I've seen a bunch of good games being ruined by microtransactions and battlepasses. At least I believe that they could have had so much better sales and reputation if they didn't include it.
For example: Shadow of War. Deus Ex Mankind Divided. Good games. These had microtransactions hooked on as an after-thought. It didn't affect gameplay at all and could be completely ignored. Still they received so much hate for it. And then there are games adding microtransactions and nobody care. Most Ubisoft games for example. I think it has with who their target audience is. Though I can't see what DX and SoW audiences has in common. Do they have less casual players than Ubisofts games? Idk.
Having played the shit out of Assassin's Creed Odyssey I can say that the game has tons of equipment skin variety without MTX, the game is balanced to not need them, even from a visual variety standpoint, there are tons and tons of equipment skins to collect and permanently unlock in that game