I'd similarly call out Warframe for this. No required buy ins, but their premium currency can be used for inventory expansion, crafting instant completion (although you can simultaneously craft as much as you want), or trading with other players. Meanwhile they continually improve the game. The trading component also means people with time but not money can still get premium currency just by trading valued loot.
Warframe is pretty guilty of the many resources trade off, and starting out the game you're basically forced to pay for more warframe slots because you don't really have good enough loot to grind the good loot that people will trade plat for. It's a strange design decision because one of the main draws is how fun/different the different frames and weapons are. I'm hopeful they will address that in the future new player experience rework because I believe they make the majority of their money from the primes and cosmetics.
They support the hell out of their game though. I just started playing again and there's so much new stuff to do.
I dunno. Warframe feels "cool" from the start, while PoE requires $50 to not walk around with tin pot on your head and bad renfest garb at max level, even though the level 3 next to you is creating and destroying dazzling universes of light because they paid $250.
The game didn’t feel like a grind until about a thousand hours in, when I quit. Up until then it was a fun series of learning curves and minmaxing builds. It’s a grind from day 1 if the gameplay doesn’t interest you.
The game felt like a grind from the 10th hour. Playing in public, people don't even play the game, they jump-dash through the entire level, kill a boss, and head to the end, over and over and over, every three minutes, all day. What's the point?
