You know what might be a factor too, is that people were probably using Spinmetal for trade-in using the chest loop glitch. If you had a decent enough route going with Spinmetal farming and you were fortunate enough not to have someone enter the area and mess up your loop, you could get upwards of 500-600 mats every hour if you were really fortunate (probably closer to 450-550 with the right chest/node spawns). In this case, farming WOULD indeed be a faster method of getting the same amount of marks/rep... .....and perhaps Bungie knew this. All I know is, I think that if someone wants Crucible Quartermaster stuff, they should play Crucible. Plain and simple. And this is coming from someone who has basically resolved that he will not get anything from the Crucible Quartermaster for a looooooooooooooong long time, since I don't do that much Crucible.