Quote Originally Posted by IvanLedah21 View Post
Good analogy. The fact is that in this case, similar to your example, Zandel considers collecting waifus to be "winning" (considering that's one of the core highlights of the game, I can understand that), thus if that's the perspective, the game is indeed "Pay to Win". Competition is not required in this definition.

Side Note: How about the Mass Effect series? IMO it's pretty much a shooter with some RPG elements, and not a true RPG (though it has decidedly more story freedom as well than the linear Diablo series)
While the storyline is pretty linear (just some small variations really), it does have the very important component of building your characters' personality. Which makes the Mass Effect series really a borderline case to me. It being a shooter is more of a game mechanics thing to me. The limited factor is mainly the few avenues available to accomplish goals. You have to clear event A, or event B simply won't happen, even though the causes of the two events are not directly related.

I'm looking forward to Andromeda though, the developers want to make that game a bit less linear and a little more open world again, making me hope they're going to include some timed events (even if that might cause some events to be mutually exclusive to the player because they happen at the same moment) to make the setting feel even more alive, and bring it yet closer to actual role playing.