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Just wanna throw it out there that the Monster Hunter series is a perfect example of in game free content becoming microtransactions in just a few years.
Old MH games had all cosmetic items as free event quest rewards, where you’d get a unique and fun battle to play, and a cosmetic reward for winning. No paid DLC even available to buy. MH Rise (the newest game) has 221 paid cosmetic items listed on their site. That number is not including bundles, soundtracks, character edit vouchers, or the expansion (Sunbreak) itself.
$60 game, $40 expansion, and 200+ paid cosmetics that would instead be free in earlier games in the series.
Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate (released 2018 outside of JP) had a ton of dlc quest unlocks and they were all totally free. It’s proving difficult to find a proper separated list of exactly how many, but here’s a google doc that lists ~200 quest related equipment unlocks, the vast majority of which are dlc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hlBLacFYxdh83a-GkxYnsIF6nH7huP_H2aI4APRGicg/edit?gid=408012748#gid=408012748
Something noteworthy is that’s just quests for equipment. In contrast, there’s only 37 event quests (all event quests are free) in Rise that offer any unique item reward, and 23 of those quests give equipment.
Giving a very conservative estimate with that all in mind, I think it’s safe to say that GU had a good five times more free dlc rewards than Rise does.