No, P2W is you buy, and you get an in-game advantage.

Amen.

The justifications that people use to paint P2W mechanics as fair or acceptable just completely astound me. The one I see most often is "it's only P2W if you can't earn the same items without money". Nonsense. You're paying money to circumvent a process which requires you to earn an advantage, an advantage that will help you win. You're paying to win.

The other justification I see a lot is "I don't have as much time as other people so I'm at a disadvantage without P2W provisions". Well, yeah, no shit. Time spent playing is time spent practicing and earning an advantage. Why should the playing field be level for someone who just started playing?

Think of it in terms of a sports metaphor. You've got a bunch of players who have spent time building up muscle and achieving success through honing their skills and earning the endorsements/equipment they need to be at the top of the game. Then some weedy guy walks onto the field with an exoskeleton he bought which completely compensates for all the time he didn't spend playing and practicing. Sure, he might not have the reflexes of the veteran players, but he has still just paid a bunch of money to level the playing field. That's not in the spirit of competition.

The spirit of competitive gaming is that the person who plays better wins. Not the person who throws the most money at the game, buying their way to an artificial advantage. Where's the pride or excitement in playing long enough to outfit yourself with some great gear when you know that some kid can just whip out his mum's credit card and trivialise your efforts at the press of a few buttons?

I don't know if my total dissatisfaction is just due the fact that I've been around long enough to remember when P2W microtransactions didn't exist in competitive games, a time when such blatant fuckery would have been met with near universal scorn rather than begrudging acceptance or even embrace.

These microtransactions are akin to the cheat codes we used to use as kids in single player, but now they're being offered in competitive multiplayer games, and instead of inputting some arbitrary button sequence, we're asked for money. Exchanging money for an advantage in a competitive multiplayer game just seems so surreal, so detestable, to someone who grew up gaming at LAN parties where everyone played on a level field and the winner earned victory through skill and skill alone.

I understand why microtransactions make sense from a short-term ROI perspective. I understand there's a market for them. I understand that they're here to stay. That still doesn't make it good game design. I can only hope that there's a developer out there with the clout to refuse the financiers who demand maximum short-term profit at the expense of all else.

There is still a gigantic market for a polished multiplayer experience that completely eschews any P2W pinnings. League of Legends may not be the perfect example as it's still microtransaction based, but it's arguably the most popular game in the world and yet it features no microtransactions which explicitly afford you an advantage over anyone else. Victories are decided almost entirely on skill-based play, not what hero you chose to buy. There's a model that works without alienating a great deal of the player base just to cater to the impatience of others.

TLDR: Pay to advantage is pay to win, and has no place in competitive gaming.