Artifacts

That goes both ways. The scorecard is important to most players. Not just you. I've seen players get free resets. I once was reset for DC alert 5 times to battle tank. I've seen players get kicked from groups for low artifacts. Seen players who have main toons wreck with full artifacts and was forced to switch from alts for low artifacts. Seen players get kicked for low performance. Artifacts were low. Maybe their skill level too. They didn't finish content. They didn't win anything.
The point they no one win because everyone is getting same loot is false

If someone wants to pay for something they could eventually get just by playing the game, that's their own decision. If spending that money is such a bad thing then don't do it lol. You can have all the stats you want, but the end game objective isn't to win in the scoreboard, it's the loot that drops at the end of the boss fights. I love having try hard DPS in my group because it helps things move faster, but some people are acting like a 5 extra minutes in a raid equals a fail. MMOs are about the grind and loot in raids. The stats and all that should be a personal thing as you aren't actuall winning anything extra by being top DPS. If some elitists prefer their groups to be all 200 arts, good for them. But none of that is actually needed to "win" the game. The only disadvantage to having 160 arts vs 200 arts is subjective and made up one by the elitists of the game because no one is "winning" anything extra in the game by having a bit of extra stats. Just like we all don't need to buy power change tokens every other month to switch to the new cheese power. Most don't do it because it's not needed to actually complete raids, which is really the only "winning" there is on DCUO.

I'm not happy with the grind for artifacts so I decided to stop feeding them completely after I got my level 20 feat

Why is damage a competition? If you are loading into a raid to with a group to have DPS comps that's awesome. But PvE is actually a team game last I checked?

I don't know when you started playing, but groups have been failing raids since the games inception almost a decade before artifacts were introduced. Even paying to max artifacts doesn't guarantee success. There are plenty of terrible max artifact players out there too, don't kid yourself. Artifacts aren't some kind of God mode cheat code like this post is making them out to be lol

And all this has been going on since before artifacts too.

Didn't say it was, but to act like everyone beat the content and get same loot is false.

The problem with this is that everybody suffers because of those who do chose to pay for the advantages that Artifacts have come to get you at this point. As a result, the Artifact system has gone wild, causing wide imbalance-issues that undermines the entire point and work of the revamp and eventually will lead to yet another revamp.

There's a lot of players who do not want to pay for what this system has come to, so they don't. Yet, more and better artifacts keeps getting pushed out, ironically with the majority of the good effects of them being around the 160-200 mark. What does that really mean? The advantages you get if you chose to spend money becomes rather noticable while those who take on the lenghty grind will probably see a revamp and/or nerf to said Artifact of their chosing before even making it to the point where said artifact reaches its full potential. Just because you can technically beat a piece of content without maxed out artifacts, doesn't mean the system is fine.

"You don't NEED it" is a poor, played out excuse at this point.

I like your message. But I’m not sure why I’m the recipient.

The only point I’m trying to make in this thread is that artifacts are pay to win when players use them for that purpose.

Saying that they’re not is like saying doping isn’t pay to win because athletes can alternatively train over time for free and still win eventually.

As to why dps is a competition? That’s about pride. The competition is quasi and it’s the “elephant in the room”.
Usually, the top dps just quietly leaves group after the instance, feeling proud of what they were able to do compared to others.

Everyone has access to the same loot table unless you are out of relevancy or loot locked. Neither of which have anything to do with artifacts lol

I run it at least once a week on most of my toons...just for that 3k piece. The rest of the week I don't really care too much..if I remember, great..if I forget, then so be it.