BnS is like battlefront 2 but this game turned into a disgusting shit slowly in ~6month instead of one day to another. Because of this people don't give a fuck "its a f2p game" right?/s
As a F2P player it would take you somewhere between 4-7month with daily two hour at least to reach the endgame gear. This also includes having 10 lvl50 alt for events and for other dailies. I won't go on detail about the mind fuck where your character attack power = higher acceptance into groups which eventually will make you spend even more money.
With the lvl55 patch(new content patch,new level cap, comes out in december) getting the current mid-tier gear will be a lot more easier but every mob/boss will be also scaled to lvl55. This means almost nothing changes and u even getting nerfed. mindfuck2.0
During the last trove(p2wpay to progress event right?/s) with the new class release(gunner) those who paid $$$$ got their character max geared in matter of hours('cuz opening trove boxes takes time) including hongmoon levels what others had to farm for years. This should tell you what kind of game BnS is.
In this game it's better if u spend those hours working, making money instead of farming.
You may ask how does it affect me? With the current system and the fact that p2wpay to progress works and it makes shittons of money to Ncsoft and the game will keep going on this disgusting path. Currently the in-game gold to cash shop currency exchange system is flawed and Ncsoft answer(so god damn retarded) to this was to make gold worth even less than before which means those who spends more cash$$$ getting more gold.
To enjoy PvP and start without disadvantage you need to level up your character to lvl50 and unlock different must have skills(depends on the class) which require u to play shittons of pvp without your must have skills or run the same dungeon for hundreds of times with heavy RNG involved or spend $$ and buy it in the cash shop. This doesn't mean u can't win. This only means u already starting the game where u are in disadvantage because of this retarded system.