I saw you are talking about independence and oktoberfest sets but those were available trough quest if im not mistaking and werent included in type event as it was run for this one.
The Oktoberfest and the Independence sets were available for completing levels in the event construction. Building the fireworks and picnic displays in Independence Day....and not everyone could get to the jacket or eagle without spending bonds or nuggets, so premium use was expected. Similarly with Oktoberfest where the more plates you ate and the faster you ate them you could eventually get the jacket and brewery buffalo...but again bonds or premium were required. Point of fact though, the drops were guaranteed
if you were able to dedicate yourself to the event and were willing to spend the bonds or premium.
I play on all open .net worlds and both open beta worlds (10 total) and completed those sets on all of them strictly from bond spending...no premium required. and they ran me about 1500-2000 bonds per world. Please note, the fact I do own the Inferno and Stormcaller sets on W1 does indicate I indeed did spend premium there....but the fact is, if I wasnt playing the events on that world to win, I still would have gained the basic event participation sets from pure bond usage.
Compare that to this event where on one world I didnt even use bond or nuggets and got the full set on one beta world, but took most of the event to accomplish; while the other beta world I got the full set in 5 hours for about 2500 combined bonds and nuggets. Flip side, on W1, I used fewer than 2000 bonds and had the full lover set in under an hour; while on W11, Arizona, Colorado and Dakota, I spent well over 2000 bonds per world and couldnt complete the sets at all. On Eldorado I spent over 3000 bonds and 800 nuggets and am still 2 items short.
So as I stressed earlier, this is an event
that is strictly luck, unlike the previous ones....no matter how much you might spend in bonds or premium.
What I would suggest as a minimum though, is that maybe Inno should consider releasing these items in the UP Shop during the next holiday season they would come about, right along side any other new event or items they might introduce. Players could spend bonds or nuggets to gain missing gear from these sets, and Inno would have a decent revenue stream from it.