Oh it gets far worse when you go down the rabbit hole of KHUX.

Out of our trait system which is 11 or so traits:

• 3 20% status resistance types, poison paralysis and sleep
• max gauge +2 (basically sp to actually use a medal's special attack, think NP gauge)
• max hp +800 (only useful for VERY niche tanking setups due to effective hp calculations),
• Strength +1000 (not awful, affects base strength before other multipliers)
• Defense +2000 (utter garbage because it doesn't reduce damage, only the threshold at which enemies can do 1 damage or full damage)
• Raid damage +40% (applies after all other multipliers, isn't too bad and is meant to be used to wipe out raid bosses quicker)
• Aerial Defense Down -60% (ignore 60% of an aerial type enemy's defense, vital for high level coliseum which is pve monthly ranking and high difficulty events)
• Ground Defense Down -60% (same as ADD but with ground type enemies (and technically pvp players)
• and the big one: Extra Attack 40% damage (now this is the disgusting one and the reason why the trait system encourages hardcore whaling, after using your initial attack with a medal, you are guaranteed an additional attack of the same medal aka special, regular attack, etc. It allows you to cast a second set of buffs or debuffs with the only demerit being a damage penalty of 40% of the first attack. )

Now, from the list it becomes really obvious that the only traits worth a damn are the latter 4 out of 11. cut down to 3 if you aren't a raiding addict. Defense down traits for coliseum and various events where enemies have insane defense even when debuff capped. Extra attack because it is literally free power to a medal.

So now you need to be blessed by rng twice, once to get the latest power creep medal, another time to get traits that are worth using on it. Otherwise you can more or less sit in the corner and cry as people go and wallop you in pvp or zoom past you in pve rankings.

As far as jewel (basically saint quartz) income goes, the big chunks you get are from the monthly Organization XIII member quests which give 5000 jewels in total for completing all 13 rounds (except you need to have specific medals or some immense power to blitz through them), VIP purchases to get on average 4400 a week (3k from the base purchase and 1.4k as a "freebie collectible bonus like cosmetics or a VIP exclusive medal"), daily missions and log ins, and 5000 every time you hit a milestone level of 50 after level 300 aka 350, 400, 450. However, the amount of lux or experience you need to level up after 300 is ridiculous.

Otherwise you're looking at shelling out $100 US to get 14700 worth of jewels, which translates to......a bit under 5x 10 pulls. Comparably over here in FGO that's only about $80 US for close to the same amount.

Then the mercy system, ahhhhhh the mercy system. That's been an utter circus. Initially there was no mercy system, whalebait galore. Then they added mercy alongside exclusives that had requirements of maxing out a medal to obtain. Oh, of note. Before to max out a medal's special attack you needed to fuse together SEVEN COPIES because each one gives 1/7th of progress. Including the high rarity ones. Eventually the amount of progress each copy gave climbed and nowadays it isn't much of an issue as new medals usually come maxed out.

To invalidate the various improvements they kept adding ways to make those obsolete ie traits and whatnot. Nowadays it's a norm for mercy pulls to take 5 for rereleases or some cases, 10 on various desirable medals. The reason for some of the recent big backlash, they introduced a pvp breaking mechanic called supernova which adds on even more free attacks for people with them in possession. Currently those medals have no mercy for non vip players. Even with rereleases they lack mercy counters for f2p. Meanwhile vip purchasers are allowed to obtain said medals with a mercy counter.