I was talking to a coworker about what's going wrong with the live service game we're making, and my feeling is that the designers are too afraid to stab the player. In the metaphorical sense, of course. This is a notion that I've picked up in my short stint at a free-to-play gaming company, which is that you can't just ask the player for money; you have to extract it. You don't poke and prod the player with your knife, you stab them. And if you do it well enough, they'll thank you for the privilege.
Most game designers for AAA games balk at shaking the player down for money because it seems rude and insensitive. The very idea runs counter to everything they believe about what makes a game "good". But the numbers don't lie. Diablo IV was hated by fans for its aggressive micro-transactions, yet it recouped its development costs in the first week of sales.
What doesn't help is that AAA game designers (as a group) look down on designers for mobile games because those aren't "real" games. Even though the market for mobile trash is vastly greater than the market for AAA gaming experiences, and has been for years. And so what ends up happening is that these companies hire people from successful mobile or free-to-play gaming companies, don't listen to anything they say, and then wonder why their live service game is a trash fire that is bleeding money left and right.
I'm well aware that I come across as a money shark with dollar signs for eyes in this post. I'm sorry to report that I'm just another cog in the machine. I don't get paid more when the game does well; at most, I'll be hired for the next project. This shit isn't going away, and I guess my broader point is that "critically panned" and "hated by fans" mean literally nothing when ARPPU is in the stratosphere.