They both start as totally equal on the same day. Of course they will then make game play decisions that make them less equal as time goes by…but that’s really a convoluted red herring to avoid the fact that one has twice as much time to grind as the other.
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Pay to win is, by definition, a model where you can buy something for real money which you either can not obtain in the game or it would take you a significant amount of time to do so.
And it’s not a myth:
So, tell me… How much time would it take to get 1,750,000 skill points? And where in the game can I get a +12 attribute booster which lasts for 24 days?
Edit: Furthermore, a player who plays the game and pays only for a subscription has an option to get significantly weaker attribute implants, which can cost a lot of ISK, can be destroyed if a pod is destroyed , and are taking up slots for other types of implants (ex. Crystal, Snake,…). While at the same time, a player who buys one of the above packs for cash can have a booster, which is NOT taking up implant slots and is not destroyed when pod is destroyed.
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About a month. Oh my God…someone is going to ‘win’ Eve because they are a month ahead of you in a game where you join and there’s people 20 years ahead.
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Someone can spend ■■■■ loads of money on EVE and have loads of fun, someone else could spend loads of money and not have fun at all. In fact lots and lots of unfun.
Someone can pay nothing, grind for isk/plex and enjoy it immensely and someone else could very much dislike that grind.
Out of curiosity, having provided both options to their customers, pay to win or play to win, what point are CCP responsible for the consumers choice?
Also, how do you even win eve? Apart from the joke you win eve by quitting, in game how do you possibly define each players “whooo I’ve won!” scenarios and weigh them against each other then come up with a generic “You have won EVE!” achievement that would be recognized unilaterally by all players. I don’t think you can, but you can make cake and that’s the most important message here.
You are forgetting that both the ones who pay for skill points and those who are not are training skills at the same time. Only the one who buys skill points for cash has the advantage of coughing up $$$ for an instant bonus of 1,750,000 skill points on top of what he can train as a regular player.
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This is essentially a very very old and ongoing debate about wealth division.
Should a wealthy person be penalized for having said wealth Vs should a poor person be penalized for being poor.
No easy answer to that one.
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It appears we still havent established an agreed upon defination and PTW is very different in other games.
It’s pretty blunt in mobile games etc. But in EVE? idk… It’s a sandbox game.
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agreed
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I don’t see any advantage over and above that which a person may have from simply having more TIME to grind. How do you know the person buying the bundle doesn’t have zero time to grind to get ISK to pay for skill injectors ? The skill bundle does not automatically put anyone ahead. In fact it makes a great option for those who simply don’t have time available for grind.
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That’s the funny part. This is the reason why 4x and MMO games are not a thing. How do you balance people with nearly 24hrs to play vs the casual 1-3hrs? No dev has cracked the code for a 4x MMO on one server. 
Outscape was the only recorded attempt for a 4x space MMO on 1/large servers. The devs ran out of money.
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But its not even that. Its about lots of people failing to see that there is already ‘advantage’ in Eve simply by having more time available to grind. Someone with more time available may not even be rl rich at all. And not one person can answer why a person who doesn’t have the grind time available should not have the option to make up the ISK via cash.
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You have literally described what pay to win is yourself, and made it abundantly clear that some players are playing to get skill points (win) and some players are paying to get skill points (win). At least for me, this discussion is now over.
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Well, precisely by allowing those who can’t grind 24/7 to be able to make up the difference some other way…such as via buying bundles or PLEX. As I’ve said a million times in this thread…its odd how people complain about cash differential but nobody complains about time differential.
Still…at least I am now fully trained to Level V Beating One’s Head Against A Wall.
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Your right, but also it is a thing.
Pointless speculating who or why, would or wouldn’t, can or cant in this discussion but I feel my point still stands, those that can afford to use RL cash do have a certain advantage over those that simply don’t have a RL cash option, regardless, and despite agreeing with you, over how valuable in game grinding can be.
Money I would argue is far more disposable and replaceable than time.
But, I don’t think we will find an answer to that on an internet forum.
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As I said earlier…cash may allow someone to get a ship ‘faster’, but without the genuine skills ( as opposed to skill queue skills ), fitting, and experience they may simply lose it faster. Cash cannot buy a person fitting skills, or actual hands on experience. It is no guarantee of a ‘win’. If cash automatically bought victories then that might be a concern. But it doesn’t. No amount of cash can buy anyone the skill that comes from lengthy experience. And that is why no-one ever ‘paid to win’ Eve.
I think once anyone can successfully define what criteria is required to declare you have won EVE, only then can we finally make the decision as to weather eve is p2w or not.
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It is actually possible to “win” EVE.
PIBC did it on the Serenity server by conquering the map so hard that all their enemies biomassed and moved to Tranquillity.
So, by “winning” they destroyed the game for themselves.
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I won EvE, and I didn’t have to pay for it.
I simply blocked an annoying troll!
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Blocking trolls is winning more than just EVE.
That’s winning at life my friend.
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