It still does.
But before your economy was also important for those end of the season rewards, which among other things prvoided you with stat boosts. The economy is still important for that, except the end of season no longer provides those stat boosts at all.
Now you get them from buying weapons.
Weapons spawn in town with 0-?5? mods (I don’t recall seeing six but I haven’t played in awhile, it’s certainly possible you can get more). The price is based on the # of mods/weapon and probably something tied into how far through the year you are. Late game, you’ll see stuff for thousands of cashews usually. At the start it’s more in line with what you would expect.
But each weapon also offers up some bonus, usually a + to fighting or farming (for some characters - Crow - you can get other stuff too). This is a permanent upgrade. So while weapons no longer break, you’ll need to swap weapons occasionally just to keep those stats going up (especially important for farming sicne max # of pigeon scrolls is now tied to farming stat).
But because you can score a nice find and possibly ride it for awhile, that means more cashews for other stuff. To a point. Like I said I think it still behooves one to swap weapons a good bit.
Of course if you get really lucky and get something you love in the 5 mod range, it means you can snowball for a spell. But eventually the power curve will flatten out and even dip (unless you are getting + combat stats from camps a lot).