I also come from a non-PoE focused background. I have played it, and even put some money and quite a few hours into in the past, but its’ been awhile. I typically prefer paying an upfront price for a game, but I actually love what PoE has done with their MTX / cosmetics. It’s not P2W, it’s pay to look pretty. But I don’t have to pay if I don’t want to and it doesn’t affect my gameplay in the slightest. (Stash tabs are a debate, of course).
Like many others appear to have expressed, ≈$15 with MTX / cosmetics as a sustained revenue source is fair. Too much less than $15 and you’ll have the psychological phenomenon where people associate the low price with low quality. That’s certainly not something you want. I would say $20 would be fair as well. The upfront price helps provide a safety net and some source of income so you can start on further development of future content and patches.
As long as the MTX are fair and don’t impact the actual gameplay, there shouldn’t be any problem with having them. People are obviously willing to pay for pretty cosmetics, as many other games have demonstrated (PoE, for many of us here it seems). Honestly, I could see people paying for fancy artwork on the main menu, or different themes for the UI in game too, but character cosmetics seem to be where its at. Personally, I’ve enjoyed the art style of Lost Epoch so far. I have faith that the art team would be able to get creative and make some wonderfully unique and gorgeous / badass cosmetics people would fall in love with.
Lastly, I have a lot of faith a solid, logical and smart decision will be made. The fact that we’re having this discussion between devs & community here and on Discord goes a long way in instilling early faith in the business model.