I'm working on a strategy game which has an online competition component, which is the MVP for the game. The free version of the game will have a set of usable strategy pieces, but they will be limited to non-customizable stats and movesets. In the full game (assuming the MVP warrants a full game), you will be able to

- aquire more unique strategy pieces

- train them and modify/increase their stats and moves

Someone who owns the full game will almost assuredly destroy players who only use the sample pieces, assuming they go through the process of acquiring them and training them up. But it's not like typical P2W games where you spend money and suddenly outclass people, or pay money specifically to outclass people/be stronger - it's more like a demo where you can play with players who do not just have the demo.

I've been thinking that, most likely, there will need to be some way of balancing it so that free players are not turned off by the potential feeling of pay-to-win, but at the same time I want to show these players the pieces and power that they could have by buying the game instead of staying free (kinda like how in fighting games, you could fight against people who had DLC characters even though you had not purchased them - the difference in balance being that fighters could not be "trained up" like they would need to be in my game).

My thinking is that I'd have a league that had forced levels and just leave it at that. But the strategy pieces you could acquire by purchasing and playing the full game would still have huge variety inaccessible to the free players, including custom variants of the default pieces.

I don't want the game to feel P2W, and the purchase of the full game would actually have a lot more content than just "buy this to get more pieces and win". Assuming it gets to that point. But I'm in the planning phase now and developing the online/competition component, trying to figure out how I'm going to handle all this.

The default competitive component will serve as a combat demo and MVP to determine if I further develop the full game, and might even be used for a kickstarter. The idea being, yes, try the game, see if you like the competitive portion - but ultimately, buy the game so you can actually develop your own pieces and strategy.

So my question is: is this still pay-to-win? Do you think it will be perceived that way?