It's only optional if you are fine with playing at a disadvantage versus those who paid. I would ask how many hundreds of hours one has to play before they have the full set of multiplayer equipment, but since this game even has one-time-use consumables, it will never stop being pay-to-win.
I'm generally not interested in games that are about grinding, so having to play a ton before you "earn" access to full multiplayer equipment, get equal with veteran players and get an edge over newbies would already be bad in my mind. But when the designers put in the option to bypass the grind by paying, that means they are conceding they don't even really believe the grind is good for the design. They are deliberately shitting on their game to make an extra buck in the usual abusive F2P fashion. There is no excuse for this in a game that has a price tag.
The advantage the paying people get may not be very high, dunno, but it exists. If you don't mind a little P2W in your game, fine, enjoy. But the way some people are jumping to deny the nature of the design, despite it being blatantly obvious, feels like victims defending their abuser. They'll even contradict themselves in a single post - "There's no problem with it, and besides, it's not quite as bad as what those other developers are doing!"
The devs are not forced to choose between paid map updates and pay-to-win DLC. They could just do cosmetic DLC and still make plenty of money, on top of the full game price they are already asking up front. Look at CS:GO - it has the lottery / Skinner box thing going on, but it doesn't give an unfair advantage to anyone. But that's not enough. Halo has to print money, fuck good game design if that's what it takes.
