I think there’s some sort of higher-up mandate at capcom to force monetized content into their games, and the dev teams are just working around it, something like that. The same thing happens in monster hunter, street fighter 6, I think devil may cry 5, and it’s all structured in basically the exact same way, where you can either get access to stuff really quickly without paying, or the stuff you have to pay for is basically just aesthetic, or both. I think monster hunter rise even tried to do the same “pay to edit your character” thing. I still don’t think it’s a good practice, but japanese devs are gonna japanese dev, I suppose. Reminds me of fromsoft titles requiring community made performance patches, or being locked to like, 30fps as an engine requirement, shit like that.

To part fools from their money?

That’s Capcom for you. It doesn’t seem like their mtx ever makes sense to buy.