I liked the business model too! I hate the part of a F2P card game where you’re playing a pile of shite to try to grind out rewards for the cards that you actually want to be playing. I’m at that stage in MtG: Arena at the moment and it’s a good thing that I quite like my grinding deck, otherwise I wouldn’t be throwing money at the problem, I’d be quitting.
I think the problem is that the business model was very appealing to actual (physical) card game players and abhorrent to people who are willing to convert their time into digital cards at a very, very poor rate, i.e. the HS model.
No sympathy for the “but mah rewards!” crowd either. At a certain point you have to be playing a game because you enjoy playing it and not as a Skinner box.