I think there are two kinds of gamers. One are the casual smartphone sit on toilet or in bed gamers who seem to be okay with pay to win, and more conventional "hard core" gamers who find the concept offensive. I'm pleased to say I'm in the latter camp.
Pay to win seems pretty much universally ridiculed on gaming message boards, but its popularity cannot be because we're all liars. It must be because we are not the people who are paying for it.
I personally hate the concept at its core. I have played some "free" games and not paid for them. Some of them are balanced such that it is possible to do so.
So far pay to win or microtransactions (hardly a difference) seem to be crap games anyway.
A game like GTA VI using the model of these mobile games would:
1) Be "free"
2) Have most of the city initially locked
3) You can steal only certain cars and need to expend gems to unlock the ability to steal faster ones or wait 4 hours between thefts
4) Have only two tracks on the radio; others are unlocked through gems also
5) All weapons beyond initial hand gun unlocked through gems
6) Spend gems to gain ability to steal police cars
7) etc.
And since they still ultimately are looking for $60/piece to fund the game, the result is that you will have a small subset of people who have no patience and so spend $200-300 on gems over the life of the game so that they can get what they want, and you'll end up with the bulk of people paying little to nothing, but spending hour upon hour upon hour unlocking gems for free by stealing crap cars and delivering to a chop shop over and over and over. They will think it clever because they are playing a game for free, but their time has lost value as they grind mercilessly.
I completely disagree with gamers are not the ones feeding into the microtransaction thing. I think it's when threads like this come along, gamers who don't like microtransactions come in.
I've been lurking on neogaf lately and quite frankly, gamers REALLY do like microtransactions. Whether it's DLCs, Pay to Win, Skins, etc. gamers despite all that they say, want to get a game, then spend more money on that game to unlock/get more content.
They don't want to pay a 1 time fee and get everything, they like to pay as they go.
This is ESPECIALLY prevalent with DLCs though. Despite what "gamers" claim, they LOVE DLCs. Just love them. I've seen recent Nintendo games come under heavy criticism for not having DLCs, not having enough DLCs, or people wanting more DLCs.
Quite frankly, the "1 payment" model doesn't work. It won't work because there is a large base of gamers that is perfectly happy with continually paying into a game.
Being older and remembering Nintendo, SNES, etc. consoles I can't do the DLC/Microtransaction model at all. I won't pay for them. I realized purchasing BF4, COD, and Halo was pointless because I wouldn't get the DLCs for all of them and would end up paying none. I may get Halo fully unlocked now but that's it. It's growing tiresome to me to keep up with the latest DLC/microtransaction I need, I don't want to spend that time looking, I just want to get a game and play it.
The way I see it though, gaming for my type of gaming mentality has died. Games, hardcore as well as casual, are not developed for people like myself. I'll play a fun single player game now and then, or a JRPG, but for the most part, I'm probably done with the majority of games. I focus my time now not on new games, but on emulators/old games I never got around to playing/completing.