Grind is there in many mmo-s especially asian ones, but is also present in many single-player games as well.
Now this system is specially designed to give the player the illusion of achieving something simply because they got lucky, or otherwise spent meaningless time playing said game.
It is boring, unintuitive, and to top it all of meaningless. Ban this system along with lootboxes.
To all the neckbeards screaming reeeeee! entitled! reeeee!, just accept the fact that what you put time into is an illusion created to deceive you into playing any game for more time than it's actually worth. This holds true to any past and future games with any grind mechanic as well.
Update:
An acquisition-based progression per se would not be the problem. Just make it interesting, not like, oh I'm chopping down this tree or killing the bear for the 10 thousandth time, but make the trees and bears themselves different from each other for example. You axe could break and you need to retrieve the broken piece, differentiate the angle at which you chop, you need to sharpen it now and then, one bear uses this strategy the other one uses another.
Make the things you do at any given time way less monotonous and way more varied. Also get rid of disproportionately high number requirements for anything. Make everything you do, no matter how little, have meaning.
The possibilities of having random variations are virtually endless, and all should emerge organically from a cause.