It is certainly a much less egalitarian Pay to Play model. The cost of entry is prohibitive for a much broader sector.
Think of say F1 racing. It isn’t pay 2 win, but to play on a level of skill versus skill the expense is very high, such that only a few can really even afford to compete.
For the record, I agree completely, especially the bits about the community.
However, I was merely pointing out that the magic model did have a few other selling points.
The thing is here they are right, and even if you do win with just core cards (not an impossibility, Netrunner has a tremendously high skill ceiling) it doesn’t really disprove their point. The one area where they are wrong is that there’s a relatively low cap to spending in Netrunner. When you have all the data packs and 3 core sets paying offers no advantage at all. Next to most board games Netrunner is comparatively expensive but next to other card games? I paid for my entire Netrunner collection by selling one Magic Card.
If you are on a tight budget something like Smash Up is probably a lot better, but if you are up for getting one game as a hobby then Netrunner is great value. It’s an utterly sublime game for a high, but by absolutely no means extortionate price.
How would they still be right that it is pay-to-win?
That really depends on your definition of pay 2 win. If it’s “someone who pays a lot of money is at an advantage against someone who doesn’t” then Netrunner clearly fits that description. If it’s “paying money has a direct correlation with winning regardless of skill” then no, Netrunner is an immensely intricate game requiring a great deal of skill to succeed no matter what deck you have. Throw in that the amount you need to pay to play at the absolute top level is comparatively light, and that the system encourages paying just for the enhanced experience rather than winning and I’d say Netrunner is one of the lightest examples of pay 2 win you can get. But if someone is particularly fervent about level playing fields then Netrunner isn’t perfect in that regard.
I think that’s accurate. Here’s my approximate scale of pay-to-win, leftmost being least pay-to win and increasing towards the right:
Chess < Yomi < Netrunner < Hearthstone < Solforge < Magic < Clash of Clans
Pay2Win is something that has become terribly overused.
It used to refer to games which were originally Pay 2 Play such as FPS games adding power items behind a cash only paywall. IE say we take a shooter and after purchasing the game everyone has the same stuff to use BUT for $5 you can buy Gold Ammo which gives you 1 shot kills. You have then taken a game and made it Pay 2 Win.
Applying it outside of its original scope is pretty silly. It basically shows that almost all competitive activities outside of some video, board and card games are Pay 2 Win. Soccer, F1 racing, Baseball… even Chess. Having the time to pay a chess teacher and time to practice rather than work is all basically pay 2 win. Even on the video game level that wasn’t considered P2W if you are even playing video games you have basically won at life compared to the global average.
1st world OP.
This scale is not to scale.
Sometimes, semantic distinctions can be useful.
Netrunner, at the highest level, is pay-to-play. The gal who spent a couple hundred bucks will beat the guy who spent 60, barring a big skill differential, but there’s no way to spend a thousand bucks and beat both of them.
O-oh yea? Well, uh, I have THREE packs of Opening Moves and Future Proof!! The amount of time I save by having nine Jacksons and Eli’s gives me m-more time to deckbuild!
Is this better?
Chess < Yomi < Netrunner < Hearthstone < Solforge < Magic <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Clash of Clans
I’d put a pretty huge gap between Netrunner and Hearthstone, and the gap between Chess and Yomi is an order of magnitude smaller than the gap between Yomi and Netrunner.
I would agree, I’m not being entirely serious with this scale 
I wonder…if I spent as much money on Hearthstone as I have on Netrunner, what would my collection look like? ~$250 buys a lot of packs.
Before the new set, I would have said $250 would have been a playset of almost every card. With the Goblins and Gnomes set though, I would say it would be closer to $600.
Everyone having access to the same cards at the same flat price doesn’t make it not pay to win. Assuming for the moment that Netrunner pay to win it just has a smaller finite win/pay curve versus MTG’s much larger near infinite (depending on format) win/pay curve.
I’m getting the feeling that you either don’t have a very good idea of what “pay to win” means, or you haven’t played enough Netrunner (especially with other peoples’ beginner decks) to have a good grasp on just how much player skill matters.
Update:
Since first posting this I have been playing strictly core Criminal and Weyland against the challengers, and I have trounced them. They have retreated from their statement, and have acknowledged the primacy of player skill over card selection.
Thanks to everyone for their input!
You could spend have the full set of cards, but only need a subset of them to win. Look at the worlds tournament and you’ll see what I mean.