If it makes you feel any better this is the second major nerf to these drops. When they originally implemented outlaws they would drop insane amount of amazing trinkets.
Just SV doing their regular thing. A year or so after implementing something new it gets nerfed and nerfed into oblivion. All the people that farm it hard in the beginning reap all the benefits and late comers get screwed.
So, this isn't some new thing for me, and I've played MO2 since release. I've done thousands of outlaws and have routes from MK all the way to Fab that I've run regularly. I can count on two hands how many topaz or better pieces of jewelry I've managed to pick up and I've got RTGL rings I use all the time. The thing is, I used to think I could get something about once a month on average, but it is just stupid how dry it has gone.
Everything drops way too much when they first release something, which is actually contrary to what they should be doing. The interest of a new dungeon alone will provide activity for an area. If anything, they should be undertuned on release and then increase the drops a bit later.
Outlaws are better for the server. They spread the population out into other areas and keep the world feeling more alive. They are harder than most of the other mobs and evidenced by the complaints that folks used to have about them. Now they just run away since they aren't worth fighting and horses are moving faster. I understand that they got tuned down because there is a perception that they were getting farmed too much because of house server mesh issues. Well, most of those are fixed or will be fixed shortly, so lets get the drop rates tuned back up.