A broad P2W definition in law would paint premium stash tabs P2W

"

ajo a écrit :

but don't brag and market your game as a totally free product that you can support if you want by buying optional "cosmetics only" mtx.

Let't not mix milk and alcohol here. PoE is - and will always be - a totally free product, no matter how you view stash tabs. I really don't care how people view them. Either way, PoE is free - and ALL its game play content is free. You can do everything in this game for free.

What gets under my skin, is the youth today, where people read "F2P" and demands the same experience - on all levels - as paying costumers. It seems that a lot of people these days view "F2P" as some sort of charity.

Anyhow, what separates Stash Tabs (in my eyes) from clear-cut P2W, is the fact that they're a one-time purchase. It's not a time limited XP boost. It's not a GG sword that will be useless once the league is over. It's not a handful of exalts you use to buy crazy gear with. It's a one-time purchase that sticks with you for your entire time playing the game.

Yes, they give you some benefits. But to draw the line here, and compare PoE to any other, crazy-P2W games, just makes people seem stupid.

it's a simple thing, have 2 guys compete in a league, one with 100 premium stash tabs, the other one with just 2 quads which is the entrance fee for te game.

and have them use them to their fullest intent.

which guy wins the race to level 95?

eh, i wouldn't mind them repaying players the points they spent on premium tabs on demand in case they really improve trade cause reddit shitstorms them to death and they love those suckers so much.

ever wanted more quads than just premium tabs

"

ajo a écrit :

A whale is not covering any costs because a freeloader doesn't cost anything. Yes, he can be squeezed for money but he could also be playing another game. He "costs" some bandwidth at most while still being a potential costumer that you can expose with free advertisement and sales. Press M now.

He keeps the game populated, brings his friends (who could become costumers) and providing free advertisement just as mentioned in NemoJr's quote. I'd say that's a sweet deal from the developers point of view. The whale would have bought those sweet cosmetics anyway regardless of a free player's presence or not. Besides, who would you flex those cosmetics for if there are only other whales playing the game :)

Somebody has to pay the bills.

Let me reiterate that, because it gets forgotten a lot in discussions like thse - somebody has to pay the bills. Freeloaders don't cost anything, BUT THE GAME DOES. The game is bloody expensive to develop and is not-inconsiderably-pricey to host/serve. If nobody pays, then the game dies and nobody plays, either.

Nemo stated that the freeloader is as important to the freemium business model as is the whale. This is only partially true. Here's the thing - it's neither fair to expect less than one in a hundred players to pay the entire cost of the game, nor entirely accurate to compare any given freeloader, one-to-one, with a whale. Any given game company has to entice people to pay their bills somehow. Freeloaders can help, and may indeed be vital for the game's continued success.

That doesn't mean it's okay to scourge and castigate paying players for paying for things the devs offered to sell them. Nor should someone feel superior to a player who's paid their shot. I don't believe someone who's paid their shot should feel superior to someone who hasn't, but by no means is the constant belittling of people "too stupid" to keep their wallets closed acceptable.

Y'all populate the game so I can find people to trade with and have a stable playerbase to work around. Thanks!

I paid for your copy of the game for you. A smidge of respect might be in order, please.

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ajo a écrit :

I appreciate you admitting that they are pay-to-win.

Let's back up a second here and get something across.

This discussion should not be about "P2W".

This discussion should be about predatory business practices as a whole. And if you or anyone else believes stash tabs are a 'predatory business practice', you're incorrect.

Anyways. Moving on for now.

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ajo a écrit :

Personally I think that the price is very good for stash tabs if you consider that to be the actual cost of the game. I can't agree that it's ethical however because there is no way of getting more stash tabs other than using your wallet, no matter how hard you even grind.

With the stash being the central part of POE it's really hard for me to close my eyes when stuff like fractured items and unstackable fossils get introduced not only for draining space in your stash, but also becoming the central part of a league.

Grinding Gear is allowed to entice players to purchase items. They should not be permitted to punish players who do not purchase items. Currently, a lot of people feel like the base four stash tabs are punitive. I disagree but can see where they may think that way, especially given recent leagues. Note, however, that Grinding Gear is looking into ways to deal with the fossil issue, and as you yourself noted, stash tabs are incredibly inexpensive. They're one of the last micro transactions left in this game of 'pay full retail box-copy game price for one armor set' MTXes.

Whether you believe this to be ethical or not is up to you. Personally, I have no issue with the stash situation. One five-dollar purchase is a premium tab with points to spare. One fifteen-dollar purchase is six stash tabs, which gives you ten, and honestly I don't see a lot of experienced players who use more than ten tabs a league anymore. A ten-dollar purchase gets you a currency tab with points to spare, enough to upgrade one basic to a premium - and frankly a currency tab, one premium tab, and three basic is enough to play the game on perfectly comfortably for a league or two, after which point you'll know if you want to play more and feel like investing in better storage.

Would it be nice if Grinding Gear upgraded basic storage for new players? Sure. If I were running the company everybody would start with one premium tab as a sampler (and to get idiots like half the folks in this thread off my back), and I'd probably bite the bullet and find a way to get everyone a currency tab, too. That'd require some serious point refunds, but the currency tab is a game-changer I wouldn't care for anyone in my game not having. You want to talk PEE TWO DUBBLEYOO, the currency tab is currently your best argument, not premium tabs.

Nevertheless.

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ajo a écrit :

Entire leagues which main mechanic is to funnel players into the cash shop to buy extra stash tabs. I'm starting to question whether or not the balance itself is intentionally bad in order to sell mtx'es for those few overpowered skills. The graphics are already monetized this way by cosmetics so why not monetize the balance also? It never gets good anyway.

Grinding Gear didn't like introducing MTX skins for new skills; they only did so because players bitched about not getting skins for their skills when they were fresh and new and folks wanted to play with them most. Balance shifts in the game because shifting balance is good for the long-term health of a game like this. Once a certain baseline has been achieved, changing things up every league keeps shit fresh and interesting.

Please, no conspiracy theories about balance being used as a tool of evil cheating baby-eating monetization efforts. There's much worse things they could do to push cash purchases, and since they're a Tencent-owned company now I'm certain we'll be seeing them eventually.

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ajo a écrit :

This obsession of selling stash tabs is reducing the quality of the game. More collectible clutter and micromanagement is introduced on top of the old stuff and more time is spent in hideout. Even the master progression and the ability to "buy content" is now bound to a random item that you may or may not have in your stash at the moment.

They introduce new items in new leagues because they're trying to make cool shit. Crafting was ass until Delve (and still kinda is), Divination cards came about to answer the demand for targeted farming in a way that's much more interesting than "kill this one boss over and over", and fragments are there to introduce encounters that would be overtuned and bad for the game if they were freely available at any time.

Selling stash tabs is not the intent behind introducing item-based mechanics in an item-based ARPG. Again, no conspiracy theories please.

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ajo a écrit :

Stashing a large variety of maps rewards you. Does that say "fun mechanics" or "please buy the map tab"? I would actually want to run whatever map I want instead of stocking them to protect myself from pain aimed at the f2p players.

Actually? Yes. I very much approved of the Atlas of Worlds encouraging players to do more than run Gorge or Haunted Mansion or whatever the Profitable Map Du Jour is for a given league seven hundred thousand times without ever doing anything else. A common tabletop game design truism is that players will optimize the fun right out of your game if you let them, congratulate themselves on being 'clever', then wonder why their game isn't very satisfying. Targeted, One Map Only XP grinding/item farming is optimizing the fun out of Path of Exile.

Remember, the map tab only came about after Grinding Gear introduced the Atlas, and they introduced the map tab after an enormous community outcry demanding they create and sell the map tab. Can they be blamed for that?

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ajo a écrit :

Now ask yourself the question if design and quality of life would be better if the game was marketed as a free trial vs a paid unlimited stash tabs version.

That's kinda what free-to-play is supposed to mean. "Play for free! If you like it, there's cool stuff you can buy to make your next playthrough even better!"

Also, trust me - you don't want unlimited stash tabs.

You do not want unlimited stash tabs.

Gawd, my Standard storage is already a nightmare snarl of remove-only tabs from a dozen dead leagues...I cannot imagine how utterly awful my storage would be if I had unlimited tabs. I don't use even half of the tabs I do have on a new league; anyone who has unlimited storage and packrats thirty tabs full of junk every league WILL learn to regret it extremely, extremely muchness one day...

Grinding Gear is doing you a favor by cutting you off after X amount of storage is filled. Once you get to know the game better, you'll agree.

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ajo a écrit :

The biggest issue for me is the false advertisement. Milk your players dry for all I care but don't brag and market your game as a totally free product that you can support if you want by buying optional "cosmetics only" mtx.

To be fair, they haven't done that in a long time. That was their early marketing; recent marketing has focused on supporter packs and, to the best of my knowledge, the fact that Path of Exile is the largest/most successful ARPG on the market that isn't the desiccated zombie corpse of Diablo 3.

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ajo a écrit :

The fact that you are basically an idiot if you spend money on cosmetics instead of stash tabs when you start playing this game says ALOT.

The fact that anywhere from five to twenty bucks fixes that mistake also says something.

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ajo a écrit :

This was also supposed to be a short response but oh well.

I DON'T DO SHORT. WORDS ARE MY ARMY, AND THEIR NUMBERS SHALL BLOT OUT THE SKY.

* * *

Anyways. Since making fun of CAPS is amusing during a shitty day at work...

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CAPSLOCK_ON a écrit :

it just annoys me that you people preach about POE having 0 P2W when it actually does have P2W elements

Uh-huh. Sure. That's what people have been doing. People have been arguing that TencentGGG are saints, not that people screeching that premium tabs from Grinding Gear are just as predatory as EA's lootbox policies are overreactionary idiots who're completely missing the point and wouldn't know what 'predatory business practice' means if it walked up and bit their wallet hand off.

The fact that you're stuck on the term PEE TWO DUBBLEYOO in the first place, rather than dealing with unethical/predatory practices, is really all that need be said.

This game is Pray To Win god bless Chris Wilson amen

lmao literally the cows are trying to turn the subject around while ignoring the thread by literally saying "microtransactions prices are too expensive!"

how certain people havent realized by now that no matter what common sense you use on this people they are far too gone, they think only one way now.. to support GGG in whatever shitstorm they get into and constantly praise them with thousands of dollars even if they turn into the next activision.

So much for trying to salvage a discussion out of this thread from the dicktrolls.

A'ight, sure. Have at it, folks.

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1453R a écrit :

Are premiumtabs p2w? By the strictest of definitions that people keep wanting to hurl around out here, yes. Fine, there you go. I'm fully aware that is the only line out of this post anyone will read (looking at you, Whale), but again - this isn't the discussion we should be having.

The discussion we should be having is whether or not Grinding Gear's cosmetic pricing is still fair and ethical (spoilers: the answer is not the unequivocal 'yes' everyone thinks it is), and secondarily whether or not stash tabs being a low-level form of p2w actually matters (spoilers: not even slightly).

And a discussion the video game industry as a whole should be having is whether the whale-dependent freemium model, however successful it is, is truly fair. because if you're going to ask folks like me to pay the bill for a thousand of my fellow players and not actually get anything for my money? I'm going to ask why you think I should be forced to do that so YOU can play.

Regardless of what the discussion should or shouldn't be, the topic here is essentially a game of semantics.

Whether a player views stash tabs as highly p2w, or only slightly p2w, they are still by definition a paid advantage.

The thread here seems to be that one side is arguing that anything can be done with stash tabs that can be done without, and that paying for a time advantage is not p2w. Although I feel like p2w is a strong term to use here, there isn't a softer definition so everything gets shoved under that umbrella term.

Once again, semantics.

/shrug

Are stash tabs P2W?
Yes, you pay to get an easier time looting items and can end up with more currency and items than someone you does pay for it. Since you can trade said items and currency, you have a distinct advantage over a non-paying player.

Are stash tab mandatory?
It wasn't back in the days, it became WAY more important to the point of questionning if its mandatory or not.
So not as important as some people believe, but WAY more than what people want other to believe.

Is it predatory P2W?
I'm tempted to say no, before Delve league
As I only needed 1 currency tab for the longest time and decided to play a bit of the market on my own (Hence needed the prenium stash for an easier time).

Right now, I'd say yes
Many items being unstackable and having many new items for different recipes makes the regular tabs almost useless. Remember SSF doesn't need those so SSF players are not relevent to the argument.

A broad P2W definition in law would paint premium stash tabs P2W?
Yes, definitely, but it will not be an issue since part of the game (SSF) can be played without Prenium Stash and placing the game for Mature (If its not already the case) would be all the is needed for GGG to stay safe.

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vio a écrit :

it's a simple thing, have 2 guys compete in a league, one with 100 premium stash tabs, the other one with just 2 quads which is the entrance fee for te game.

and have them use them to their fullest intent.

which guy wins the race to level 95?

That has absolutely nothing to do with it, and just shows you guys keep strawmanning getting caught up on the term, "win."

GGG could sell exalts and gear and a guy could still lose the race. Would you consider buying items and exalts for real money pay to win? I'm sure you would. So this entire "win" argument is dumb. You guys know exactly what Pay 2 win stands for. Its just a term encompassing paid advantages that other players dont get with the base game. A lot of things fall into that category. Quality of life, boosts, time, items, currency, stash, inventory space, whatever. Anything that gives an advantage, no matter how small you think it is, over someone with the base game is an element of "p2w." Its just a term to cover it. Its not meant to be taken literal.

It never guarantees some arbitrary "win." Just like buying exalts and gear straight from GGG isn't gonna guarantee someone winning the ladder even if they start with 100 exalt worth of gear. So why continue with this "win" argument? Its just stupid. It really is. I guarantee you guys would flip your shit if GGG sold items and currency, and what would you say if I used your argument? "Oh its not p2w if the guy can't win a race with it!" You would think I was ignorant. Which is how I feel right now watching you guys strawman and latch onto "win" to make your case.