All your points are pretty much how'd I put it. If the core gameplay loop is all about leading me to the microtransactions window, it's an instant No for me.
This goes for almost all free games such as Apex, Fortnite, Destiny, etc... where skins are the primary source of revenue.
That's without mentioning "games" which I consider gambling like Genshin impact, Fifa ultimate team, and all kinds of shameless gacha out there
"It's free" is not an excuse for preying on people's psychological weaknesses.
I think "Red Queen Race" is the term from philosophy I'd use - the faster you run (from the Red Queen in Alice) the more you stay in the same place
"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
It just treats every instance of what it's decided are "dark patterns" as bad, regardless of whether they're being used maliciously or not.
> Definition: A gaming dark pattern is something that is deliberately added to a game to cause an unwanted negative experience for the player with a positive outcome for the game developer.
Note: In my opinion, it's perfectly fine to say "this is tough to define but I can try to say 'yes' or 'no' to specific examples". It's also acceptable to me to admin (as you have to for some words) that a word doesn't have a real definition but is rather the product of confusion or convenience.
As a different way of making the same point as you, I think critical differences are: (1) whether the compulsion to play serves you or the game creator, (2) whether the game mechanics serve an entertainment purpose or are grafted on to a game that would be just as fun without them, (3) whether it's designed around an "upgrade treadmill" as the core interactive structure of the game, as opposed to elements that have some degree of human craftsmanship to them (e.g. the mobile game Sorcery is fundamentally about the story).