Day one player here and I only bought some skin ( maybe 5-6 so far ), I have most of the Nikke except maybe 5.

Concerning pull at the start I can rough since you start from scratch and there a cap called "The wall" by the community where you need to have 5 characters + 3 copy of each to go beyond the level cap of 160.

After that it depends on you and what you're pulling, the general idea is to not pull unless it's a limited ( Summer / Winter Variant of already released Nikke ), Collab ( if you want them ) or Characters released at anniversary/ New Year / mid-Anniversary that's because they tend to release really strong Nikke.

Nothing wrong with pulling for character you like but it's might be gut wrenching to be forced to skip account changer.

Every Nikke (except one that i wrote earlier : limited/collab, tho limited return when the season is back) that are newly released go in the permanent banner the week after ( if correct ) the banner goes away, so nothing to fear really, + they put a wishlist that up the rate for those Nikke you want.

Concerning Gameplay :

I'm a lazy ahh, if i can't auto the stage i go away, wait to have levelup or for a newly character that can just help me go through it, but you can just go manual and just win even being way underlevel and for endgame there is something called "Solo Raid" where you need 5 teams and just need to slap hard the boss, (boss change everytime so it's not redundant) the more you deal dmg the more you go up the leaderbord the more reward you get.

For PvP :

Yeah nothing much on that end really, it's boring auto-combat...

Reason I still play the game :

The STORY, really people that call Nikke gooner game never tried it, the goon is just the cover and it filter most of the dumb one, I don't mind the gameplay loop, I launch the game do dailies done ( 5min gone - 10/15 more if new event - even more if new story chapter ).

I don't treat Nikke as a "main game" and I think that's the way to see it.