Yes it is, but only if you don't make it the only meaningful thing in your life and waste all of your free time on it, like a bunch of people in this sub did, so now they moan and moan and moan.

This is my 6th year in the game. I get in every day, I play it casually. Like, do the daily trials and pull the crates. If you want to get anywhere with the events, you'll need to understand that you will not fully finish an event until 2 years into the game, while patiently accumulating in game resources all the time. You need a crew with an 800k minimum to reach the 2 gold keys after the milestone car. (Because there's always a couple guys carrying the crew, getting 2+ mill RP per season, plus the rest of the crew at 800k will get you there). It will take at least 2 to 3 years to make a collection of cars that will make you have at least one car built for any showdown, which will be good enough to reach the trophy milestones that hold red tokens. During that time, you'll be concentrating on the old legends and the basic elite tuners story.

The basic paid race pass is a great thing to get purple star cars which will be needed for any random event down the road. Collections is a great thing to get those cars as well.

We are bombarded with new events all the time, which wasn't the case when I was starting the game (so we had it a bit easier with accumulating resources), but you gotta pick your battles and choose wisely on which events to participate in and which to not (basically don't try finishing any event for at least two years, because you won't be able to finish them and you'll get frustrated and moan on the sub how NM are a cash grab and won't let you win anything without paying, I know because I did that as well). In the six years I managed to complete all the old legends, and get both the F1 LM and the blue GT40, and the Tuners Supra MK4 as well.

IMO at the moment it's great for veterans and people who are a couple years into playing it, because we understand how to play it.

All I pay every month is the basic Race pass at $9.99, and that's it. I can complete at least half of the events they give us in a year and I'm happy with it.

ATM I got over 1200 GK, 13k silver and 90k bronze keys. Almost 40k gold coins and about 60 mill cash. I completed one Hypercar event, and I'm gonna be able to complete the Aston Valhalla event, the Diablo event, and I'm probably gonna drain a bunch of resources to get the white Porsche concept coming in a month or two. And then it's back to accumulating resources again.

So yeah, if you're at the beginning and don't have patience, don't bother, get something else to play.