You're not wrong on the general principle but Nah man, there is no salvaging Drop. Players don't like time limits, players don't like having control taking away from them. Te drop system's foundation involves both of these. There is no degree of tweaking possible to make it not hated. Sometimes a bad idea is just a bad idea.
Yeah, but a bad idea is mostly created with some intention in mind. You need to look deep so you can find the answers to a problem, and not dismiss the idea entirely:
The Timed Drop gauge was created because they wanted to add a sense of thrill to the player by changing characters, and the fact they made it a TIMED gauge was the core problem, and also the fact you couldn't really do much to change your present gauge. Every time the gauge was at the end the only thing you could do to increase it was by using a Drop-me-not item inserting it in your Deck, so yeah, it was really frustrating to see the gauge ending and being almost completely powerless about it.
If they ever make a drop gauge again, I hope they make a system where the gauge increases and decreases through something else, like killing enemies for increasing and taking damage to decreasing, maybe. The player should be able to manipulate this gauge in A MULTITUDE of ways, always with a Reward/Punishment system in mind.
There, identified the problem! Ideas on how to improve (some are probably bad, but you can only know that by testing a lot, so I'm brainstorming):
Maybe creating more Spirits could increase your gauge.
If you heal you and your Dream eaters in-battle it also increases.
The more enemies there is in battle, the faster your gauge will decrease,
but if you kill them, they drop Drop-me-not-Orbs that can refill a little of the gauge.
Anyway, I don't have the time to think in more ways they could make the gauge more dynamic and maneauverable, those things can take a lot of time to analyze it since you have to look at the entire battle system, but the point is, if you can indentify what was the PROBLEM with the EXECUTION of the idea, you can always make the idea a lot better next time. Don't jus kill them after their debut. Evolve it!
english is not my first language, I hope I typed everything understandable enough