For me it's just a decision between free

[karmic bridge]

(thread, because the convo could be a bit long)
To me, the monetization of mobile games depends heavily on phycological timing ("that looks cute enough to justify 3$ as 300 game coins", "I made progress I dont want to lose, I can justify a 1$ retry", etc), and I would think the mobile market is more difficult because of how competitive it is - you could make the most optimized most fun replayable mobile game ever, and maybe only have about a 2 week window, after that youd probably not see many (if any) new players, and have to find ways to monetize with your existing playerbase (and convince that playerbase to keep playing), and from their perspective, are they expected to be dedicated (such as several TFT or PUBG matches a day, hugging their charger), or is it casual they might play on the bus/when bored for a few mins (such as Subway Surfers)? I would imagine most big mobile companies either already have a large brand to back them, like Diablo Immortal mobile being published by Blizzard is big enough to survive way more than 2 weeks, but indies dont have that kind of brand power or audience to promote their game to, because of this, I would guess the former (free to play, micro transactions) and just releasing new games every few weeks/months rather than revisiting an existing project (like you might for PC/console games) may be a more effective strategy for mobile indies, but I do not develop for mobile games so I dont have much experience with that market or strategy

[small crater]

Oh I only now saw this haha. Well, I don't do low production games, I only do (what I would consider) very good games and I spend quite a lot of time on it. In fact, this game I have now I think will be the only mobile game I ever make (as far as a game that I'm targeting at mobile). For a game like this, with above average depth and above average quality, you seem to say that pay to own is better?

Because I'm concerned about just what you said - having a small playerbase (which is expected, with no marketing) that doesn't reach the kind of 'critical mass' which perhaps free to play games need to reach before people feel compelled to buy micro transactions