There shouldn’t be any free to play in this game due to its scope. However when they change ownership of the franchise the game took a HUGE hit and the content released wasn’t nearly on par with what used to be. It resulted in a major loss of player base. Hence they opened up free to play to gain back the player base. Which worked wonders for them! They improved Eververse and raised the price (and perks) to play content for paid users, then cut content in half by sun setting with seasons and time gating end game content. The free to play aspect of the game is absolutely huge content wise for games of this quality. It was a publicity move that paid off for them in more ways than one. The game isn’t going to change from here. They’ll never retract that. Paid content now is to give you access to just a couple of other things, and some gear and weapons (including exotics). Proportionally, the paid content is basically 3x less vs what the game used to be, at the same price (because of free to play access vs paid content gameplay).