>>536893486
>Does getting high tier ships matter?
Rule of thumb is that the worse your ships are, the more gear dependant you are and vice versa. It's easy to say "No" when pretty much any content will suggest "Well, just use these 4-6 rainbow ships.", but honestly most of the content is accessible as long as you run some decent+ key roles between healing, tanking, DPS and anti-air, which don't need to be the highest tiers each.

>How hard are high end contents?
Worlds until w13 can be run with pretty much whatever nowadays, world 14+15 require better fleets and actual understanding of game mechanics if you don't just copy-paste suggestions. Worlds beyond w12 stop having greater benefits beyond dropping a mid-bad gold bote for collection purposes each though. Events don't require any skills, just decent levels. Operation Siren honestly just requires a large number of max level botes. Meta bosses "work" to some degree with whatever, but reward high tier fleets / synergies / equipment with having to invest less effort into getting rewards.

>Is this still only a collecting game?
Considering the lack of PvP autism, yes. If Manjuu (or anyone else, really) ever truly wants to copy the "success" formula of AL, they just need to recreate the Triforce of accessible/fair gacha, telling the PvP-audience to fuck off and monetizing the game through cosmetics people want to buy. That and stronger supporting the base game maybe, instead of basically running with the same event mode/cycle from year1 and telling stories every other month that take years to go anywhere if ever.