That’s the origin of the hate: addiction to meds.

While PDX-published games may suffer from the decouplement of features between DLCs, at the very least PDS-developed games have a built-up expertise when it comes to managing this.

As for MMO model, it’s a hard sell because purchased things get made “free” for new comers. It’s one of the crux that EU4 faced when they rolled many DLC features into the base game.