Give us temporary access to the merc that the case dropped for!
Say: lead case gives you 2-3 games with the merc, with higher tier cards giving more time to play.
Would certainly add some excitement to the drop, rather than ‘great- another card for a merc i dont have’’ and encourage people to test different loadouts.
If you get a drop on a merc you already have: great, its a card for your merc!; or if you found ‘your’ loadout, you can now trade it in, make another card for a merc of your choice, and get a few games in.
You encourage people to find out more about your game without the feeling of a paywall: people can get excited from trying a particular loadout and will save up for that merc, or buy them outright.
Crate drops frequency could be dropped down if you think it will give people too much content (with Gold being something like ‘free access for 24h’ and silver at 12h, i dont think it would hamper your $$$: people still need to get that merc to play them whenever they want.
We the beta testers will be fine, playing the game as mercs come out allows you to somewhat keep up. With the merc starter pack you can get a good headstart, but if you are a true F2Per (and a lot of people will), than you feel very limited in your ability to experiment in the game; and how much worse its gonna get when you have all those 15 mercs in front of you, but cant play any of them?