@GarGx1: Items and currency are not enough, you need them to be tradable between players for someone from outside to sell them.

"It is" and "it potentially could become" are different things , right?

@GarGx1: Every game that sells gameplay altering items is P2W, the difference in how mild P2W is.

"There are plenty of games out there with a rhetorical "I win button" where they sell time boosts, level boosts, equipment and gear that is either unavailable to non paying players, and give a distinct advantage in competitive play, or the time involved is so impractical it's as good as cash only. That, to me, is the true definition of pay 2 win." - I can;t find anything inherently different to those games, it is just your personal border of accepting P2W, i.e. the amount of advantage that can be bought becomes unacceptable for you.

@GarGx1: Don't look at the literal meanings. P2W is not literal too, there is no game shop with "big red I WIN button" for sale (but there are games that get pretty close to that, just the button sign is different haha). It means pay for higher chance to win over the opponent, or faster generation of ingame power/progress, or overcoming challenges faster, in sandbox MMOS it could mean to have more social influence.

There is no such thing as my game is mine and yours is yours when it is up to MMOs/social games. By simply playing you influence the game itself and everyone else respectively. What if you are trader and im trader too and I want to be the wealthiest trader? What if I'm fighter or guild leader or whatever and with your wealth you support opposing guild's war machine? The more sandboxy the game, the more different kind of playstyles, the more ways to "win" over others - there are countless ways to get in others players way. Most game goals at some point pass through the in-game currency and that currency is sold for real money.

@GarGx1: It's p2w by all means.

What stops me from playing as much as you and then spend some real money on top of game time to get ahead of you?

BTW how selling gold stops gold farmers? We have seen countless times already that this only leads to goldfarmers undercutting the official shop.

"They will sell in game cash after release (no one wants a game full of gold farmers) but there will be a limit to how much a player can buy each month. As for ships, weapons etc. to date they have not changed that they will only be available to buy in the game with in game money and not from a cash store. If that remains the same, we'll see..." - We can see it already haha. When you can buy ingame currency for cash that means that effectively you can buy ships for real money. Im surprised there are people that still can't see p2w hidden behind a single layer of exchange. Its good that despite modern games nowadays use much more deeper/complex layers in try to hide p2w there are more and more players that learned how to fast spot that.

@GarGx1: It's irrelevant if ships will be available for in-game currency, what matters is: will ships be sold for real money. P2W is when power/stats/improvement/buffs/conveniences (call them whatever you like, basically everything that makes you stronger/better/faster) are sold for real money. Because money spent for power is not a substitute but an addition to power generated through playing.

@yanko_iler You are right in general. But I think now the trend reversed. Few years ago project of the scale of Divinity: Original Sin would never be called Indie. Now the so called niche games become bigger and more expensive with every year. Why? Because more than enough people buy and play them, i.e it looks like they make money. I'm sure if you scale the investment/profit of Divinity:OS and DA3 you will not see that big of a difference.

TBH I find it like some small arcade game, I just cant see the depth of the gameplay.