I keep seeing "But they're doing so well with DOTA! Well good for the f#$%ing Dota fans. The rest of us meanwhile are out here in the cold.
I can't stand multiplayer games-as-a-service. Any of them. Team Fortress, Overwatch, Dota, on and on it's all the same rehashed ideas with the same business model at it's core; continuing to make money well after release by releasing a trickle of low effort, easy to market in-game assets that are all worth exactly NOTHING when the next popular one comes out (or in the case of Destiny, even the sequel).
I've never touched any of these stupid things because it's all artificial; artificial scarcity of items by way of limiting the rate they come out and not allowing trades; artificial hype by employing the very best of marketing sleaze and artificial competition of various groups/clans/teams all pitted against each other in a dance of noise and anger signifying nothing.
And then the next one comes out and everyone goes to that, leaving all the achievements, collected items, won prizes and earned trophies to sit in the digital dust until the publisher gets tired of hosting it, pulls the plug, and then it's gone forever. Nothing was learned, nothing is retained, nothing is remembered, all packaged up and shipped off for the next set of customers.
It's the most cynical and hollow business model and hopefully will someday piss off so we can get more good story driven titles again.
I fully agree with you about the cynicism of the taking-your-cut-at-both-ends marketplace, but this business model is never, ever, ever going away so long as we have games. Single-player games are going to be relegated to what's functionally art-house stuff because of the revenue model implications. That's where what you want (and what I want!) is going to live.