What are the grounds for saying that a game is pay-to-win?
Seeing the posts for Rose it made want to go try it again. I checked their premium service it doesn't really have much to do with combat and stuff. For the Item mall, most of the costumes just give increased exp and drop rate and for aesthetic purposes. yeah, less time to reach cap but hey, you'll get there sooner or later.
IMO, the only real reason to consider a game pay 2 win is if all the tools necessary for endgame content and/or pvp can ONLY be obtained through the cash shop. But I guess that's very idealistic of me. If something that's purchasable in the cash shop can be earned with in-game currency or effort/play time then it's fine by me.
I don't have any problems spending money on free games anyway since they don't force me to spend money just to log in like p2p games.
Pay to win is a little bit different for everyone. For me, it's when you can get have a better chance at upgrading gear by using cash shop money/items and/or having items that can give you a bonus in combat. Also items that give you higher drop rates are sometimes pay to win (depends on by how much it increases the chance). I don't think exp bonus items are pay to win, tho.
For me it's upgrading as well especially if theres a high chance of breaking your equipment and they have item's that protect the item from downgrading or failure.
There are other minor things but I don't really care to much about those.
For me, It becomes "pay to win" when there is already a barrier from the normal users to the premium users. Like for example, you can't beat the premium users on pvp if you're non-premium user. No matter how good you are on PvP if the items and gears of your opponent is very OP and these items were only available on cash shops of item malls.
pretty much what they said.... if the premium items in use give more than 20% damage in pvp and you cant obtain anything equivalent without using real money.... then its pay to win (usually if this is true, then you can get a total of more than 50% bonus damage...... like drakensang sells 200% bonus damage crap for premium only, but sells 100% ones for ingame money... mind you they are expensive as hell, funny thing is that it consumes one item per hit <.<)