Maybe you can't buy weapons easily without spending the real money?
I'm not sure what to think about it. I'm not going to judge before I know the details, Rockstar has enough credit in my book to give them a chance.
No, the "real money" is just buying ingame cash. And the amounts aren't even that impressive. $15 for $1.25 million? The cheapest businesses will run you at least a half million, and the more expensive ones start at around $15-20m. And unless they seriosuly jack up the profits from them from SP, they aren't even a sound investment. I imagine the safe houses will be in that price range too. Golf course is $150 million at the most. You won't even earn that in SP unless you save the Lester missions till after the final heist.
Cars can reach pretty high, but from my GTA SA and IV MP experience, I've never seen a situation where a good team in a shitty Sedan (Aka Roman's Taxi) can't manage to defeat a team in a super car just by actually driving well.
And in the end, GTA game modes are more fun co-op than competitive anyway, and when its limited to 16 players, will the rare asshole player going pay to win really affect you?
I don't normally like defending microtransactions, especially when its not a necessary evil (I concede they ARE a necessary evil in say, F2P MMOs, and I'm more than happy to coexist with people buying items with real money if it means I can play without spending a dime, God knows I can't afford multiple $10 subscriptions to play all those games.). But in this case it really feels like, pardon my french, Rockstar is trying to fuck us with a very flaccid penis. Yes its an awful intent, but in the end it's more awkward and uncomfortable than anything.
Sidenote: Since I made the crew "open", if everyone who joins could just shoot me a PM with your account name so I know who to promote past muscle. Don't want to accidentally give random people who stumbled across us permissions