Most games that I tried/played that has a "battlepass" gives you a good base when you get it. It's usually a good commitment to help the game to develop while getting a good boost to keep up things, in this game it's not that way, the pass is just a poor people thing.
No idea where CG took the idea that bullying people to spend so much money each 15 days was a good plan. It's not required to play the game, but it has a big impact in the new game mode (and it will also have in the following new game modes), so it makes the game feel worse for players that are not willing to spend a crazy amount of game in a mobile game.
I think that their focus is in trying to get new players willing to spend some money, even if they don't stay long in the game, the goal is to get money as fast as possible. That's why they have this soft reset of the Era each 3 months where the work done goes to the legacy and the focus will be again in new characters, Era rankings and burning money to get those characters up to rank well to get the currency for R10 or Lightspeed tokens.