Playing games with micro transactions and not paying playing it wrong. The games are specifically designed such that not paying feels bad, but paying just a little gets you to enjoy it significantly more.
If a game includes micro transactions its most important goal is to get you to spend money once, that is the most important psychological barrier to overcome. And that is why many "free to play" games are unpleasant to play without paying money.
There are a few exceptions (Dota2, csgo, path of exile and sone more) but on mobile these are exceedingly rare and drowned out by games designed to get you to spend money.
Path of Exile actually is unpleasant to play toward the endgame without specialized stash tabs, which cost money. PoE has possibly the most irritating item/inventory management of any game I've ever seen, and those purchased stash tabs make it tolerable. But the total cost of the mandatory tabs is still somewhat reasonable compared to what you can get out of the game.
At the point where you reach the stage you need to start worrying about stash space in Path of Exile you are going to be many, many hours into the game. And once you purchase the enhanced storage space it is a permanent addition to your account. Personally I don't mind this form of monetization. As far as predatory strategies goes it is on the low end.
I played Genshin Impact earlier this year I was enjoying the game until it sank in just how predatory the whole thing felt - they had timegates baked into the game to encourage you to spend money - there was a limit to how much of the in-game currency you could earn each day (it was also a very low maximum cap). You needed to spend this currency to level up items and characters etc so it placed a deliberate block on how quickly you could progress and of course you could spend money to bypass this block. Not only that but because of how little of the currency you could carry it created a massive FOMO loop where you needed to be logging in everyday to spend your allotted quota ro you would miss out on making progress on your account.
If a game includes micro transactions its most important goal is to get you to spend money once, that is the most important psychological barrier to overcome. And that is why many "free to play" games are unpleasant to play without paying money.
There are a few exceptions (Dota2, csgo, path of exile and sone more) but on mobile these are exceedingly rare and drowned out by games designed to get you to spend money.