Not quite fringe. But not really common either.
There were several other instances where i noticed 6-7 hge at the same time.
Sure, it may seem fringe if someone doent actually play the game, or if someone expects to find 6+ hge in the first system they scan the nav beacon.
Also them hge seem to come in great numbers when you're not looking for them specifically - as expected
The thing I notice most about these "discussions" (quotes used because it's just two sides trying to promote and demote the value of feedback 99% of the time, with no discourse of any real kind) is the frequency either side resorts to projecting extremes. I'll include myself in that.
It's really hard to talk about anything if the conversation is usually littered with comments like "if you expect - insert extreme scenario here - then you'll be disappointed". Or like when I said pharma HGEs never spawn (they do).
I'm sure quite a lot of us expect to play a game where what we have to do is subjectively enjoyable. I think entering an outbreak system and hoping to see a couple HGEs (not common at all) that reliably contain PIs, enough to get the commonly required amount for a single engineering pass after perhaps a couple systems visited tops, is a reasonable expectation.
At some point in the last few years, fdev decided shard sites should exist and instantly added a long-con method to relatively rapidly fill up on rare raw materials. I'd not only suggest that this was an excellent decision but also that I reckon it doesn't lend much credence to the suggestion that the sudden drop in PI HGE probability was a conscious decision they made, or that they're happy the hge meta is 100% done.
I'd further suggest that assumption is good given fdev have outright admitted the gathering process is grindy.
Given that relatively safe assumption, I'm not wholly convinced it's super helpful to assert that "it's fine, just play the game" on the basis that rng can result in desirable outcomes sometimes. Extremes aside, including my own, I'd think there's zero harm in the profile of this topic remaining high. It touches on a huge part of the game and is controversial for very good reason.