They design these games to be a chore with an appealing but costly way to skip the chore, and rather than demanding they design a game that's actually fun, you ask them for a more convenient way to take money from you?
A good subscription plan is often capped at 10-15/month, with full access to the game. This is cheap entertainment if you are already playing even 3-5 hours a month, and a good way to fund on-going development.
Contrast that to unlocking a hero/character (the 'fast' way) alone will cost that much, and you still don't have access to everything.
The reason why F2P with that kind of incentive is popular among developers is that it's a good way to artificially inflate your playerbase with tons of people playing the game for 'free' while you manipulate the 'whales' (the addicts) into paying an insane amount to offset costs.
The relevant point of comparison for me is Overwatch 1, which cost around $40 and provided me with hundreds of hours of entertainment for years after release, as well as indie titles that typically cost $15-30 and equally provide me with least dozens, if not hundreds of hours of entertainment. A $10/mo subscription is an increase of at least 1000%.
Personally I skip games that gate primary content behind microtransactions (with some exceptions like MS Flight Simulator where additional content is highly individual and takes a lot of effort to create)
Compared to a 20 hour single player game for 70 USD? Let's break it down.
a subscription to an MMORPG for example ; 15 bucks a month, 5 hours a month = 3 bucks per hour. this is basically uncapped. if you only play 5 hours, then you're paying 3/hr - if you do more (say 10 hours a week = 40 hours a month) then the value goes up and cost goes down.
a single player game; 70 bucks, 20 hours = 3.5 bucks per hour. Plus an extra 5-10 hour for another 40-70 bucks DLC to extend the experience
i don't have time to grind out an overwatch2 hero in 30 hours, nor am i going to pay for one. i'd rather pay for a 15 bucks subscription for 1 month, then if i want to, then cancel.
The "chore" you describe is literally just playing the game and the "reward" for the "chore" is also just playing the game.
I don't understand why you people make this sound so terrible. If you don't like OW2 then don't play it, that's fine. If you do like it, playing it is not a chore and you quickly unlock new heroes without paying anything.
I unlocked the flower boy in about 30 hours, that's completely doable in 2-4 weeks if you're playing regularly. If you play less than that you have plenty of work to do learning the other heroes anyway.
You don't have to grind, you literally just play the game. You can play a whole bunch of heroes and eventually you'll be able to play all of them. It's not a problem at all.
