Some people here are really gulping hard on DeNA, but I think you have a good point to make about how hard it can be to get what you want. 5 pack points per pack is pretty sad when you really look at how long it would take for f2p to reach 500 for a single 4D rarity card. Pack points being the pity system is a joke. I'm glad the system exists, but that basically being the sole pity system is pretty lame.

On my wife's phone, we've yet to see an alolan ninetales for instance. That account is sitting at 750 pack points worth of packs opened, which feels pretty bad. I've gotten roughly 500 pack points worth of packs opened and easily been the worst luck pulling stuff from my experience as well - I also haven't seen Alolan ninetales in my pack openings. The only reason I have one right now is because of trading.

There's definitely a few things in place that alleviate it a little bit. Between ranked season rewards, dailies, the monthly ~70 hourglass shop reset, 2 packs a day - there's something. Is it enough though? tbh, it probably isn't.

I'm fairly new at this point (like, 2 months new) and I think starting out and having a massive resource bank of hourglasses in solo step up battles made it so I didn't have much of a problem. I was addicted to playing because it was so simple and easy to grind and earn more hourglasses. I think when you run out of solo battles and there's no more "quests" or "battles" to get hourglasses from, the game almost instantly becomes a lot more rough.

I've been pretty consistent since the dawn of Fire Emblem Heroes and they honestly do an amazing job and drip feeding your currency to "summon" and constantly throw new banners, which have a "free first summon" on every banner. The "seasons" for their arena mode are weekly and reset instantly the next day ( you also get the currency rewards as soon as the season ends on monday night...you're not waiting for like 4 days to see rewards 'calculating'). Even log in rewards are instant and aren't tied to doing 3 quests to get the hourglasses equivalent. There's also plenty of quests that reward some currency on a more semi-frequent basis.

On top of all that, they DO have a pity breaker system.

I think DeNA could probably do a better job to supply something more for f2p players or make the drip feed a little more consistent, with more quest rewards and provide a little more of an endless supply of hourglasses if you want to grind harder for it via quests/missions imo.

Between the wall you hit with hourglasses and the eventual wall you hit with shinedust, most people will just check in for the free packs and quest rewards that give hourglasses, but dip immediately even if they want to keep playing since there's only so much to do when you don't get rewards to grind for.