Mr TAllen Sr, I respectfully disagree with your views.
I think the main issue I have with what you wrote is that calling PVZ:Heroes Pay to Win essentially makes the the term completely meaningless and thus, I don't understand why the desire to call it pay to win in the first place other than to voice your displeasure at losing to a powerful card played the way its meant to be.
Why is it meaningless? Because by the definition you are applying, every single game with any kind of rarity distribution and micro transactions is pay to win, and if that's the case, then any game where you have to pay to play it, for example call of duty, or the sport of golf, is pay to win. In golf, you need to buy golf clubs. The better they are, the better equipped you are to play. However, nobody calls golf, or any other sport for that matter, pay to win. In call of duty, you have to pay $60 for the game itself. If you don't you can't even play. Nobody calls that pay to win even though those who pay have a complete advantage over those who don't, given that those who don't can't even play.
With CCGs, you also often have to pay to play, depending on the economy of the game. For MTG, you will likely need to pay quite a bit if you want to play competitively. But really, what is the difference between paying to purchase the right cards to build a competitive deck and purchasing golf clubs of the quality necessary to play in a competitive tournament?
With a CCG that is advertised as free to play there is an important difference: it has an avenue of progression for people who don't wish to pay money to be competitive. What you are saying with this rant is that the free progression in this game is too slow for you because you don't already have absolutely all the cards and would like to without spending any more time or money. Even if you remove the p2w label, I disagree with the notion that the progression is too slow.
For starters, at least one public player has shown that they can create a new account and get to Ultimate league within a couple of months without spending any money. I personally did this too with my son's account and I've seen a few posts on reddit from players boasting that they got to Ultimate with budget decks or within a small amount of time. To me that shows that the game has a pool of cards that enables skilled players to created decks with minimal rarity count. In my experience this game has a progression much faster than most other f2p online CCGs and a design much more balanced towards budget decks, and to me these examples are proof of that.
That's not all. The ladder system, while not ideal, tries to ensure that most matches are fairly even. Thus, a player should be growing their collection along with their skill, that's what progression should work like. It sounds like to you a game can only be truly f2p if from the get go you have all the cards. I hope you realize how bad that would be for any game's reward system. In this game people complain that once you get to UL you don't get anything. Imagine if you started with all the cards and never ever got anything! nobody would be interested in playing.
In addition, this game actually has a very fair and generous rewards system. Veterans and people who paid or have played for long don't get much of an advantage in terms of rewards because the bulk of it comes from the ads and daily quests and the difference in gems of what a newbie can get to what a veteran can get is about 20 gems every day, on average, essentially 2 more quests. I say that these rewards are quite generous because within a year anyone playing this game will get over 72 legendaries without spending a dime. I challenge you to show me another online CCG with a more generous reward system.
To me, the pay to win term should be used for games were at least one of these things happen:
- Paying more GUARANTEES winning.
- Paying more is REQUIRED to win.
For example, a pay to win game is one where you can purchase additional life points. Such a scheme would allow you to guarantee a win since you can just buy as many life points as you can to win the game. There are plenty of games like that. Calling a well designed CCG pay to win just makes the term meaningless.
I'd like to also answer to a few of your points.
- Games should not allow paying for individual cards if they are free to play. I disagree with this strongly. The quality of your collection of cards dictates what level you can compete at. Some people want to play at the highest level from the get go. Having the option to pay in order to quickly complete their collection allows them to do this and generates an effective business model for the game. People not wishing to immediately compete at the highest level can still have a great experience by following the natural progression of the game.
- People playing with 3 or 4 of the same legendary in their decks MUST have payed! This is also not true. A person who is focused on being competitive has the option of sparking all their cards and using those sparks to build the few legendaries they need to build the most competitive deck. A person could have easily opened up a couple of the same legendary and crafted the other 2. It doesn't take long to generate enough sparks to craft 2 or 3 legendaries, without spending any money at all, if you are focusing fully on that.
- Dragon fruit is pay to win! Not really, there are lower rarity solutions to this card, including a general aggro strategy and some removal.
- Free to play means grinders can keep up with buyers. Not sure why you think this would be true. Free to play means that there is a way to enjoy the game for free. It also usually means there is a natural progression that lets you eventually reach competitive levels. It does NOT mean that you can immediately be on the same competitive level as someone who spends money to compete professionally immediatelly, otherwise there wouldn't be a point to the financial model.
