This is a poor take.

You cam have games without micro transactions actions that are trash, and f2p games with micro transactions that are great.

It’s not binary black or white and ultimately it’s the game/developer that is great, not the business model.

It's more of a "are good games with microtransactions good regardless of MTX or in spite of them?"

You can totally have a good game with MTX, but I think it always lowers the quality in some way, and they're only good in spite. I don't think OP is suggesting that no MTX guarantees a good game, but that a game should stand on its own merits and sell its whole experience instead of chopping itself up piecemeal

I kind of doubt that. A lot of things like say, character skins, are done using the “leftover artist hours”, when the core programming of the game is done, but there’s a lot of tweaks and fixes going in - and the character artists are left with nothing to do. Having them make downloadable items is just another way to justify keeping those artists on the payroll.

The man-hours spent in MTX can’t necessarily easily be redirected to make more singleplayer content. Generally, if a game just doesn’t have enough content or doesn’t feel satisfying, that’s my direct criticism of it - that they didn’t do a good enough job, and it should show up in reviews too. I also generally don’t buy MTX at all, and have rarely felt I got “less than a whole entity”.