In the last few days, I was part of the discussion whether STEEM-Monsters (
- CC0 LicenseWhat is "pay-to-win?"
Before discussing whether STEEM-Monsters is "pay-to-win" or not, we should look into the definition. And this is where the problems start - there is no 100% clear definition of the term "pay-to-win" (which I will refer to as P2W from now on).
The, in my opinion, best definition I could find via Google was the one from urbandictionary.com:
Games that let you buy better gear or allow you to make better items then everyone else at a faster rate and then makes the game largely unbalanced even for people who have skill in the game without paying.
Is STEEM-Monsters "pay-to-win?"
Now that we have a definition we can work with, we can look at STEEM-Monsters. Considering the fact that you can pay for better cards is obviously a big point for the ones who consider STEEM-Monsters to be P2W. With max leveled cards you have a huge advantage over players who just have level 1 cards for example. You might want to be able to beat higher level decks with skill if the player with the higher ranked deck plays bad - But at a similar skill level, you will have almost no chance of winning with your level 1 cards. By buying cards you also can level those up way faster than by collecting experience via fighting (not yet possible).
So it may seem as if STEEM-Monsters is a classical P2W game when just looking at the above definition, I can totally understand that.
However,...
isn't everything "pay-to-win" to a certain extent? Let me show with a overdramatic example:
In my home country Austria, Skiing is the national sport and Marcel Hirscher the biggest hero of that sport at the time, winning the last seven world cups in a row. But could he have done that without having the best equipment available? Of course not. Even though there is little to no doubt that he is one of the best skiers of all time, he would have ZERO chance on pro level (where the racers have 1000$+ equipment) with a regular pair of 100$-ski out of some random sports shop.
Have you ever heard someone discussin wheter skiing is pay to win? I bet not.
This is because it is accepted that, in order to compete on the highest levels, you have to have the best gear. It's just a barrier of investment you need to make, otherwise you have no chance. But once you have passed that barrier, you can't pay more to have a higher chance of winning.
Isn't it the same with Steem Monsters? Once you have all the available cards maxed out, it is definitely no more P2W. Besides bribing other players to play worse against you, you can't invest money in order to have higher chances of winning.
What a stupid comparison!
Well, I know that comparing Skiing to STEEM-Monsters might be a little bit crazy, as the first is a sport and the second a trading-card-game. But what about comparing STEEM-Monsters to the most popular trading card game on the planet - Magic the Gathering (MTG) !
Do you consider MTG to be P2W? If you don't want to spend a few hundreds (or more likely thousands) of dollars on cards, you will have as much chance of winning a big tournament than you will have being at the number one spot of STEEM-Monsters with just level 1 cards.
So if the worlds most famous trading-card-game works in a similar way and has been successful with this style for over 20 years - do you really think this is something that will be a problem for STEEM-Monsters?
Invest-to-win
Personally, I see STEEM-Monsters rather as "invest-to-win" than "pay-to-win", since you also can see the cards as an investment and even make profit with them without playing a single match. And if you want to play STEEM-Monsters on competitive level, you just have to invest in good gear (high level cards) the same way a sportsman has to invest in good gear (above is of course not only true for skiing but for pretty much every sport out there). Once you invested in your gear, there are not more P2W elements at all.
It would be different, if there for example would be some kind of bonus you could buy that would earn you double experience points for a certain amount of time. This would be clearly pay rather than invest, since you would posses nothing after that amount of time that you could sell again. I hope something like this will never come to STEEM-Monsters!
Additionally, there might be modes with lower levels of needed investment in the future. Maybe tournaments capped at level 1 monsters for example? I am sure 
Closing words:
As you can see, if you only look at it from a definition-point, STEEM-Monsters can definitely seen as P2W. However, I think STEEM-Monsters just works the way many things in life work - if you are not willing to invest into good gear, you will be at a disadvantage against those with better gear. And in all of those areas, let it be sports (skiing is obviously not the only one where it works that way) or popular trading card games (MTG, Yu-Gi-Oh, etc.), this mechanism has been and is working. So why should STEEM-Monsters be different?
If there was no incentitive to buy cards, there would most likely not even be STEEM-Monsters game. And with that, there would be one less option for all of us to invest our STEEM/SBD into. And I think we can all agree that we want more things to invest those currencies into - and not less!
That beeing said, I think it is a good thing that STEEM-Monsters is "invest-to-win". This definitely adds value to the STEEM blockchain!
What are your thoughts about this topic?
Greets,
Martin