A comparison of combat content in Endwalker.

[AshfinTyrfinnson]

Liana.

Pay to win?

Really.???

In what regard will you have p2w in this game in terms of PvE combat?

In order to have any so called "p2w" there is a need for following things:

1. Any official ranking of players regarding certain content (raids, dungeons, trials whatever it will be). This is essential otherwise p2w doesn't have any meaning.

2. Any of that content rankings mentioned in 1st point would need to be affected by anything you will get from the store.

Are there such things in this game? No.

FFXIV doesn't have any competetive content with rankings that is affected by PvE combat gear. So paying for any additional attempt of savage raids or whatever timegated thing it is going to be should not be considered p2w.
Since getting gear in 1 or 2 weeks doesn't affect any other player experience in this game or any rankings, because there are none.

Deep Dungeon ranking - is not affected by PvE combat gear
PvP ranking for CC - is not affected by PvE combat gear

Even buying a job skip to lv 70/80 whatever it will be later on in this game is not going to affect any other player PvE combat experience. The reason is that any PvE combat content in this game is meant to be done solo or via cooperation of certain amount of players in a group. The cooperation is the keyword here.

Let's say there are 3 players A, B, C and one of them, let's say A, buys job/story skip. Does buying these things affected any experience of B and C player? No

There are no official rankings of who finished the story first, raids first, dungeon first, who deals most damage on certain jobs.

Conclusion is simple.
Who cares if some other player was able to clear content in 1 week or 10 months or 7 years or whatever the timespan was for them to do that. Because that player is not affecting someone else progress in PvE content that is based on cooperation rather than competition between players.

If someone cares for some random player progress in noncompetitive PvE content or what they buy to skip some part of it, then there is an issue with the way they think of what p2w is.

P2W - is the practice of buying in-game items that give a player a very big advantage over others.

If there is only solo or cooperation in PvE content that is not competetive then there is no p2w. Since so called p2w player would rather be help for any f2p player in terms of clearing content in that case.