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I am with you. Subscription services align customer and developer interests best. That said, the second best modern model is probably theirs. They sell stash tab space (item storage) and cosmetic items only. They do not play psychological games that many free to play games do. I imagine that when their revenue starts to slip, they may go down the more dubious road as is the normal pattern. But for now, it has my appr…
I haven’t played hots in years now, but there were loot boxes last I saw. The system also encourages you to spend in game gold to get better loot box contents, but you need that gold to avoid paying real money for new heroes. Those new heroes were usually overpowered on release, or at least, nobody knew how to counter them, so they were great for peoples mmr. I wish it had just been pay to play with optional costumes…
I'm completely fine with that monetization since you still can't beat better players with money and you can still do everything without spending a penny. You at most get a tiny MMR inflation for a week or two if you buy every new hero on release (which wasnt even that often) and that was nowhere near enough to jump a higher league. Hell, given that it still didn't make them enough money maybe it was too little monetization..