Its not frustration, but more of a case of earning my money.
The example I draw is Warframe, which is free, but because I enjoyed the game, I ended up putting about $150 into it over the years. Not because I was blocked and needed to pay to proceed, but because I felt the devs were doing a great job and deserved my money!
I agree with you on the "forcing players into paying more" system of Destiny 2, it's not pretty. I stopped playing for quiet a while, for the exact reason of being kinda offended by the price tag and limitations put in place to force players to pay. I only jumped back-in about a week ago when I got a second copy for the wife through my humble monthly bundle, and since the expansion pass went on sale for like 15 bucks on the humble store, I bought one for both of us. I was right to wait for the discount it seems, I finished both expansion campaigns yesterday, and they were mostly meh at best. I hope the Forsaken expansion works out better.
But, oh Glorious Leader, if I may interject my little story here:
While you keep saying that Warframe is free, I had the exact opposite experience.
For me, as a totally new player, jumping into Warframe late and without any prior knowledge, the game seemed more confusing than "free".
When I say confusing, what I meant to say is, I felt Totally PayWalled!
It looked like any other cheap pay-to-win mobile game, just ported to run (badly) on PC. Blocky graphics, messy art-style, Shitty tutorial levels, lots of unexplained things that are unavailable to me because I was too low level or lacked some kinda shiny tokens (premium currency?)... And the previous tutorial missions kept repeating just without the tutorials, as no other locations were available, and when I went there I was bunged in with other random players of much higher levels who killed almost everything with one shot, or mostly just ignored the enemies that kept attacking me, and as I had no clue WTF to do and didn't know the levels by heart, I was lagging behind constantly, even though I didn't ask for them to join in the first place...
After 2-3 days of bumbling around the first 1-2 planets that were the only available ones, it seemed to me that if I wanted to proceed and get a decent gaming experience, I have to pay for loads of premium currency, or get stuck grinding the same 3-4 missions for weeks. While I may have been just "soft-walled" from progressing, it felt like it was not worth the grind. I was left too far behind by those who played for years, or simply payed.
You know how people felt when they found out that they would have to play Battlefront 2 for like years without pause to unlock all the characters? Yeah, when you have that feeling in a "free" game, it doesn't feel like "free" anymore, and to me Warframe felt just like that. *
*Full disclaimer: I did not buy Battlefront 2, but I couldn't be bothered to come up with a better example. The difference of paying for the game in the first place or getting it for free is irrelevant in this case. The point is "does it feel like I can achieve it by grinding" or "the grind is too long and it's designed so to be payed for". The sinking gut feel that you get when you realize you gotta pay (more) is the same.
The free-to-pay mobile-game kind of crafting system, with multiple days (weeks?) of wait times that could be shortened to instant with hard cash, upgrade-parts-for-cash system, XP multipliers-for-cash, anything-really-for-cash, zero storyline to follow (even if there was one, I guess I should have played since launch or read hours of Wiki to get up to speed and make me care), no explanation for what am I supposed to be doing etc., it really didn't seem like a quality game, but more like a poor attempt at a cheap Destiny clone riding the last waves of the mobile-game cash-shop era.
Very much the opposite of when Destiny2 launched, which had it's straight up gameplay, polish, a (mediocre but) clear storyline that is even explained for those who haven't played the first game, a logical workable loot and upgrade system, yada yada, for which I had to pay Once to be able to reach the exact same level and items as anyone else, regardless of personal wealth. Even the cash shop didn't bother me as if you put in enough hours you could most likely get what you really wanted. I know I did at least. I have more shaders, bikes and crap filling my inventory to the brim than I would ever need... (and yes, both my characters are in full Testie color scheme including their bikes, ships, and Dinklages)
Until the expansions came out, then it all went to crap...
Don't get me wrong here, I did watch videos and read enough about Warframe since then to know that it's far from that "cheapness", and it is indeed a pretty good game. But as first impressions go, it was really bad. Mind you, this was like 2+ years ago, I guess things have improved a bit since then.
