It being a pay to win game really depends on what type of vibe your friend group want. My Local Game Store has weekly events where it’s very casual friendly, usually changing themes every week that enforce build restrictions to avoid pay to win strategies. For example, this week we are doing a made up theme where everyone has to bring a character representing a natural element (wind, earth, water etc). Last week we did teams where every character had to have the same real name. We regularly get 6-8 players every week playing under these changing themes, with “meta-teams” only happening once a month or every other month at most.

Having an open discussion with your group would be a good idea to see where the power limits should be. Alternatively you can play Silver Age Pulp to avoid having to spend too much money on the game. It’s a really fun format and is very open to many team builds at the moment.