I'm sure you can have a perfectally normal experience in those games without spending any extra cash. In Lost Ark you pull the lever, fail, and then are timegated. You cannot run high end content. It's not just pay-to-win, it's pay-to-spin.
But again, Asmon mislead his audience. How do I know? Read the comments weeks later about how they didn't expect this game to be a such a grind. You play 1 Korean MMO and you already know how they work.
What was his coverage of Lost Ark before launch? "An MMO that respects your time", not "An MMO where you have to run dailies for 6 alts" or "An MMO where endgame content is a locked behind a slot machine" which should be the first thing you should disclose. How would Asmon know? Well the game was already out overseas. You already have meme screenshots about how blatantly pay-to-win the game was, so where is the point of contention?
If it were TB he would of pointed this out immediately, but he's not TB. Asmon is not a consumer advocate, he is farming hype views.
I wasn't talking about free-to-play games, I was talking about pay-to-win games, the worst offenders. I can't speak for Genshin Impact, but games like LoL or Fortnite you can have a perfectly normal experience without spending any cash. Usually people don't care until it's no longer only cosmetic.
If a game's terrible monetization strategy isn't a big issue to stop you from playing or purchasing items, you've accepted it. You are their market demographic. It's normalized now. I'm sure 90% of Genishin Impact players hate lootboxes and would rather buy things outright (I don't know if you can but usually you can't because it defeats the purpose), they still play the game and spend the money.
