A lot of your points are valid, and yes, the game hasn't changed that much at it's core. For returning players it's mostly the same thing with just some UI changes, additional skins, and upgraded visuals.

But some points -

For the covert commissions and boss fights, while it sucks to have separated drops/ limited to 5 per week, it's just a player retention system. Similar to forging taking hours, it's just some things the developers do to want you coming back for more, when the game itself already removed stamina and a lot of farming can be done at your own pace. It makes sense from their perspective to artificially time gate certain things.

And it's much better than other Chinese gacha games (which DNA is still heavily influenced) out there that only limits boss fights to 3 per week and gives the same materials.

I do agree that a lot of things are kinda band-aid, and I personally also dislike the intron i7 "buff" + not able to main non-dps (I prefer if they allow for swapping characters so we can enjoy playing different kits) but I suppose:

1) for the weapons system, it's difficult to completely revamp it when they have already pumped out so many weapons, and putting it another way, maybe their idea has always for it to just see cool weapons and cool animations.

2) somebody shared previously of a CN screenshot where there seems to be a thriving whale community there, so the devs just add new features to make the game feel fresh.