True, after more than 10 years, all possible factors get very complex into “winning”.
Like the other poster said, can you define what you perceive as a win? Because I am not even capable to list all factors, and hope others will help out as this game can have a lot of situations not everyone thinks about.
I agree that this is something significant and relevant that should be pointed out, however, context is also important. I also feel that my original reply made it pretty clear that you can, in the short term, buy advantage in EVE, and also that there are non-buying ways to counter that.
One area that would be useful/informative to a player consider getting into a game is, just how much advantage does how many $$ get for you? Does putting $20 into the game confer a significant advantage? Do I have to put $15/month in for over a year to get an advantage? If I want a big advantage right now, do I have to drop $300 on the game, and then end up with gear I’m not really skilled enough to make use of and can’t afford to lose to a mistake?
For my own personal experience in EVE, someone who has spent 3 years paying for a sub and playing the game regularly is far more threatening to me than someone who signed up 2 months ago, dropped a thousand bucks and bought all the best stuff he could find. And essentially, that’s exactly what I would expect from every game out there, whether it was free or paid.
(Note: I would even consider a 3-year old, regularly played Alpha account to be more of a threat than the newbie with $1,000 worth of Plex… but of course Alphas aren’t quite that old yet.)
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They really don’t have to. They could pay it the same way they did in the past. The problem is that many companies don’t want to anymore, because the “free2play” crowd is much easier to pander to and milk.
In no way or form is “free 2 play” a requirement. All the people from before this horrible era of psychological abuse still exist.
They’re called fossils
You’re a fossil Sol
CCP doesn’t force anyone to keep playing this mess lol, people are just too stubborn or addicted to move on
@op
Paying for skill injectors or plex or whatever won’t turn you into an elite killing machine…
Skill points are beyond useless if you don’t have the knowledge to use them 
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The fact you consider this to be an “extremely important factor” reveals you probably don’t understand much of what I wrote previously. I’m going to make one more attempt to clarify. Consider the equation:
Chance_of_Win = ( a * my_skill ) - ( b * opponent_skill )
Here, my_skill and opponent_skill are predictor variables. Chance_of_Win is the response variable. The goal of the equation is to predict Chance_of_Win given values for each predictor varialbe. This is accomplished by defining what we mean by “win”, encoding it (probably a 1 for win and a 0 for loss here), and then fitting the equation to a data set to find values for ‘a’ and ‘b’ that minimize prediction error across the data set. A key point here, whatever we define to be a win, the equation will be made to fit that definition. So really we can use any definition we want here as long as we are consistent and it’s a good faith representation of “chance of win.” If we pick our win criteria as surviving for at least 10 seconds, obviously that effects the equation and the meaning of its output compared to if we define a win as driving all of your opponents from the grid or killing them. I’m not going to pick a specific definition because it’s not necessary and limits the point I’m making.
Now, we should note that when we fit the equation to data, we are estimating what the true values are for ‘a’ and ‘b’. So from here forward lets pretend we have a way of finding the true values for ‘a’ and ‘b’. A true solution exists, we are just claiming to know it.
With this step passed, the next one shouldn’t be as confusing (I hope). Now, lets add predictor terms for every possible predictor variable that in truth effects our chance of a win. If we tried to fit this to a finite data set, adding so many terms would be a bad idea. But since we have allowed ourself to know the true, optimal form of the function, it’s fine to consider here.
Now our function is something like:
Chance_of_Win = ( a * my_skill ) - ( b * opponent_skill ) + ( c * my_relevant_sp ) - ( d * oponnent_relevant_sp ) + …
With the ‘…’ representing the full list of all relevant predictor variables (each with a scalar multiple). This is where most of you seem to be making a mistake. If we want to now see the effect of an increase in the value of one of these predictor variables, we must hold the values of all other predictor variable constant while we increase the variable of interest. If we compare the output, before this one variable is incremented and after, we can see the effect of increasing said variable. The exact amount of change may be dependent on the values of the other predictor variables, if the model is non-linear, but in many of these cases we can still describe the correlation, or change in output per change in input, as always positive.
So when many of you say things like “well that one bonus from spending more money doesn’t mean anything because there are so many factors”, with respect, you’re full of ■■■■. Would be like troubleshooting a problem and making 20 changes each time before you check the result. You don’t know what the individual effects of those 20 changes were because you didn’t do them one at a time. If 10 are positive in the exact amount that the other 10 are negative, and you see no change, it doesn’t mean that none of them had a positive effect.
What you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
You have failed to answer the simple question of what is winning, its not some arbitrary formula that you shat out.
I know you wont answer the question in sincerity because if you do your entire argument on pay to win will crumble apart.
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advantage compared to whom?
if its compared to the player-base on the whole, then no, it doesn’t grant an “almost unlimited advantage” because no matter how much money you pump into the game, I guarantee there is someone else out there who has more isk, or more sp, or more friends, or more experience. probably a combination of all of the above.
yes. if you boil it town to an absurdly small sample size, then it will grant you an advantage against say, someone who started playing at the exact same time as you in a strict 1v1 with equal experience, mechanical and tactical knowlege, and identical ships and fits other than the amount of bling and the sp for the modules.
So yes, against that singular person under those very specific circumstances you will win.
but with enough criteria ANYTHING can give you an advantage, hell, if that theoretical person is living in england (where the servers are) and has a strong connection, while you are living in australia with a ■■■■ connection, and it still might not matter how much bling you put on your ship.
I’m sorry that was obviously over your head. I should have known better given your questions…
I was going to rephrase it in terms of probability instead of statistical models, which in hindsight is much simpler, but I’d like to honestly thank you for the reminder: waste of time trying to explain math to people like you.
Please carry on spouting nonsense
Again don’t try to be cute, it doesn’t suit you, either does intelligent as it would seem.
All you are doing at this point is devaluing your own arguments buy refusing to answer a simple question, What do you consider winning? It’s not a statistical probability, it’s not a garbage mathematical formula.
Fine I’ll bite, let’s consider winning as surviving and driving all of your enemies from the grid, with at least an hour afterwards with no conflict (so it’s a clear win).
This is just one possible definition, and I’m not claiming it is the best (haven’t given any thought to that because it’s irrelevant for the current discussion)
Completely relevant as you are the one who first spouted that SP give you a greater chance of winning.
By this definition, evasion is also winning and has the similar skills that are necessary for combat but when used in a different application don’t need to be skilled up to the same level.
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We’ll call it a draw…
To call it a draw you imply you had a chance of winning.
Thats called a subscription. games shouldnt be charging both a sub and expensive microtrans together. you want high MT go f2p, you want subs, go low MT not a full store.
Pay to win in EVE doesn’t exist for one simple reason
You can’t win EVE
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I think many ppl confusing „must have“ with „winning“, there is nothing to win in EvE and yes there will always be things that you cant have.
Remember, RL is the only one P2W game.
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That’s not true. I’ve been winning Eve for a few years now.
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No you just “think” you’re winning EVE, thats the best part of this trap, CCP makes you think you’re paying to win and that you’re winning, but in reality the only people who win are CCP 
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So you know the truth but refuse to accept it?
Go ahead, spend a few thousand and get yourself a blingy ship, and the skill points to go with it, that lol dominates everyone.
You will find out that unlike other games having the best equipment means exactly nothing.
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Well someone thinks pretty highly of themselves, eh. Perhaps a fedora over-tightness check might be in order?