hoard them.  Without regard to how people think the game should theoretically be run, my question is:  How much fun is that?

Theory falls flat when it does not serve fun.