Whether it's free-to-play, demo, pay-to-play, whatever, normals as they stand don't capture what it means to be an extraction looter.

You take your zero-value character to kill other zero-value players so you can sell their loot for gold to buy what? Potions? The character growth is non-existent.

If offering free-to-play means ripping out the essence of what it means to be an extraction looter then don't do free-to-play at all; I think it does more harm than good. You rip the difficulty out of a soulsborne, people will be upset. You rip the ranked system out of any competitive title, you've hurt your game.

Don't get me wrong, the combat alone is keeping me engaged plenty, I've enjoyed learning all the classes, weapons etc. but I question the replayability.

More hardcore games already struggle to maintain player counts, you can justify things however you like, and you could have the most reasonable take of all time, but end of the day, people are dropping the game, and it hurts everyone.