Black Desert Online Remastered

I really wanted to give this game a try, but after reading some of the posts in the Black Desert Online forum about the funky payment system they use, I never bothered to download the game.
If I remember the name correctly, they use a PayWall or something like that, which is based somewhere in Europe. One of the issues people were having is not being able to make any transactions(credit card, PayPal, etc.) until after they send the PayWall company photo-copies of their ID(i.e. drivers license), and if they want to use a credit card, they have to send a partial photo-copy of it as well.
I believe you can play this game through Steam also, but I don't know if they are connected to the same merchant when it comes to purchasing in-game stuff. If so, it seems to be quite a hassle to go through just to buy some of the bare necessities in the game(inventory/character slots, etc.).

Games like Vindictus don't have a limit on PayPal transactions, but credit card purchases are limited to under $90 per month if I recall correctly. I'm surprised this game hasn't died already, because unlike Black Desert, the graphics are not optimized. It's dependent on the cpu, so even with a decent graphics card, it runs like absolute garbage if you don't turn the detail levels down.

Tera seems to be dying out as well. Some time this month they're going to be cutting the number of servers in half by merging them except for the single roleplaying server. It plays a lot better than Vindictus for sure.

Ascent: Infinite Realm appears promising and seems to have similar character customization features that Black Desert Online has, but I haven't looked at the actual gameplay itself yet. Bluehole Studios is planning on a release date some time in 2019.

Basically the "working method" consists of free-to-play & pay-to-win along with microtransactions with a hefty dose of random number generators(RNG) applied to various things in the game(upgrading equipment, crafting, loot drops, loot boxes, etc.). Its all about how many steep exponential progression curves they can put into the game. They don't know their asymptotes from a hole in the ground... If they ever eliminated the "pay-for-power" and cash shops, many of these games, especially the 2nd rate browser games, would disappear rather quickly.

I personally would like to see bigger worlds with more content with a focus on "playing the game" as opposed to "living in the game". When I say "living in the game", I mean being forced to farm a specific dungeon repeatedly to RNG obtain w-amount of component A, then farm another one to RNG obtain x-amount of component B, then RNG craft enough of component C successfully y-amount of times in order to RNG upgrade a piece of equipment z-times; so it becomes a redundant time-consuming second job instead of a game. Nowadays, they go even further and place strict limits on how much you can do each day, regardless of whether or not you're paying for a subscription.
Socializing... Sheesh, I want to game, not spend hours chatting and waiting around before I can accomplish what I logged in to do. This was one of the things I abhorred about Everquest. Even being in the top guild on our server, the raiding absolutely sucked since you spent more time waiting than fighting against mobs...

Anymore its all about eye-candy and how much players are willing to pay for things such as cosmetics, boosts, or perks to ameliorate a game's ridiculous progression curves. Game developers need to get away from the various "free-to-play" scams and start earning their money by upping the quality of their games. Anyone who enjoys the game enough would be more than happy to pay a subscription fee. You can make a game beautiful and all that, but you can do the same with a turd. Of course, no matter how you pretty it up, it will still be a stinking turd.

Hey, if the cost of the server is such a high risk factor, then this is very likely the problem itself. I don't see how they get to the point of investing in a million-dollar server farm and not have a very good idea of how well received their game will be to their targeted customer base. In my opinion, they deserve to fail at that point because they either did a half-@ssed job in the development phases, and/or they refused to listen to their community. Its strange that despite all of these powerful & convenient tools that are available to these game designers nowadays, they don't seem to put much effort in developing the content. They just want to make a quick dollar and then jump on to the next bandwagon.