It's better than the Japanese rates, but the Japanese rates are the worst I could even think of short of them just not including them in packs but still having them in the set list. I generally complete the sets using singles, but for most sets I rely on getting some product (usually one booster box/ETB combo) to fill in most of the trash/filler cards, which itself is usually a pretty good strategy and may even save you quite a bit of money, especially if you sell the duplicates afterwards (I normally don't for anything more common than an ultra rare, though I may in the future seeing as I have several boxes full of extras), but for this set a booster box worth of packs will net you maybe 50% of the set if you're especially lucky. And that's not even including variants like reverse holos and whatever other variants they release in the future (like alternate holo patterns in blister packs and stamped GameStop exclusives, though obviously you wouldn't expect those in normal packs anyway). I'm a dedicated collector, but this set is incredibly terrible and feels like a spit in the face. The enormity of sets since Lost Thunder have been an absolute pain, but the difficulty in collecting Hidden Fates just takes it to a level never seen before in the TCG.
I do (almost) the same method with new sets-I usually get an ETB and a few packs here and there. Booster Boxes not as much, haven't opened one since XY, but they were very helpful back when I was opening them for set completion. It's a pretty good method to get the C/U/R cards out of the way.
I may just be the one person then who actually feels
more inclined to collect Hidden Fates. I can see where the complaints are coming from, definitely, but I find the regular sets way more daunting and less rewarding than Hidden Fates to complete. I'm just more drawn to finding these shiny cards, I guess, over something like Rainbow Rares and Gold Items, which are hard to pull and immensely unappealing to me. Yes, there's a lot of quantity with the shinies, but the pull rates are alright to get me started before I hunt for singles, and the quality of them is top notch to me. I barely open product anymore apart from these special sets, so I'm more used to being 100% singles. Trust me, this set will be tame compared to something like the e series (Skyridge ESPECIALLY), or the EX (gen 3) era. Those are the real nightmares to collect. And if prices get low enough, It could even be easier than your average main Sun and Moon era set to complete. Since there's going to be a lot of them with high pull rates, there will be a lot on the market most likely-compare that to your average sun and moon set with 20 different Secret Rares, PLUS all the other nonsense they've got going on that have inflated prices. I could be wrong and the shinies could end up being pricey (I know
some will definitely, Zard, malamar, etc). But I'm pretty confident that most of them won't be too bad. We do live in an era of large sets, but I don't think this is the worst of it.
Of course, that's just me-And I'm fully aware this set can be daunting to some. I'm not fully intimidated for the reasons I stated above, but it
could just fully be that I'm just so much more interested and engaged in collecting this set. It's the same feeling Shining Legends gave me. I'm excited, it gives me that old feeling of wanting to open packs again that I had in the good old days of 2014-15.