People, Developers, Staff. Let this be one thing clear, what is this? A video game. Is it real? It exists. The company's gotta make profits, etc. However, what people see, aside from those who are just belonging to the top, trying to defend it, it is that IT IS A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT. There's not much else but the usage of electricity, servers, proprietary ownership of software, code that belongs to someone, a stock... So since there are stakes that the game isn't profiting well, they'll close it down, "exploring multiple options, but each one of them aren't sustainable" (MxM Closing letter), and jobs will be lost, because as quoting the person above, "The game shouldn't compensate for your real life activities", because that's what happens. Should a business not change it's products to compensate for others wants, needs? Take a look at what happened to Combat Arms, and other NEXON games. There are others who say the same thing too, and look what happened, at the least, different company changed hands. Could've been shut down totally. You'd think that NBA 2K20 SHOULD retain their practices as it is, and not change, because others "seem to make it work"? Seems to me the gaming industry has yet to learn a lesson from their financial counterparts. Like the 08' financial crisis.
You could easily sell Gilded gems outright on the HM store, and still have a whole new ton of patches, content to do, and the profits might still be there. You could implement harder, newer, innovative mechs, training tutorials that deal with on previous mechs and still profit! The community will love this! If it came down to already putting Darkstorm necklace, maybe getting other gear in new events or HM Store, but put an achievement lock on it, with trial gears, for people to grind highest dungeons, raids. It would be chaos, but people will have fun. Maybe private house mechanics? So many ideas, mitigations, but there's just trove, lackluster events...