The bottom line is that you can trade other players stuff for their platinum.

Of all the ideas of all time, the idea that Warframe has an aggressive monetization plan is certainly one of them.

Yes, you CAN save time by buying a resource drop booster, but those can also be earned in game. you CAN just buy whatever Warframe you want right now, but you can absolutely earn them all in game. You CAN buy Platinum, but you can also trade for it in game and never spend a dime. But none of this is aggressively presented to you, none of it gets pushed on you. The mere existence of boosters is a far cry from aggressively pushing them, the only one nagging you that you "could have had more" is you.

And the accusations of FOMO are pretty misplaced. It's not completely absent, but on the rare occasion that your login bonus is a coupon for platinum you're only ever one click away from just ignoring it. So many games will put something on sale once and tell you up front that if you don't BUY it now, you'll never get it, if you miss out, you REALLY miss out. Warframe never does that, even the things that are limited time are on a rotation, they'll be back, and they can always be earned in game without spending a dime. Warframe makes a point of making everything earnable in game, always. You can pay for a shortcut, you can pay to skip some part you don't like, but at no point do you ever have to, and it definitely doesn't PUSH microtransactions on you like so many other games. You won't get pop ups telling you to buy some limited time bundle or encouraging you to double your payout with this booster or that. Those things exist, and they're tucked away in the market where you don't have to interact with them. If you're really wound up over resource drop boosters or the like, you'll get them as the occasional log in bonus from time to time, but in most cases they're just not going to be necessary. The things that tend to block you aren't things a drop booster is likely to seriously impact. Frankly, if you ever spend platinum on a booster, you're a fool.

You spent money, once. By your own admission it wasn't even a lot. That's fine, just have some shred of self control and the game won't push more on you. Have a modicum of patience and sooner or later the game will give you what you were looking for anyway.

Hey, my 2 cents here since I've over 2000h in Warframe. I never had this feeling "I have to buy XY" but on the other hand I'm a cheap ass which thinks twice about every penny spent... I never spent a dime on Warframe but have buddies who buys every big pack and so on. Later on you're able to trade with other players and earn platinum (premium currency) this way. But I can see it maybe get frustrating when the needed items won't drop. If you've got the feeling to have buy boosters to reduce farming, this game won't be a good choice for longer terms. You may check out path of exile since their monetisation is focused on inventory space (but kind of not hard limiting) and cosmetics.

Been a while since I played, but I didn't even reach 1k hours and was trading stuff much earlier than that. In 850h I think I bought plat once, and made it to 21 (iirc) mastery total, with a dozen or two frames and weapons in store. The only thing I spent plat on is either intermediate currency for trading, or more slots (which you still get plenty of for free from events and such).

The game involves a lot of grinding to begin with, but you can easily farm a bit to find something to sell for plat.

Also Reddit misled you a bit. The game throws 50 and 75% off plat fairly regularly at you.

Especially about the competitive thing though: I've never had that thought. I've never seen it as competitive to begin with, even in a friendly way. And afaict, there's nothing you could do with money that would give you too much of an advantage. Maybe skip a bit of the grind, but a lot comes from mastery levels, build synergies, and knowing how to play your frame right... And even then outside of Steel Path and other endgame-ish content you can easily nuke an entire level with minimal effort.

All that said: yeah, it's a free to play game and it has a few features that will make you want to spend money. You can absolutely not spend a single cent and achieve whatever you want though, which is why people praise it. It just means playing the game more, so the question really becomes whether you enjoy the gameplay loop to begin with and how much time you're willing to spend.

To be honest, having been in the exact same situation with other games, I think the problem is you.

I’ve played Warframe for hundreds of hours, I never once felt forced to spend money. I had fun with my friends, we were farming the Frames we wanted, at our pace.

While I get your point, I think you should really consider WHY you want to spend money. What’s you goal with the game ? Are you at least having fun playing it, or are you achieving a list of chores as fast as possible in order to feel the achievement of having 100% the game ? If it’s the later, it’s a never ending quest. There won’t be pride at the end, just frustration, and wasted money.

The short answer to your question is that for the vast majority its very easy to ignore. If youre the kind of player that absolutely must be able to collect everything there is to collect, youre gonna have a bad time even if you pay. There is no friendly competitive aspect to it, its an easy game with a big grind.