This is it. You want to make the game at least a little fun at first, but at some point you have to make your users feel dissatisfied in order to get them to spend. Much like Facebook needs to keep their users angry and depressed to keep them coming back. Hyper-optimizing anything for profit is never about creating an experience your customers will love, in my experience.

Sure, I played Lost Ark for it's PvP recently and paid $5 to skip leveling my second character. I definitely both paid to skip content and enjoyed playing.