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TL:DR is at bottom
Caenen here, Sion main and enthusiastic player. If you're wondering about the title, you could also read it as "Eternals are Pay to Win", because right now, both on the PBE and based on everything we know is in development, they are - The first half of this post will prove that they are, and in the 2nd half I'll suggest and evaluate possible solutions.
To break this down, let's first clarify what even counts as "Pay to Win"
A system is Pay2Win when it provides at least a tangible advantage only accessible though purchase.
While Eternals are intended as primarly a cosmetic system, their stats update in real-time in the Eternals tab
Spells that do not inherently grant vision or detonate upon hitting a champion usually do not give any indication of whether they hit something outside of vision or not, unless the player has on-spell effects such as Manaflow Band or Luden's Echo ready. But if you do not have those, being able to see your damage dealt in real time still allows you to check for opponents inside bushes with abilities such as Lux Q (on single target hit), Urgot Q or Galio Q.
Spells that can hit enemies outside of vision without dealing damage or triggering spell-effects can still grant information via Eternals: Viktor's W is an example, which already has a Unique Eternal in development that tracks whenever a champion is stunned by it. Currently, the only way to see you have hit a champion is Aftershock.
More Unique Eternals both upcoming and already on PBE that grant critical information are Sion Q's, Vel'Koz R's, Cassio W's, Garen E's, Graves E's, Janna E's, Morde Q's and to some degree Aatrox Q's (if Deathbringer Stance is on CD, he already gets an indication on struck sweet spots), Cho'Gath W's, Aurelion Sol Q's, Ziggs Q's (when detonation strikes indirectly, e.g. last bounce) with many more that I believe are not worth listing, you get the point.
You can now easily find stealthed Teemos with Tiamats, Garen Es etc. when you have bought a way to see damage dealt to champions in real time.
I have played only 3 Normals on the PBE thus far, but being able to see when a blind Q has struck someone has had major impact in at least one situation in all three of them. No need to guess any longer.
For Riot to be able to design cool Eternals without any confines, avoiding 'information granting eternals' is not really feasable.
Now, to adress the "then some skins are also P2W" argument before we go on: Most of them, like model size and such, are either myths or very small. Riot pays close attention that a new Legendary skin has the same particle visibility/SFX audability rules when it comes to the fog of war, and while bright color schemes or flashy animations may be distracting, beyond that there is not much advantage a skin will give you. Some skins can fool you into thinking you're against the wrong champion for a second, but those are subjective and rare aswell (with the exception of all Neeko skins).
Hopefully the first half of this post has created an even ground for discussion. Regardless of personal stance on Eternals, let's finally think solutions to the outlined issue - from (imo) best to worst:
Solution 1: Keep the main features (Loading screen/Death screen, Popups, Carrying over scores between games/Milestones) paid, but make the Eternals Tab available to everyone, only showing the stats from this game to non-premium users.
Pros: This solves any advantage the Eternals tab grants, since now the information about those stats chaning are available to everyone. It's also an appetizer for people considering to buy the system, without just making the main reason for it completely free.
Cons: Still helps players of some champions to be able see whether they hit their abilities, meaning the cosmetic system has at least some impact on gameplay. Which is also distributed across all players in that case, not 'just' those purchasing Eternals.
Solution 2: Make Eternals progress on the tab only update out of combat (like the Popups on the side, which only occur after combat)
Pros: Delaying the information you can possibly gain would fix most problematic interactions. Now to check if there's someone sitting in a bush, after shooting a long range AoE spell into it you have to wait 5 seconds without taking or dealing any extra damage (to champions).
Cons: While delaying the possible information gained would fix most cases of abuse, it isn't guaranteed to fix all cases. Trapping people inside Yorick W, for example, doesn't put you in combat.
Edit: u/Nevran suggested to move from 'until out of combat', straight to 'delayed by X seconds' (10-15s). Which is a straight upgrade in basically all cases, since it's consistent and still lets you track your stats with the tab (which is its intended feature). Only contra point left I can think of would be that it's unintuitive to have it delayed, but for the sake for fairness that seems fair (pun not intended).
Edit2: Another suggestion in this vein by u/GoldPhos is to update the Eternals tab upon your own death, which would allow you to see the progress you made between deaths! The better you are - the less you die and the more you do in the game - the juicier these stats!
Solution 3: Literally delete the Eternals Tab
Pros: Everyone has acess to the same information, but this time it's zero information, as it has always been before.
Cons: Downgrades the system to people who actually want to buy Eternals. The Tab's main function is to show you your current progress, which would then be inaccessible.
Solution 4: Make (some) Eternals free
Pros: If the main offending Eternals are available to everyone for free, the issue isn't really there. Would work as an appetizer where you might want to complete the set for a much-played champion.
Cons: The obvious, and the fact that this would still restrict the Eternals that would be designed in the future because of it. Since you can only show off 3 Eternals in loading screen at a time, it's likely a lot of players who have 2-3 free ones on a champion wouldn't feel the urge to buy any others.
Solution 5: Adjust ALL problematic champion abilities to give vision by defalt, or broadcast the information in another manner (like changing on-hit VFX to be visible to oneself regardless of vision)
Pros: Solves the majority of them, I suppose?
Cons: Cosmetic additions shouldn't need to impact the gameplay itself. Furthermore it still doesn't fix all interactions (but probably enough), makes it worse (at least now you still have to have the tab open and pay attention to your damage dealt stats etc.) AND I sure as hell don't want to be one of those who'd have to do all of this extra work (recripting, QA, etc etc.) when it could be solved MUCH easier!
It's obvious from the past ~2 weeks that the people at Riot working on Eternals are not trying to race the implementation and 'fire and forget' about them, and want them to not pose any more issues after the rocky start (with incredibly bad/confusing announcement, pricing that I personally feel is still a tad bit high even after the reduction, and the backlash we've seen in most places). It's one of the reasons they were delayed instead of shipping in their current form in 9.17 like the announcement had said. Since, we got an Eternals feedback thread, better bundles and prices for them (but still bundles), so hopefully this post will cause another of these improvements. You've seen the solutions to the issue I have thought of up there, but do you have any better solutions? What are your opinions on this issue?
Edit: Changed some examples that I didn't check properly. Feel free to tell me if any other of the examplary abilities give you information on whether they hit with things VFX or SFX!
Edit2: It's been knowledged by a Rioter who's working on Eternals, so I doubt we'll have to worry about this issue anymore!
TL:DR Eternals grant immediate information about thing you do in game, and purchasing them is the only way to access this particular way of gaining information. Which is a fancy way of saying they're scraping Pay-to-Win territory. This should, and can be fixed!
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