Welcome omeganx,
MercurySteam have stated that this was never meant to be a F2P, the idea is a chapter style game in which you pay for the campaigns that you want. I like this approach, and in theory can be great; but, I do agree that there is a problem of getting players to be invested in the game.
They add the “invitation system” which I have been using often, it lets you invite players that do not have the content and allows them to play with you, and at the end both of one get a 5000 Gold reward; also, you can spend Gold to temporally unlock missions for about three and a half hours. I think there is more that can be done with the “invitation system”, for example, having a sub-que in which you use an invitation and can let a player join you in match making that does not have the content.
To balance this out, the player that used the invitation would still get the 5000 Gold reward, but the player that did not have the content that joined the sub-que gets 1000-2000 Gold. I feel that this would help encourage newer player to invest in the campaigns, and reward current players for helping the newer players. Also, this could enhance the overall moral community and lower toxicity; and from long time with this game, there is very little toxicity in this community as it is.
Also, lowering the price of skins and characters to under 1250 Mercury Points, and the Max Gold for a character should be 120,000 Gold I think would be a good change as well. Since the economy change, I have not had much trouble grinding Gold; in fact, since “Wardogs Fury” came out I went from around 90,000 to now over 166,000 Gold. Using the new “invitation system” and bringing in players I meet in the “Eternal Soldier” campaign. This is why I think adding a Sub-que using the “invitation system” would be a great idea.
If your on Xbox/Windows omeganx, hit me up some time. My Gamertag is BloodNekoKiux.