There will always be people that can P2W above any possible F2P player can hope to achieve, but a smart F2P will beat out the 99% of dumb P2W players.

Most P2W don't even use their resources well wasting them on getting more and more ninjas rather than building power, these people can be caught and passed quite easily. Also one of the biggest limiters for F2P to compete with p2w was the lack of options to get Medium Threads, well SA now gives Medium Threads, so although at a slower rate you can't use taht as an excuse.

There are many F2P players that are among the top of their servers and that's all you can ask for as even P2W players have to compete vs people with bigger budgets than their own.