I concede that you guys who can snoop may know better than I do, but I see it like this:

I explore an area. I find little of note. Why? Because a group came through and cleared out the limited stuff before me. Therefore unless I am looking in a secret niche that contains nothing else, I have no way of knowing there even is anything there.

Until you put something there that helps us know if a limited item would be there if it wasn't maxed out (eg something that looks similar but as you take it you "feel the power flow out of it" and you are left with either a dud or a weaker version of the item), I don't think you promote exploration that much.