When you're struggling to make 1mil an hour... 20mil doesn't seem so bad.

This is a very sad story from someone who spent $2400 on Black Desert Online. If you can't figure out how is it even possible when you can't find enough items in the Cash Shop to spend that much, he gladly explains: he purchased lots of pets and used them for "breeding", a process of sacrificing 2 pets in order to gain one high level pet. So he got 4 tier 4 pets. Same with mount. And all kind of "convenience" items. The result was:

"I was rather frustrated with the game. I was progressing while my friends who couldn't afford the cash shop items, lagged behind. At first, only in gear progression, but quickly enough in terms of level as they could not make it past certain points in the gear progression system."

OK, he is a textbook social who bound himself to moron and slacker "friends" instead of playing alone or with similarly progressed players. If he was any competitive, he would attribute his progression to his "skillz". Like any good social, he wanted his "friends" to grow with him and wanted their team to be successful. But "Once more my group of friends seemed to continue to lag behind, as I continued to "play" against the Gear upgrading system. Until I was past them by several enchanting levels, while they weren't even close to 15 at level 52, locked behind hours and hours of grinding before their next attempt. Bad luck. I thought."

Then he "realizes" that it was because of the game being P2W and boo BDO. This is obvious. For a social, the failure of the team always due to external factors and never ever being bad at what they were doing. So, "I was more worried about my friends that were in the progression hole. When you're struggling to make 1mil an hour... 20mil [for selling a $30 costume on the marketplace] doesn't seem so bad. If they would not pay it, I would. For them. Just to keep them playing."

Yes, that was the problem. His friends not spending enough money on this P2W game. Not sucking at a level I couldn't even imagine to be possible. 1M/hour isn't "bad", it's a horrible joke. I make 15-20M/hour with methods clearly explained on the forum. Random grinding nobodies get 5M/hour. But they rather thrown money at the game and then quit "realizing" it's pay-to-win, than reading some basic guide. You might think they were some isolated hive of idiocy. But look at these screenshots: That's $40K on just one server in one week on the most common items. It has a very long tail. And for what? 20M, a sum I can make in an hour while reading news on the other screen. This is what "P2W" is about: morons and slackers wasting money just to suck a bit less while their social friends try to help them by paying for them. And then blame the dev. After all, who else would be responsible for losing $2400?! Not him for sure, "he is just a nice dude who wants to hang out with his friends".

However the elephant isn't even the $2400, but the fact that they were not in a siege guild, so "lagging behind" wasn't even defined. You can't be undergeared for smelling the flowers! Obviously we are talking about lagging behind from the Joneses. You must keep up with them, I heard! This is why games are worse and worse every year: an idiot social spends more real money on it than dozens of good players, so the devs obviously cater to them. We are simply not the target demographics anymore, even if we pay. We are tolerated, but not supported, as much more money come from the socials who are trying to keep up with the Joneses and too dumb to do it without spending hilarious amounts.