I like this game but it's just a shame that it has a skeleton crew. IMO, the main reason the game fizzled is unironically because it was too complex for the Hearthstone audience and because of the hoard of free2poors
I know the spoiler sounds like paypigcope but I'm serious; hear me out.
Look up "harbingers of failure". The simple version is that some people are drawn to products that are doomed to fail. The kind of person that would get super excited over some gay shit like pickle flavored Pepsi.
In LoR's case, the game's biggest selling point via word of mouth was always how generous it was. There are certain f2p players that will basically never spend a single cent. Either due to financials or principle. LoR was sending out signal flares in the digital tcg sphere that this was the game for them.
But those aren't customers and I'm confident that's a big part of why they struggled to find a way to monetize.
I remember when the first skins came out there was a outcry of how overpriced they were. Idk like $10 for a jpg or something.
To be fair they're right lmao but that's exactly why generousity doesn't work as a monetization strategy. Selling cosmetics needs to compensate for all the money they would have made from selling packs. If they double the investment into each skin, they need to double the revenue or more.