TotalBiscuit talks about the PoE microtransactions in todays The Mailbox

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Tagek wrote:

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Miljaker wrote:

Maybe a micro transaction to be able to change your forum avatar to whatever you want? This is visible to everyone on the forums.

More options for avatars, yes.
Completely free avatars.. no.
I can already see the penises.. This is the internet after all.

I visit allot of boards every day and almost every one of them allows free avatars. It isn't a problem there so why should it be here?

Changing it to something that is for adult eyes only would be a bannable offense. And by making it cost money to unlock I doubt anyone would take that chance.

I really see no harm in allowing free avatars. And you can post penises anyway by embedding an image...

id like a way in-game to snapshot an avatar of my character. ie. choose a headshot, or midshot and much like the screenshot option it saves the avatar image, sends it to the PoE website backend and appears as an option from your avatar prefs. i would probably pay some PoE$ do be able to do that.

I've said a lot of this before, especially the idea that GGG is giving too much, especially now. And I'm glad to hear a voice people listen to acknowledge that Diablo III is a massive threat.

He also touches on the point that towns are too small and segmented to warrant cosmetic item acquisition.

On the topic of gems/items that increase experience gain or item drops, all I can say right now is the reduced drop rates of this latest patch has me almost wishing I could use some of this GGGold in my account to get back to something close to what was 48 hours ago the standard drop rate.

I also suggested the reason GGG hands you so many character slots is because it gives you more dolls to dress up via the cash shop. This is true, but I agree that they could pare it back with open/release to 8-10 and charge a bit for extra slots.

I think what Mr Biscuit is saying, all condensed and boiled down, is that GGG took the words 'completely free to play' and then threw a heck of a lot on top of that concept. 'Completely free to play' could simply mean all content is free, all classes...but that doesn't mean you get a huge array of char slots, for a start. I guess the game then is seeing how much you can strip from a game to reach the absolute baseline of 'completely free to play' and thus how much you can 'sell' to a player who can play completely for free but wants more. And Mr Biscuit seems to feel that GGG haven't done that to the best of their capacity. Yay for us, Boo for GGG/PoE.

Given this is a beta and that they want us to test a vast array of builds, I don't think anyone would have a right to complain if GGG reduced the number of available character slots somewhat on 'release'.

I had an idea recently regarding the issue of vanity and oddly enough it coincided with a problem I've been having with the 'c' screen UI. Thus I shall post this idea in the appropriate board and hope more than ten people read it.

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WhiteBoy88 wrote:

The most likely reason for the rather high number of slots, a reason that's not brought up in the video, is the league system. Many players will have characters on multiple leagues, and it's a bit unfair to have to buy slots to keep a reasonable number of characters on your account. Sure, you could make another account, but your pool of cash shop credits and purchased perks are tied to your main account.

I know I'll have hardcore characters as well as default ones and maybe even some cut-throat, possibly more than one build of each class per league. When paid leagues come around, I may participate in those, as well. When you think about all of this, ~20 slots starts to sound more reasonable.

He mentioned how DDO allows 2 character slots per server, but a league is essentially a "server" in most MMOs, since MMO "servers" are separated like leagues in PoE. So, it would be equivalent to 2 characters per league in PoE, which is not as bad as 2 overall.

I like how PoE lets you pick which league to dedicate your slots to, though, rather than limiting you per league.

That makes a lot of sense, cheers for this explanation chris!

As someone who enjoys purchasing vanity items in other games (esp LoL), I definitely don't buy them to show off to other players.

I'll go as far as to say that I don't give a rats ass what other players think of how I look, and I imagine that they don't particularly care how I look either.

But I do like to look at my own character and think that they're awesome.

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Chris wrote:

This game is designed so that you play it for ten years.

i do hope that is the case, and it's great to hear you guys have such a decent long term aim for this game and property.

y'know there was a point where i would have laughed at the idea of playing a game for more than a year or two, but recently i hit the point where i had been playing DDO for near 6 years, and have been paying for each and every month of that time. and i realised that the only real reason a bunch of my mates play that game is the social aspect. we all live in differnt cites and have other things happening, so getting together over a few quests in DDO was a great way to stay in touch, and hack some monsters while we're at it.

i'm hoping PoE becomes the platform for us to do that in the years ahead.

I would be happy to cut the current character limit to say 6 – 10 at release. GGG could then charge less for extra slots say $1 instead of $3. The increase in the volume of character slots bought should offset the reduction in price. I do not believe anyone will complain about something like that either. All in all whatever makes GGG more money and is still ethical I support.

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Epicurwin wrote:

I think the character limit could be better off at 5-10 or something. Two is a bit harsh, unless the slots are really cheap.

Please GGG, make me pay more money! I'm serious!

I would say 5 since that would give you a reasonable number of slots, but also maybe make you want to buy at least 1 more slot if you wanted to try/play ALL the classes at once(6).