Most people don’t play a game to learn its hidden mechanics, they just want to have fun.
I know quite a few people who’d rather be playing the game, not even understanding their build is ‘not optimal’ or whatever the endgame players will call it, and have fun than be trying to googling guides on the game.
That’s the opposite of extreme DPK value/low % drops, the highly common item but absurd amount required.
It kills the motivation to even start working on that farm, rather than causes frustration from lack of progress.
Overall it’s less about the system itself and more on the execution/balancing.
For example, using that absurd amount required way, I’ll use an example from another game: Warframe.
So in warframe, there’s clan (guild) researches that any members can contribute to the research amount to unlock the item for anyone in the clan to purchase.
There’s a gun called Hema that had an absurd amount of a material required.
It was a mistake, but one that the Dev chose not to fix in the end and riled up quite a lot of player.
The thing is, the amount itself was certainly high, but the real issue was how to obtain that resource.
Out of the whole map, only 2 location have access to that resource, one location have it as insanely rare drop, while the other disabled auto-matching.
If that gun had use any of the other 2 ‘rare’ resources that is readily available everywhere else? People might raised an eyebrow, but it wouldn’t cause a uproar, because people would have those things available just through playing the game normally.
The point is that it’s possible to make it work, just that you have to make it to the combined experience is enjoyable.
Absurdly low chance to obtain? Either makes it something really powerful that it feels worth the effort, or makes it something that doesn’t impact gameplay so it’s more of a surprise bonus (like cosmetics)
High amount required? Makes it commonly available from various sources so players isn’t stuck in one area (like the kill count achievement, or in a way, silver) and that the thing does not burdens the player in anyway (i.e. silver have no weight so you can have however much you want without worries of weight limit)
Or to use ToS example:
Cafrisun always drop a piece of the set - worth waiting/finding the rare spawn.
Manahas does not always drop from the specific mob - sigh…