Posting here my attempt at arguing this:

Because you said you want to be convinced, heres my semi-serious attempt at it.

Note: theres a TL;DR at end.

So, on todays greedier episode, you bought pay to play to "save money on keys" on the caves, but you had already opened the caves item room. What does that mean?

If Pay to Play costs 15 cents, and you have 3 item rooms left on greed mode (Depths, Womb and Sheol), you are actually paying 18 cents for 3 keys worth.

Lets also consider theres always a key on every shop, and theres a chance that key might be on sale. That means if you wait til next floor, you have a chance at a key for 3 cents.

Then if we consider you got at least 2 free keys on that run, of the 18 cents you used, 12 cents got sorta-of wasted (5 for each key + 1 cent for each door).

Now lets think you didnt go to item room on caves where you got pay to play. That makes it 19 cents for 4 keys (20 cents worth if no discounted keys show up), BARELY worth it.

The max value you can get is 5 keys worth (25c) for 20 cents total.

Pay to Play is only really good if its on sale for 7 cents or on first floor.

Now, about your no-key strat

So, that strat... it freaking sucks.

3 keys = 15 cents = 3 random items from a sort of good pool, agreed?

Now, 15 cents is also 1 item from shop.

The shop ALWAYS has (correct me if im wrong) a Key, a Heart, a Shop Item, a Boss Item and two randoms. Randoms can be Treasure room pool items, trinkets or pickups like bateries, spirit hearts, pills, cards and stuff.

In your logic, instead of 3 random treasure pool items, you can instead only get a guaranteed boss item/shop item, but the item itself is random, you can only guarantee the pools its from.

I think thats the fallacy you are getting stuck at. Sure, 3 keys = 3 ? items, but 15 cents is also a ? item!

Whats the only advantage you are getting onf the shop? That shops are rerollable way more often... But even then thats a huge gamble too! Because rerolling items costs resources, it makes the item cost even more money or bombs you could be using to get money blowing pots/shop keepers, the value you get is super bad.

The point is 3 random treasure room items versus 1 random shop/boss item is equally random, the only difference is what item pool do you value most at this point.

Lets analyze the pools:

• Treasure room pool, this has many of the big boys, Polyphemus, God Head, Tech X, Moms Knife, Serpents Kiss, Pyromaniac that you reeeally want, Proptosis. It also has trash, but theres many good items and average items in it. It has definitely a higher amount of carry items on it compared to others.

• Boss Pool has tears ups, not so awesome damage ups (the best damage up in this pool is Magic Mush for the 50% multiplier) and a bunch of hp ups. Also valid to mention this is the same pool from Silver Treasure Rooms, so its very easy to get these items from there.

• Shop Items have a lot of spacebar items, and mostly situationally good items. Examples would be BFF for Lilith, Blank Card if you got a card you can abuse it with (two of diamonds), Car Battery if you got some good spacebar item, etc. The only "always good" item is Champion Belt, and technically Chaos tho it can fuck with you..

So, do you value the random chance at ONE those, more than 3 random treasure pool items? I dont, most other players dont, and thats why we hate your strategy and think its dumb, its trading 3 randoms with carry potential for 1 also random item with less chance of being carry-good.

TL;DR1 - Pay to Play is only really good if its on sale for 7 cents or on first floor. You wasted money.

TL;DR2 - No-keys strat: The 3 random Treasure room items are equal 1 ALSO RANDOM Shop/Boss item/maybe Treasure item**, the item isnt guaranteed to be good in any of the places, but 3 items from treasure pool have a higher chance at being impactful/better/run saver.

^{I hope NL reads this, sorry for any typos/english mistakes.}