No. It requires having a sword for sale that does 100 times the damage of everyone else. Why learn the game mechanics when you can buy the Legendary Sword of Fuck You?
Whales don't care about being better at the game, they care about winning. And if they can win by buying victory, they will do so and make the company extra cash.
This is the part you don't understand. All whales, every single one of them, do not want to learn how to play the game any more than just the basics. They don't want to learn deep complex mechanics, they want an easy way to win and the company WILL give it to them because they are willing to pay for it.
All F2P degerates on free gear being utter shit compared to what you can buy and no matter how skilled you are at the game, a complete noob with 10 dollars can buy a massive advantage that makes all skills and all mechanics useless against him. That's the business model, that's what they are selling.
Stop being a fucking apologist for this shit.
What the fuck? What does "deeper more complex mechanics" has to do with Themepark audience? Why would they like or dislike the first based on the second, where are you extrapolating this from?
That is not my assumption, that's what you assume my assumption is. Content is what differentiates ALL MMOs from each other, but buy2play gives all of it's content for a low price or subscription, while F2P gives you it's content for retarded amounts of cash once you sum it up all up.
HOW DO YOU FUCKING MAKE THESE CONNECTIONS?
Casual players aren't interested in keep paying money every month to barely play a game a few minutes every day. They have so many free games to do so, why should they be interested in paying at all? F2P games are the ones filled with casuals, since they require literally no investment to start playing and they can ditch it at any time they feel like it.
No. If if you can buy advantages, it suits people willing to buy victories instead of getting better at the game. This is the complete oposite of hardcore player.
And you call these "hardcore players"? People that can't even be arsed to play the fucking game?
This isn't even an argument in your favour, what if instead of grinding for months, I much prefer a game that gives me all the content at launch for 60 bucks? What if instead of having to buy retarded keys to unlock shit in the game, I prefer to pay a monthly subscription and not have to worry about that shit?
The concept of "investing money vs investing time" does not imply at all that P2W is better than B2P at all, both are compatible models with this.
Pay2win is fucking retarded because once you sum up everything that is for sale, you'll always get something in the order of HUNDREDS of dollars, and yet you think it's such a great business because it's just 1$ per item. You're fucking retarded and falling for the dumbest scheme ever.
You keep talking about "hardcore gamers" but at the same time, you complain about "not having enough time to play the game". What the fuck is an "harcore gamer" to you? Someone with a deeper wallet than the competiton? It seems that you like MMO's (because you're a fucking retarded trying to validate his purchases) but you don't like that you're not a "real gamer".
Tough shit, you bought into a dying genre and even started with the worst model possible and now you're trying to justify it like someone buying the wrong flavour of yogurt and trying to argue you actually like this flavour. The only serious skill that you can develop in MMOs are social skills, talking with other people. But from your posts, it's pretty obvious you're not even "harcore" at that.
You're fucking delusional, there's no place for deeper and interesting mechanics in the game because the stuff you buy in the cashop ALWAYS has to be more powerfull than those skills and mechanics. If it wasn't, nobody would buy it and the company would lose money. So why waste time making those mechanics in the first place when nobody is gonna use them and they don't even matter?