So... why is the OC now coming from the event as an "item that will be removed from my inventory during maint" instead of directly deposited to the account...? Did they decide to nerf the event so no one can roll gacha now without spending money?

No, the server is experiencing lag when OC is generated via that means. They are giving it to you in chunks everytime that they do a maint now instead.

And apparently, they greatly nerfed the rate at which you could get OC -- now converted to "OC ticket" -- prizes. Before, I could manage to nab 50 ~ 80 OC per 200 special boxes; now, I consider it just lucky if I could even obtain a single "5 OC ticket" from the same number of boxes.

Still bitching about free items

So stating an observation seems to now count as "bitching about free items". Welp.

It may be bad luck, you cant expect to win everytime with random generated numbers. I did get a few seconds ago 35 Oc from 200 special boxes, 2x10 and 3x5, still seems the same to me.

That or i did get really lucky

NPV of boxes was previously too high. They nerfed the drop rate of a whole bunch of stuff, but comepnsated by re-adding the gacha tickets and increasing status point reset drop rate.

Good to know. Where are you getting your information? They didn't add any of that to their most recent notes so I'm surprised no one else asked about it.

Mix of of JP patch notes and wiki data.