I bought the thing when it came out because the grind was that bad. But I've been around since closed beta and my account is not comparable to a player starting in the last few years. Unless they've bought a lot of plat or managed to trade to get 10s of thousands of plat it's apples and oranges from either perspective.
But the problem calling it p2w, is there isn't really a concrete advantage you get over other players. Other players for example have some mastery xp that you won't have. But besides being able to access content associated with the voidrig/using it in open world, the only thing those levels other players have over you only affects things on their account, like a frames rank 0 mod points and daily rep caps etc. It doesn't give them a power up that allows them to beat you better/faster.
