Yeah, the event (and the lootboxes) could have been handled better if the devs wanted to introduce people to the lootbox system with a positive experience.
The example I'll give would be to have the BVP-80 come in lootboxes instead of the ZTQ and make sure that players are all but guaranteed to get enough lootboxes (either through sheer volume of lootboxes, or through tweaking the odds to be more favourable) unless they only do no more than ~70% of the event. For the players that either have very bad luck or didn't complete the enough of the event, making the BVP parts tradeable would give those players an incentive to join an active clan (if they aren't in one already) and would provide a demonstration of the trading function.
I'm sure there are other ways that the devs could have done it, however we ended up with with an event that should have been seen as generous but instead left a bit of a bad taste in the players' mouths.