I've posted on this a couple times.

It comes down to better infrastructure so that non-coders can create value within a new system. Like say someone creates a puzzle game. A way to create objective value would be to allow users to create puzzle for that game and have the community upvote the best ones or even a pay-to-play situation. This way puzzle-creators are getting paid for building objective value and making the game better.

The skins model for free-to-play system is even better. Creating a graphical skin only changes appearance and not gameplay, and thus creates no unfair pay-to-win mechanics. There's a lot to be said here.

There's also another option of creating bounties for accomplishing certain tasks. The community can add to the bounty to make it a higher priority. Like if the community wants to see some kind of feature added they can donate money to that bounty and the person that does the work and cash in on it.