I really do appreciate the response here. And i dont want to diminish the effort you put in. I just would like to know specifically why cannot a large fee and a subscription fit side by side in your eyes. Yes obviously a 1-2$ fee of yesteryears past is impractical just as acquiring investment is not often the best for an indie team, im personally against that 9/10 times.
There are examples of software companies offering both. Which users like myself are willing to pay for. It may be difficult to figure out the raw number, but maybe even just having a buy option for everything except maintainable services like cloud backup and sync is viable.
It just seems like its subscription model is pushed on users as the only way to do it because everyone else is. Which to me just wont work its not this one subscription its the aggregate of everything in society being a subscription. I dont like this world, where all indie devs are forced into.
To your last point the only way to make change is to provide some path out to at least test and see if there is another way. I still think theres room for clear on my devices in the future if a bridge is made.
My best suggestion is to have an inflated price buy offline only features on a devices which only require occasional major os level updates to function, and you can subsidize os level updates to the core app because you side by side are still developing actively for the bulk of exepected as you maintain for subscription users.
I know to people who already subscribe or believe thats an acceptable proposition i come off as a petulent child demanding special attention for my principles but im just trying to open minds to an additional revenue stream that otherwise wont exist.