Retail Games aren't the devil. granted, it's difficult because always online types of stuff can't be 'previewed' by the Customer to see if they like it before they pay money for it. but there's not much you can do about that.
a reasonable Retail cost as well as having monetization is really the most practical business model for games as a whole (because every game can't be free, Et Cetera. it's the business model that covers the most types of games).
has some intial cost, but doesn't cost $60 because raisons, and because of that has some other monetization which helps in the longrun. lots of people whine about this but this type of model can support the most types of games financially while being 'the minimum amount of evil possible'.
Subscriptions can blow me though. games that are Subscription based or structure themselves to basically force the Player to make a Subscription - i'm good, i'll play other games.
i don't do Subscriptions. period. i don't care what it is.
they're financially excellent for whoever owns it. it doesn't matter. i don't do subscriptions.
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unlocking new zones - what of a different way? rather than it functioning like a """""'DLC'""""", people that wish to specifically put money towards that can... do so in a sort of recurring funding campaign way. they get special snowflake trinkets for doing so, but in the end it's for everyone, not only some people.
signifncant game content being contained in separate purchases creates tons of problems for games, for example having map packs and such as DLC's in games - they split player bases and that's pretty much suicide for a Multiplayer reliant game type.
Multiplayer Shooters find this out the hard way, selling extra maps and content with separate purchases, and then you'll notice that 99% of the Servers are vanilla only. why? because the extra purchases, regardless of cost, splits playerbase. 100% of players can play vanilla content. much smaller percentages can play mixed or only DLC content.
it works great for a Singleplayer game, buy the stuff you want, but when you rely on Playerbase to sustain a game, splitting it only achieves making your game look like there's less people playing it.
Warframe has even had this problem, despite having over 100,000 active Players at any given time, previously what more experienced Players spent the vast majority of their time in the game doing, farming for Prime stuff - was in sessions you couldn't matchmake for, or see that people were playing it.
we've gotten questions or misinterpretations all the time that 'the game is dead nobody plays it'. there's actually a metric ton of people playing, but you'd never be able to play with them.
that stuff all has Matchmaking now, so the people doing that is in clear view of everyone else. that was critically important to do, so that prospective Players could find other Players playing the game. Et Cetera.
tl;dr splitting Playerbase is a really rocky road and it's fine
financially but it's not so fine for how the game
appears to Consumers. and how they interpret it is crucial, most will not investigate further to see if that's true or not.
That opinion is shared by many that pay 2 Win isn't welcomed, but it isn't fair either to lump all pay to win as bad. Can a game be absolutely pay to win free? I don't believe and i don't believe all of them ruin game experience, example are the basic form of currency or exp booster is pay to win and many if not all games have them. Another would be premium tanks or prime warframe packages. All of which also don't ruin it but improve the gameplay for many players.
the sorts of things you give examples as 'okay Pay to Win' literally isn't. you don't win anything by it. infact, usually (like Prime Access for example) you pay to not play the game, basically. because Warframe there, since most people don't know how to have fun, the game is all about farming 234976235 types of Credits (it is, through and through), and buying the items you'd be trying to get basically means those players pay money to get bored.
while WoT is a pretty cancerous game (not for being pay to win as it's reduced the problem of most of this issues over time - the game is still purpose built to try and force you to spend money though, it's a cancerous game on the industry), the shiny tanks are
technically just different things, not necessarily better.
War Thunder does a better job at that though. those shiny vehicles are either identical to other models, or are actually slightly inferior but matchmake slightly lower as well.
paying to skip gameplay doesn't make you 'win' unless that makes you actually superior to other Players. which means superior numbers or things that only you can get because of that.
with earlier days in say WoT for example, almost every vehicle had a cash only Ammo Type, that was literally superior in all possible ways to the other Ammunition types. THAT, is pay to win. you spend money, and you universally perform better. even if you were a pro with your vehicle, that Ammo made you better, period. (yes, it's available for Credits nowadays - though the cost is high enough that it didn't really solve the problem, basically impossible to use them unless you spend money still)
however there are also problems with allowing you to walk around things you're supposed to do in the game, as that has a tendency to... cause a paradigm shift in what those things you're supposed to be doing are.
which isn't really because it's a pay to win problem - it's a different kind of problem but still... a problem.
(Overwatch is a $40 game)
http://i.imgur.com/lEPSxiT.png
vs the $60 version:
http://i.imgur.com/dvqau0a.png
a few extra Skins and some merchandising doesn't make it a $60 game. the GAME is $40.
I did spend quite a bit of cash on Warframe to unlock new frames and weapons, etc. but as the cost was low, that did not bother me very much, POSSIBLY an area to consider.
it also helps that buying Equipment just skips the (usually) pretty simple process of Crafting it. so just a button for being lazy/impatient.
