I really like the idea of a player driven economy since you've mentioned that there would be professions like crafters which could help in players interacting more. For loot boxes i am definitely with you in that regards but I think there would be some who will still enjoy the thrills of it tho I pretty much unlucky with that stuff in all of my gaming experience so I mostly relied on grinding .
starter packs will pretty much be the only form of "lootboxes" provided by holozing for this game and it'll mostly be collection-based skins, like for instance alpha skins as we've showcased, then beta-skins and occasional seasonabl skins. These won't be necessary for players to attain eventually except for early on as we need to fund things, players will be able to do well through player crafted items as well and those will have unique skins too but not the ones we've created.