It's definitely about how it is done and what value the game offers otherwise.

As much as I enjoy the sims, I think the sims can be a bit of a rip off with how they do the base game, expansion packs and stuff packs. Some expansion packs are good and worth the cost but others offer quite little value and additional gameplay for how much they cost.

World of warcraft has cost for base game, cost for expansions, charges for game time and has optional microtransactions for buying stuff like mounts. Yet wow also delivers and packs a lot of gameplay into it, so it kind of seems reasonable at times.

Fortnite br is free to play and charges for cosmetics and the battle pass and I think it does a very good job of it, especially given you can buy the battle pass once and be able to afford the next seasons one jusr from vbucks earned from the battle pass if you are careful with your vbucks.

I've encountered free to play games that rely on ads but the ads are optional to get boosts. I have no problem with this set up. There's also ones that have ads but you can buy the removal of ads.

I don't really like pay to win, especially in multiplayer games where one player doing so will affect another.

When done well I'm personally starting to prefer free to play with either microtransactions or paid dlc as a model over the buy the game and that's it model. I've experienced not having much money and I appreciate that free to play games are ones that a person can play regardless of how much money they have.

I am working on a game myself and I am seriously considering making it free to play with either microtransactions or cheap dlc.