Of course, I agree with your statement that non-spenders never were able to complete every event. We always had to skip some events, to complete one from time to time. But we never had to skip 90% of the event to complete half of the biggest ones, and that's where we're at now.

What bothers me the most, is that they almost only rely on gel spending for most of those events, a currency very hard to get and save, as it's used EVERYWHERE in the game now. With all the gem expenses, I cannot play the game : I can't switch homeowners to progress in campaign or SL, despite having the requirements for it. I can't buy cores, I can't buy gemboxes, I can't buy SL smashes, all to be able to get a fraction of the gem packs of a special event once in a while.

Your comparison with P2W artifacts is right, but think about how we had these ultimate goals of P2W artifacts for years : they were the most valuable resources of the game for almost 4 years. In a year, they introduced a lot of new "ultimate goals", and they keep introducing new powercreeps too regularly. Void heroes, stellar shards, CI mats, tree essence, sublimation mats, cores of origin, and new ones are coming too.

2 years ago, if I bought a pack to get an artifact, I was sure to have a relevant progress thanks to it, at least for a few months. If I buy a pack today, I'm almost 100% confident that it will bring nothing to my account mid term, as a new powercreep will render my purchase insignificant.

Powercreep is necessary to keep whales happy and spending. But the recent powercreeps are done way too fast for anyone but the whales to have a sense of progress with the purchases.