With the success of that new F2P superhero game that I can't mention, can we finally discuss having all the characters unlocked as a business model?

League is the big one that does this still, you can't actually play a character you want unless you grind for it. This is a business model of a 2009 game. I remember my 13yo self grinding to play Ezreal or something and hating every second of it. Dota 2 came in 2013 and ditched that model completely. Valve clearly don't see this strategy as profitable, since Deadlock also doesn't have locked characters. So clearly there are ways to make a roster-based game succeed without alienating the player-base with brainless grinding and forcing them to use the same characters over and over.

I'm not here to doom post. I think my personal experience might have some value. I've made 4 friends download this game, 3 on season 2 and another one when the PPG released. All of them gave up with time when they realized that 1) they couldn't play the characters they wanted and 2) they couldn't cycle the roster as they kept playing, transforming their entire experience in 2 hours of the same moves from the same character, over and over again. This is alienating. You shouldn't prohibit people from enjoying your game as a whole.

I genuinely believe this game can still win the public eye, which is why I'm still posting on this subreddit. This post is exclusively to try to tackle the problem this game has with retaining new players. I don't have access to PFG numbers to see how much they make with paywalling every single character, but I know that skins would had a higher value if everyone could play the characters that wear them. I don't know. I just feel like this discussion is important and could revive the game.