Yeah, there are many subtypes of 'Free to Play' ranging from reasonable to absurd. Planetside 2 is what I would call reasonable as players who spend no money aren't at a huge disadvantage when it comes to combat but are limited in the roles they can perform, then you have APB: Reloaded and Real Racing 3, the former gives you free guns that are worse than peashooters so you just get slaughtered by players who have paid real money (rendering the fact that the game is free completely pointless) and the latter monetises everything: buy a car and wait for delivery or pay to speed it up, drive the car and wait for it to be repaired or pay to speed it up... All told there's over $500 of paid options in a 'free' iOS game. Madness. Of course you can play either without spending money, the question is whether it's worth your time.
Also regardless of how fair the system is, one common feature of all free to play games is that they're eyebrow-strainingly expensive. One gun plus attachments and a set of armour in Blacklight: Retribution costs more than BF3 Premium does, which features more players per game, larger maps, more vehicles, more weapons... The expensive cars in Simraceway are approaching $40 each now too, I'm sure GT5 can be found for less than that.
So as long as you have the time or you're prepared to spend a little and be locked in to a fairly narrow role for a while, free to play is quite good. If you want to play a diverse selection of roles you're better off just buying a game outright.
