But you know that they got rid of loot boxes and you can directly get the players you want?
Indeed, it looks like they may well be looking beyond a lootbox focus. But that shouldn't yet be cause for joy. The game is F2P – i.e., fee to pay.
How will they make money if they don't put gambling elements into the game? The same way other developers have been doing it. We know there's a battle pass equivalent already. Kimura has come out and said "it's not pay-to-win" – we'll see about that. Konami marking their own homework ahead of time.
For the uninitiated, a lot of F2P games these days (or even paid games) allow you to play a "season" of their content, and in the process you unlock certain items and benefits the more playtime you put in. Where the passes come into the picture is in allowing you better benefits or attaining the benefits more easily. So it's essentially paywalling a lot of the content, and splitting the playerbase into a tiered hierarchy of those who either pay or grind a whole lot, and those who don't. Some passes can be generous, others stingy; likewise, what you get for free can be extensive, where the only extras are "cosmetic".
But even there, there's exploitation. Mobile developers in particular consult a lot of behavioural psychology about how to influence their players – one key mechanism, e.g., is by instilling "FOMO" (fear of missing out), the sort of thing one gets by seeing other players spend and get cool things that you don't have access to.
Another means of making money is by paywalling things that you would ordinarily take to be part of the experience – famously, Konami themselves charged money for save slots in Metal Gear Survive.
Obviously, also there's paid DLC – but the game going F2P is not aiming to make loads of money from game modes released as DLC.
And lastly, there's advertising. Mobile games have this a lot. Where you have to sit through an advert or else pay to skip. We're not there in console/PC games yet (though EA tried with UFC 4 and came up against a huge backlash), but that could still be in the pipeline – who knows.
So simply getting rid of lootboxes (if in fact they have) is not the end of exploitative microtransactions which make the playing experience qualitatively worse. Most free to play games survive because they find a way to exploit compulsive spenders and children, and otherwise make a steady stream of regular but small purchases from the less compulsive types.
The fear is very real that this will be both cheap and expensive at the same time.
