It doesn't matter who says it or where it's said, if someone calls this game pay to win there's always a plarium rep saying something tone deaf to players about the game as if it refutes the game is pay to win. So I'l talk about why this game is pay to win, and why some of these tone deaf responses are p2w. It's okay, I know PR tells you to say it. So I'll give you something to bounce off of PR and get their response.

I'm told this game isn't pay to win, but people who are f2p and spend a few bucks $ here and there are forced to go against all who spend tens of $$$ at a time, 100s of $$$$$ at a time since launch. And who knows possibly 1000s of $$$$$$$ at a time with the release of pilots.

I'm told this game isn't p2w, but people who spend tens of $ at a time have been forced to go against players who spend 100s of $$$ at a time since launch. And who knows potentially 1000s of $$$$$ at a time with the release of pilots.

I'm told this game isn't p2w. But with the state of matchmaking, and with the release of pilots, players who spend 100s of $ could be force to play against people who spend 1000s of $$$ on the game at a time.

See the $ signs? In the first paragraph I star with 1 $ because I'm talking about people who could be seen as just 1 person trying to have fun. For each multiple of 10 there's a difference of two $ signs used to represent the 2 star difference between each normal players and pay to wins that people face, or a power difference too great for skill to overcome. A power difference which causes you to get killed faster than you can react. Each consecutive paragraph starts with a single $ sign again because it's representative of each person trying to have fun. But we're forced to lose over and over and over again and you pay to keep up and the more you pay the more you win. What's worse is the bonuses pilots give are percentage based and those percentages get significantly higher with each star upgrade. Including up to 100% bonus damage to certain weapons at max. The power those who spend more have over those who spend less could be exponentially greater now. And it's especially bad, because the highest possible bonus to HP is 40%. Christ almighty who thought that was balanced? I wouldn't mind fighting players who spend more regularly, a lot of paying players seem to think they should have an advantage in matchmaking because they keep the game going. But nobody likes matches that aren't surmountable. So far the game has been the more you spend the more you win. And you do more than just win, you completely crush your opponents. We're told skill is what matters in the game, but that hasn't been true since launch.

So you think you've done a better job at making pilots f2p friendly than in "other games"? Obviously everyone knows you're talking about war robots which is infamous amoung a large portion of mech arena players because we migrated to this game after we'd been frustrated with pay to win and all the gacha and power creep and increased complications. Have you done a better job? One look at them and I think "hardly if at all". The 1 thing I can think that's significantly more f2p friendly is I can purchase any of the pilots at any time. That's it. There's also that the implants installed on your mechs isn't gacha based. But the implants you unlock that you can install on your pilot are gacha based. It's a negligable difference. People are going to be spending as much as they might in war robots now to upgrade a mech. On the task of making your pilots more f2p friendly than war robots, you failed.

So I'm told this game isn't pay to win, but to change your implants on your pilots you have to scrap them and reset them and upgrade all new ones. You can't just swap them out. And scrapping your upgraded implants doesn't even give back all the resources you used to upgrade them. That means changing up your pilots could potentially cost you money to have them up to spec. This isn't just unfriendly to f2p. p2p will experience the same exact problem. This is just incredibly user unfriendly. It would be cool to upgrade implants on a weaker pilot until I can swap them to a stronger one.

I'm told this game isn't pay to win, but since global launch you've repeatedly taken a-coins out of the flow of the economy, and locked them behind a paywall. Epic pilots, legendary pilots, epic implants and rare implants all cost 1000 or so a-coins and 3000 or so a-coins respectively. And the implants you can buy varies by the day. Rare pilots can only use 2 implants while epic pilots can use 3 and legendary 4. Thank god there's only 1 legendary pilot in the game. But rare implants only give half the bonuses that legendary pilots give, and epic implants give 50% higher bonuses than rare ones. Epic pilots get 50% more implants and epic implants give 50% higher bonuses on those pilots and all of this costs a-coins which you've only removed in varying amounts from their different sources. Some of them entirely, when we had all still been stragglilng for resources because we need them for rank upgrades and plenty of META weapons. And they all cost more pilot and implant marks depending on their rarity. And now items that didn't cost a-coins before. And more new META items that cost a-coins. This is yet another way you've failed to make pilots more f2p friendly than war robots. I don't get it. You should have decided how you wanted the flow of resources to be when you launched. And how many you wanted each new source would give them. f2p should always have access to the same flow of resources and pay to play should just get extra. But instead this game has reduced the flow for f2p significantly and made it for p2p instead. All I ask is f2p stops getting less, and p2p just gets more. Not p2p gets a-coins f2p used to get.

You say you're balancing the game resources wise, but as I've just esplained you've added tons more META items that cost a-coins all after you've just taken a-coins out of the flow into the in game economy. Seems you're balancing the economy for pay to win. I was told these resources would make their way back into the economy in new features like clans. This was before pilots was even announced. We still don't have clans. I was told they had to be removed for "compatability reasons". I find that hard to believe. What does the a-coin value of event tokens have to do with it's compatibility in other features? Is that really the reason you've cut the flow of a-coins? Then why have you at the same time increased the cost of a-coins in keeping up with the META. I was told the flow of a-coins would be restored to the same with clans and that we're getting them soon. Is that true? Or was I lied to?

I'm told this game isn't pay to win but we waited 3 months for disc launcher 12, a META item that's especially powerful in the early game and has a low skill curve, to make it to the progress path.

I quit war robots because it became pay to win. And the more you paid the more you won. Matchmaking favored paying players and it's been like that since the wild west robots. I haven't gone back they've loaded the game with a bunch of gacha and aggressive monetization and complication. And it took months at a time for players to be given access to the new META items. I was f2p in war robots. I used to spend a few $ here and there in mech arena. Mech arena matchmaking has been p2w since launch. But it's gotten worse and worse. With a failure to address matchmaking in any meaningful manner even with you word that you're totally doing something about it, and over-aggressive monetization, and META items costing a-coins that are made more and more scarce, I quit spending. And since, items that didn't used to cost a-coins cost a-coins now. And items that costed a-coins before cost more a-coins. You know like killshot and panther costing 1500 a-coins on some accounts. Though it seems like a bug, at the same time it isn't listed as a known bug.

So you're working on matchmaking but you're still choosing to stick with XP based matchmaking which is the cause of p2w bias, but just trying to balance that, as if that will work.

As a refugee of this game you're talking about when you say "other games" that you've made your pilots "more f2p friendly than", I'm going to say I don't buy it. All we get is empty promises. You've done nothing to prove this game is skills to win or f2p friendly. Without any changes to matchmaking that we're notified of if there is any at all I can't allow myself to believe it.

So tell me, what is pay to win? Why doesn't mech arena fit that description? How does the infamous, pay to win war robots fit that definition in a way that mech arena doesn't? In what other ways are your pilots more f2p friendly? Why should I spend money on this game? Why shouldn't I quit like I did with war robots? Why are cryo-javs exclusive to recommendations? None of the people I recommend are going to get to division 1. They won't want to play the game. All this game is take my money. And I just LOSE to people who spend way more than me. "F2P friendly", "we're working on it", "skills", it's all talk if I don't see any action and I can't get answers and at the very same time you are selling skills.

So go ahead, Rescue, Alina. What does PR want you to say? What is the truth? Address every concern in detail. Tell me, how is plarium going to prove mech arena is a skills to win game. The truth is p2w and skill to win are mutually exclusive. Sometimes you can give paying players a slight advantage and people will be satisfied. But paying players have an absurd advantage in mech arena. It looks like war robots. So what are you going to do about it?

Let's get realistic here, almost every video talking about mech arena since pilot update has been negative. The only reason play store reviews barely fell below 4 stars on play store after the pilot update is because you guys froze reviews on mobile for a period. It looks good for u, the star rating, where people download apps primarily. But it's not the reality of how players feel. And it's not like we were suddenly frustrated with the pilots update. I explained multiple instances of moves by plarium which were frustrating people and laying the embers for it to explode. And all along, it's been almost as hard to get answers from reps before the holidays as it was during them. Plarium has a lot to do to make amends. There's already a pay to win mech game out there people played. They don't need another one. As I said, if I wanted to play p2w I would play war robots. And that's exactly what happened with pilots update. Players went back to war robots because there's virtually no difference between these games and they've probably made more progress there.