The grind to get those depends on whether the player is being farmed for money. If it feels good to play, and you unlock content at a reasonable rate, that's just called progression, not farming. But if the task is repetitive, unfun, and designed to frustrate players into paying, that's farming.

That's why people shit on EA for BF2. They did the math of the grind and loot boxes, and it came out so something ridiculous, like multiple hundreds of hours to unlock stuff. I used to play R6 Siege and never spent a penny. After a week or so of playing with my friends, we'd have enough in-game currency to buy a new operator. We'd all unlock new characters and try them out. Week after week, it was fun.

Paying, imo would have ruined that experience because the gameplay is what made it fun. Forcing us to use the ops we chose rather than having a full roster to pick whatever we wanted. Felt almost like deck-building. We were progressing, not farming.

The caveat is that the new ops tended to be OP. I think the devs probably do it intentionally. This is the P2W part. People could pay day 1 and get the operator with the overtuned kit. They paid to save time, because they want to be the first to use the shiny new toy.

But again, like I said. I'll never spend money on either, but at least that person paying is gaining something, an advantage, time saved, instant gratification, more time learning the op. The person buying a pink gun gets ... a digital pink gun?