What am I missing?

I've been playing since pre-1st anni (around month 6 i think?), 100% f2p (because I'm stubborn and want to prove something to myself i guess) and I've constantly found multiple reasons to keep returning. However, since the most recent anniversary event, I kinda just dropped the game and stopped playing as frequently. Each new event or mission seems to just be "Hey! Get the new units!" instead of anything actually fun or difficult. Last year's 10th anni almost did the same purely because of how quickly the "broken" new units were outclassed by even URs released a handful of months later. I understand power scaling is an issue in gachas, but it's to the point where each new event (if you want to get more than 3 ds) is a choice between slam your face into a brick wall until it breaks, or pop open the magic wallet and throw some real money at it. Even if you have the semi-most recent units, you aren't getting any distance in new events unless you have THE newest. The best teams aren't even based on synergy, because all the new units make another form of the same team redone a 4th time. Not that it's an important point, but even people's favorite characters take backseats to the new units. Unless your favorites ARE goku and vegeta (or some fusion of the two) then you're just shit out of luck. Your unit peaked 5 years ago and the eza isn't a paragraph, so it's not good anymore, or possibly ever again? TL;DR the scaling ramped extremely, everything in the game seems to scream "wait for next anni" even though it's the current one, or "spend your money" to maybe get a pass to beat the (5 total ds) new event and the missions. Is this just perpetually the state of the game?