The Awakening Item Page and Top-Tier Supporter Beta Access

Wow!! The new unique's are amazing! They truly open the door to so many awesome builds.

I can't wait to test Empire's grasp with my dual shockwave totem witch. I don't know effective it would be to have packs of mobs smashing into my totems (inevitably destroying them), but should be very interesting to test and see hehe... Imagine a unique with mod that allowed mobs to take X% physical damaging when smashing into one another.. Wouldn't that be something. :D

Deodre's scorn is so aweeeesome!! Would love to build a mult-curse COC witch/shadow around this item, with a Doedre's Damning or two (depends on whether I spec in Whispers of Doom or not) and pair of Windscreams... A fire trap multi-curse Consuming Dark shadow (scaled with all the delicious +% to chaos passives on tree) is also a build I'd love to test! Can;t wait.

Keep up on the good work GGG - you guys are amazing!

To all you exiles anxiously awaiting a beta key, good luck :P May the karui spirit be wif you lol

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Josephoenix wrote:

not point out something that I feel might benefit GGG/PoE/players.

Kind of like receiving closed beta access and playing the game for several months before all the others, right? :)

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monkuar wrote:

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Marlexyz wrote:

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monkuar wrote:

By this logic the ladder for leagues are irrelevant and have no competition.. yeah no. Nice try.

That doesn't directly affect gameplay. And why would you play just for the sake of being in the ladder? Who cares? The amount of no-life required for that is just unbelievable; that's not a concern for the majority of players. The main quality of PoE is to try out new builds and have fun razing things!
You say that it would spoil the fun out of it if some creep from the other side of the globe does it faster and more efficiently than you because of whatever "unfair" reason? What the hell.
And how the hell being on the CB gives you advantage? From what I know that isn't the final product and a lot of stuff is gonna change when 2.0 comes; the real PoE is 1.3.1 that everyone have acess. How halting your progress on a character that won't be wiped to play a temporary character will give CB players a leap over you? If you think about it is just the contrary; those players (some of them) are sacrificing their progress in order to give feedback to the DEVs.

Again..you have valid points but these do not change the fact that the closed beta players are indeed having an advantage.... Why dont you understand this..

By definition of Pay 2 Win, the advantage amount is irrelevant. It could be just strategizing around 1 bosses AI and knowing their movement/etc, or 20... It's still an advantage.

I know, right? Bosses in POE very often require much more complex strategies than "spam your primary attack, chug pots, tp if things get hairy".

I see now what you mean by advantage.

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monkuar wrote:

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Marlexyz wrote:

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monkuar wrote:

By this logic the ladder for leagues are irrelevant and have no competition.. yeah no. Nice try.

That doesn't directly affect gameplay. And why would you play just for the sake of being in the ladder? Who cares? The amount of no-life required for that is just unbelievable; that's not a concern for the majority of players. The main quality of PoE is to try out new builds and have fun razing things!
You say that it would spoil the fun out of it if some creep from the other side of the globe does it faster and more efficiently than you because of whatever "unfair" reason? What the hell.
And how the hell being on the CB gives you advantage? From what I know that isn't the final product and a lot of stuff is gonna change when 2.0 comes; the real PoE is 1.3.1 that everyone have acess. How halting your progress on a character that won't be wiped to play a temporary character will give CB players a leap over you? If you think about it is just the contrary; those players (some of them) are sacrificing their progress in order to give feedback to the DEVs.

Again..you have valid points but these do not change the fact that the closed beta players are indeed having an advantage.... Why dont you understand this..

Their characters will be WIPED.
Their stashes will be WIPED.
The only thing they will carry will be their knowledge, which you can also obtain trough reading a lot of articles and watching streams and whatever.
If you work on your permanent character while they are testing a temporary game client in a temporary server, is YOU that will have the edge when they are forced back in our realm. Unless you are a complaining poser who doesn't play if there's no hype and just sit back there drooling on top tier players. I'm no good player but I dont envy them.

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Chairnick wrote:

By definition of Pay 2 Win, the advantage amount is irrelevant. It could be just strategizing around 1 bosses AI and knowing their movement/etc, or 20... It's still an advantage.
I know, right? Bosses in POE very often require much more complex strategies than "spam your primary attack, chug pots, tp if things get hairy".

Yeah because someone who hasn't dueled the Vaal boss and knows his slam is definitely at an advantage than someone who has fought him before, right?

Yep, that makes total sense /s.

The arguments that Path of Exile is now "Pay to Win" are farcical because of the following two reasons:

They outright sold access to the first closed beta, in 2011, for $10 straight up. It's ancient gaming history. If that is your sticking point, it's already been done and they sold out four years ago.

The second reason is that they cut off access to the supporter's packs before the closed beta was launched and before they announced they were going to grant beta access to any of the supporter tiers. No one could actively, intentionally buy a supporter pack or upgrade one of their existing packs to strategically get into beta.

It remains to be seen what will happen in regards to beta access and the Awakening supporter packs. We shall see. That is when you can begin to argue the pay-to-access point again, because that is the first point when someone will (likely be able to) actively do so for this closed beta.

Edited to add:

One of the previous posters above also makes the point that the knowledge and experience gained is really the currency or advantage that you carry forward by having beta access, since your items and characters will be wiped.

By having a non-NDA closed beta, GGG is trying to eliminate that wall for the people who do not get in as much as possible. Even if you don't play, the information will be readily available should you choose to seek it out.

They are also intentionally holding back certain things from the beta that will not be released until 2.0 is live. This was also true in the first closed beta, and again for certain things in pre-updates that were not beta-tested for the other two expansions.

The advantage will not be as significant as certain people think it will be, especially not if you are already an experienced racer or theorycrafter. This is in part due to the fact that you will be keeping yourself informed for changes to your favorite playstyle, and also due in part to the short duration of the beta and the non-NDA status.

For comparison's sake, this beta is slated to be a maximum of six weeks. ArcheAge was in alpha, and then beta, for something like 18 months. Founders could buy in and play from early alpha all the way up until a 4-day early access period. The utter debacle that the launch was notwithstanding, 18 months of advance knowledge bound by NDA is a world of difference apart from six weeks tops of non-NDA bound knowledge.

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monkuar wrote:

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Chairnick wrote:

By definition of Pay 2 Win, the advantage amount is irrelevant. It could be just strategizing around 1 bosses AI and knowing their movement/etc, or 20... It's still an advantage.
I know, right? Bosses in POE very often require much more complex strategies than "spam your primary attack, chug pots, tp if things get hairy".

Yeah because someone who hasn't dueled the Vaal boss and knows his slam is definitely at an advantage than someone who has fought him before, right?

Yep, that makes total sense /s.

Oh my, you'll have to take 10 seconds to see his attacks before going in to fight him? It's a travesty, I say!

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Marlexyz wrote:

Their characters will be WIPED.
Their stashes will be WIPED.
The only thing they will carry will be their knowledge, which you can also obtain trough reading a lot of articles and watching streams and whatever.
If you work on your permanent character while they are testing a temporary game client in a temporary server, is YOU that will have the edge when they are forced back in our realm. Unless you are a complaining poser who doesn't play if there's no hype and just sit back there drooling on top tier players. I'm no good player but I dont envy them.

What? The character being wiped is irrelevant......... I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about game knowledge and expertise that will be gained and be put into those closed beta players minds. All that information they have accumulated over their beta test will be to their advantage over the new players who never had a chance to experience or fight the bosses, know their AI, get the feel of the new dungeons, etc, etc..

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Chairnick wrote:

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monkuar wrote:

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Chairnick wrote:

By definition of Pay 2 Win, the advantage amount is irrelevant. It could be just strategizing around 1 bosses AI and knowing their movement/etc, or 20... It's still an advantage.
I know, right? Bosses in POE very often require much more complex strategies than "spam your primary attack, chug pots, tp if things get hairy".

Yeah because someone who hasn't dueled the Vaal boss and knows his slam is definitely at an advantage than someone who has fought him before, right?

Yep, that makes total sense /s.

Oh my, you'll have to take 10 seconds to see his attacks before going in to fight him? It's a travesty, I say!

It's definitely more than 10 seconds, and it's not just 1 boss. There are a lot of new bosses.

And regardless if it's 10 seconds or 1, it's still an advantage, and still Pay 2 Win. This doesn't change the fact.

Racing is relevant because you mentioned it at some point in your ranting.

Assuming you can't play closed beta why can't you catch up on the almost guaranteed open beta?