I fail to see where the issue here is, not because I haven’t read your points (trying to quantify an amount of time with money or the Deepwoken example of To1), but because I legit am unable to see the issue with this.
First of all, this is for players who have already experienced the game a lot of times already, as a Tester I can say that I have, but I always find it nice to progress the Storyline, so, for example, it wouldn’t impact people such as myself who like starting over and over again sometimes.
Second, and this is very important, mind you, you cannot purchase the product if you haven’t finished the Storyline, so that’s one less issue, but I can see why you’d be mad at the fact that skipping requires a payment.
Now, I acknowledge the fact that yes, Deepwoken’s Trial of One does work… because it’s a roguelike, you are expected to die over and over and the progression for that trial is legit defeat X monsters and that’s it; I’m not going to say that Deepwoken doesn’t have a story, but it doesn’t have one, but what you’re given as a Story is mainly a few dialogues with a few NPCs, no main questlines aside from when you first spawn in and that’s it.
Arcane Odyssey has a Story, one that you see many, many times, and it can become annoying for certain people.
Now, could an AO version of the Trial of One be added? I don’t know, how would you make it even work with the way the game works? You get levels and then items? Then why is a product so bad? All of the game’s gamepasses are vanity-only and this single product isn’t pay-to-win since it’s just a way to get to a point where you have more freedom faster and you don’t get items that give you an advantage compared to someone who grinded to Level 100, actually, if an experienced player were to get to Level 100 compared to someone who purchased the product, chances are they might be a little behind compared to the one who grinded from Level 1.
You should tell us why this is a bad thing and not one that will simply be ignored by those that don’t care or don’t want to skip the Storyline, you also have to explain in what way it is predatory, because I just can’t think of any reasons as to why it would even considered as such; you still have to grind for the items, you still have to make your build, so why is a product such a problem?