Hot take: The shard system is arguably the best thing to ever happen to F2P players
I don’t mean to be offensive to anyone or anything like that, it is just my opinion, but as an F2P player it’s really hard, if you don’t have good pack luck, to get the players you want or any meta players
For many many events, most F2P players have been left disappointed, but this shard system allowed us to get our favorite and/or meta players and however many we could get (I personally got 9 meta toty players, so it was a huge win for me)