Yeah, the lack of transparency in the Pay-to-win game mechanics is annoying as heck. It’s frustrating to be lectured on F2P deck building strategies by someone who is P2P and pretending to be F2P (And that’s ignoring the contradictory advice of “Break out of the meta and do something new” and “Don’t spend your resources frivolously and don’t do anything too outlandish, stick with the established strategies”).
The P2P playerbase are functionally playing an entirely different game, and whilst I am fairly sure that game is still grindy and difficult in its own ways (I’ve noticed that P2P players are often so OP that they only engage with the co-op mechanics superficially, if at all. That makes me sad because the only reason I’ve stuck playing this game is how incredible the co-op multiplayer is and as salty as I am about P2P advantages being OP, I want everyone to experience the parts of this game that I have truly loved).
This is why solving the real life problems stalls so much, because “progress” literally means something different across different chunks of players. It’s why griefers sometimes say “I don’t know why you’re getting angry, I’m literally just playing the game”. That used to make me rage, but I’ve realised they’re not lying, they’re just playing a different game. Now I’m just sad that I have to spend so much energy trying to keep them out of my game if I want to make any progress