On a final note, pay-to-progress is not pay-to-win. They are entirely separate with precisely zero overlap. Pay-to-progress shortens a grind that is not overly ridiculous to begin with. It's not seen as mandatory by either the community or the developers. Pay-to-win means the grind is so crazy that in order to actually do anything new you have to pay. If the community sees that XP boosts are mandatory then it's pay-to-win. If not, then it's pay-to-progress.

Not really IMO. Pay2Win is usually only used for PvP related games where paying brings you the mentioned victory (more easily). Peaple tend to use the Term "P2W" because it's mostly common.

The P2W and P2P you describe are the same thing in my eyes and are ok or bad depending on the game. If you have to play 24/7 (or something too similar to that) to be able to keep up with people who pay or to just even get smallest upgrades, it's bad.

I mean, since this isn't a PvP game the "keeping up with players who pay" isn't that important, since you basically can give a f*ck about what other players do, but if you can't feel the progress anymore and only see further fun in the game if you would pay to accelerate things, than it's bad P2P. At least that is a kind of bad practice, that ultimately keeps many players from a particular game.

In the end, it depends on the game and the people. If this game turns out to be too grindy, it's obviously bad. If it's not, than the micros won't be bad.