Paid weapons are master-crafted, sometimes with one mod on them (For example the gilded bolter is a master crafted bolter with a grip mod to improve accuracy on the move). Master-crafted weapons can be unlocked and modded to achieve exactly the same power within a week or two of gameplay by requisition boxes. Furthermore, Master-crafted only awards a tiny barley-noticeable reduction in the weapon's recoil for ranged weapons and 25 additional durability on melee weapons (only enough to endure one more weapon clang than the normal variety), but both also costs 100 additional loadout points. There is nothing more powerful about master-crafted items due to the balancing factor of increased loadout cost. No master crafted weapon does more damage than any normal weapon. So no. Actually it is better in the long run to unlock your own master-crafted items since they can be equipped with the mods of your choice to suit your play style. This means the paid weapons are, in fact, disadvantaged in the long run, since you can not use the mods you want on them. For example, my traitor owns Ragespitter but I never use it. I have a master-crafted bolter which I use the spread-per-shot grip on and also get to use the accuracy barrel (unlike the Ragespitter). The weapon I choose to use is not the one I paid for. So yeah. No. Eternal Crusade is definitely not pay-to-win. If anything, the paid weapons are so restrictive that there is really no point in buying them except for their unique appearance. For this reason, many of us believe the weapons in the store should just be cosmetic skins (something that would also mitigate this absurd belief some people have that the game is pay-to-win). Anyone who marks this game as pay-to-win is a complete fucking idiot that bases their opinions on the least possible factual information, if any. To mark EC as pay-to-win, you'd have to make the barest most stupid rule such as "If you can buy a weapon in a store with real money then it is pay-to-win". They don't even do more fucking damage than the standard variants. How can people possibly complain about pay-to-win when the damage is identical. The recoil reduction is almost negligible and is completely offset by the loadout point increase, which results in a loss in health or armour in the long run. So yeah. Anyone that thinks this can rip the stick out of their backside.
I only have two words for people who say P2W doesn't exist in EC: Abbadon's Grace. And no, just because the mod might come out some day in the future it does not make it not pay to win, game's been P2W since release and will still be for as long as the fire damage mod for ACs isn't released to be bought by requisition. Sure it's not as bad as some other titles, but there is a undeniable P2W element in it. Edit: For the people saying the fire damage is meaningless, I've died more times than i can count due to the fire damage after i got to cover.
300 LP before rank 5? No ways, unless your saving all your advancement points for one tree to get all the higher level stuff as it opens this will not be the case. Also everyone can use the default loadouts which are 1000 LP loadouts, which most will use until approx rank 3 when they have unlocked enough to tweak to thier preference over the defaults. This is a huge factor in this p2w bs as you can right out of the gate always be playing with a maxed out LP class. AG is not any better than a standard AC when it comes to how many shots to kill you. Both will do it in the same amount of time, and I imagine the only real reason so many are focused on only AG being the issue is because of how strong AC is in general. AG is just very visual so everyone assumed that fire dot has to be OP like SW crozium or Ork sword was. Speaking of which, it's ironic that all the really OP weapons have never been RT weapons at all. I really think this p2w talk is for cry babies looking to nitpick something instead of a calm rational approach.
It is pay to win if a said weapon is giving a clear advantage to a faction. ATM it could be construed that way in a couple of cases but then you'd need hard evidence/a backlog of stats for every single match and its players to really know if that is the case. You won because Abbadons Grace is not hard evidence.
The thing is, they claim everything is cosmetic. Yet the RTC weapons have stats that differ from the default weapons. While very minor, they're still stat changes. And most of them are bonuses of 1 percent etc. Then again RTC weapons have preinstalled mods and shit. So the RTC weapons do provide some bonuses BEFORE you start opening up the boxes and shit. The Abbadon's Grace, even though the fire ammo is coming is still easily considered a P2W item due to having something someone else doesn't have via IRL money.
Because they are bundled with mods that are not yet available to make our own non RTC equivalent. It will be purely cosmetic I'm sure in time but I am dubious about there reasoning for not making it so sooner especially after having ingame info about them only being cosmetic.
The only 2 weapons you can't make is Abbadons and Gatekeeper. Everything else is just mastercrafted weapon with mods.
