Which event costs money?

New Frontier event has a buyable pass option.

I feel like a lot of people are gonna get screwed buying the pass and not being able to complete it. Seems like a real poor decision from plarium.

Smarter option is buying it at the end after you unlock everything but already seeing complaints from people buying it assuming they just get all the stuff. 

That's becasue people have been trained by other passes that that is what happens.  

Forge Pass you have to do the quests to unlock everything.  What pass gives you everything?

doesn;t the "upgraded" version of the forgepass give everything at once? platinum or premium or whatever it's called.

This

That one gives relic mats but I think theres an additional option to buy the levels but IIRC its clearly stated. 

Even still forge pass is very simple quests, this frontier requires much more.

Both Forge Pass & Champion Pass Tasks are very easily achievable just by playing the game and doing Dailies, even for early-game players.  Getting to the end of the Frontier Event requires a late-game account.  Even if you paid your $40, you can't even open the last node w/o completing every previous task.

2 of these things are alike and have trained players what to expect when buying a Pass.  One of these things is very very different, and I am sure there will be many players burned by the buyer's remorse.

Combined with the fact that the actual quests are hidden, this is, quite frankly, an escalation of Plarium's predatory marketing.    

Definitely a fair argument.