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allionus wrote:
Argument in short :-
Purchasable stash tabs (of all kind) = Time saving advantage over players who do not buy the same product.
Faster sorting of items, extracting from stash, or dumping items between runs, not having to spend extra time listing items for sale outside the game, not having to memorize each stash's category without a naming privilege, etc.
It's not "just a convenience", it's an advantage providing transaction (pay to win)
Run a base simulation - 2 identical players, identical content-clearing speed, identical everything. Only difference being,- one has all the premium stash tabs, the other has none. Run the simulation in your head or a computer, which your head kind of is already, too.
For an extra frame of reference, ask yourself if you've bought special tabs of any kind - "Why did i buy it? Was it just aesthetics? Or because it would give me an advantage, which without the purchase, I would not have?"
That's about it.
Your definition of pay to win absolutely IS important to this argument because if people can't agree on what it means, then there's no point in arguing either way.
I don't think anyone playing PoE would disagree with your assertion that stash tabs are not aesthetic. And it's common knowledge that they are GGG's biggest seller for precisely that reason: they are considered essential if you want to play the game even semi-seriously.
So we can start with this common ground, I believe:
stash tabs are pay for convenience.
IF pay for convenience falls under your definition of pay to win, then there is no point 'convincing' you that stash tabs are not pay to win because by THAT definition of pay to win, they are.
And that's where everyone else has said 'have a lovely day' because that's the smart thing to do when an argument is pointless.
I, however, am not smart. And you seem to want more than that, so...here you go.
'Pay for advantage' is not 'pay to win'. That's my response.
But if you stick with me, you might see that is not exactly an exoneration either.
A lot of people here have a more nuanced definition of pay to win than merely 'pay for advantage', largely by demand of their own indulgences in that regard I believe. Where you are trying to assert a binary, pay to win is more of a scale -- with, say, being able to buy power at one end, and a game that has absolutely no mtxes at the other.
All games fall on this scale. Most of those closer to the 'bought power' end are free to play or Games as Service, and almost all of those that are unplagued by mtxes at all are buy to play.
This makes sense: a free to play game needs to entice people to support/contribute the money they'd otherwise have spent just buying the game outright.
The trick, of course, is that selling a game for X one-off makes a lot less money than if you can give the game away but convince players to contribute x/5 many times over a number of years.
The easiest way to do that is to sell power. This is how the more insidious f2ps have worked, and continue to work -- in markets that are used to it. In the West, people need to be...coaxed a little more subtly. Games that straight up sell power are very unpopular in the West, for good reason. Someone mentioned Lost Ark just now, and that's a fine example. The Korean version has a LOT more pay to win than the Amazon-backed Western version. It's still there, but it's not as blatant.
PoE never had that option, because its entire selling point was ethical f2p. That's how they roped in so many early whales (that and Diablo 3 let a bunch of us down and we cashed up veterans of D1/D2 were looking for an ARPG passion project to support). But of course these large support pack sales weren't unlike what I described before regarding lump sums: not even the biggest whale can make more for a company than hooking a large number of smaller-purchase supporters.
PoE established itself as an ethical, aesthetics-only free to play game supported by niche ARPG fans who had the means to support it simply to keep it afloat. We were The Good Guys.
But that's unsustainable. Sooner or later, they needed a product they could sell not just to the truly converted but anyone who played their game regularly.
And that's where stash tabs come in.
Stash tabs are the one and only safety net of revenue when it comes to mtxes -- because they are 'needed'. Funny thing about shit people 'need': they tend to buy it more than shit they don't. They prioritise it.
PoE is not and has never been a game supported purely by the sale of aesthetic mtxes. Let me repeat that:
PATH OF EXILE HAS NEVER BEEN SUPPORTED PURELY BY THE SALE OF AESTHETIC MICROTRANSACTIONS. It started with private investment, moved to the sale of early supporter packs which came with two important elements: access to the early game (closed beta, which lasted over a year) and aesthetic perks (and at the upper end of the budget, physical merch and 'special' involvement with the game design itself), and then it added pay for convenience in the form of stash tabs. Leagues add new currencies -- which need new stash tab types.
And there is no fucking way the game isn't designed to make NOT buying stash tabs a serious pain in the arse. GGG gave away the problem (packaged as a 'free game') and sold the solution (the key to unlocking the real game), and they do this with every new league and its associated specialised stash tab. 'Our game is free because all content is free' is disingenuous when how much a player gets out of that content, how deeply they can engage with it, depends almost entirely on buying 'optional' mtxes.
Aside from my now retired but once very cashed-up account, I had one with no mtxes at all. Just to keep myself grounded, I started a new league on it from time to time. And yeah, it was a very sobering experience. It certainly made clear that stash tabs are not optional *if* you want to play the game regularly and engage with the league mechanics -- i.e. the way the devs want you to play the game, given Standard is sort of a dumping ground of old ideas and an economy compromised long ago by all sorts of shenanigans.
Can you do play PoE with the default 4? Sure. But you can also hammer a nail with a brick. Or you can fork over 'a few bucks' and buy the tool designed for the task. Technically that's also paying for convenience...
Your model of two identical players doing everything the same but for one having tabs and the other not is sound but too simple. As ChzBoi illustrates, there are many ways to play this game (and by play, I mean 'win' IF you are enjoying yourself), and some don't need all those stash tabs. He's exceptionally good at hammering nails with a brick, which is simultaneously impressive and a little bit silly. Thankfully, he's only playing a game, not building a house.
There is one last thing to be said, and it goes back to what I mentioned earlier about varying definitions of pay to win resulting from the demands of indulgence. If you want to piss off a PoE supporter, you can do so very quickly by accusing them of paying for their power in game. It immediately puts them in the same box as those who actually do pay for power in other games, and that's understandably unpleasant. But they know that their stash tabs aren't aesthetic, aren't 'optional'. So if they're not pay to win by a typical Exile's standards, what are they?
They're the real cost of admission. A simulated subscription (now largely redundant thanks to an actual subscription in the form of a Battle Pass). Stash tabs purchases are an abstracted price tag stretched over years rather than in one 'big' hit. Granted: by this point, I am sure the overall cost of a complete set of specialised stash tabs and, let's say, 20 premium ones, far eclipses the typical price of a buy to play game. Far. BUT this is also a game these people play for years and years, whereas a buy to play game might last no more than 20-30 hours. So for an Exile who can wring thousands of hours of entertainment from PoE, stash tabs are an insanely cheap upkeep.
I used to joke that PoE can't be pay to win because I paid more than anyone else on the planet, and I sucked at the game. This was typically glib of me, but the point was simple: no amount of money put into PoE will make you a winner. It's all down to how you use that hammer. I had the biggest shed and the best tools, but not because I really planned to use them. They just came with the Ruler residence, which I bought mostly for the view and the exotic animals in the area.
Sorry, this analogy is a mess isn't it?
Heh. Anyway -- ours is not to convince you that stash tab mtxes (and you don't need the inverted commas there -- they're absolutely mtxes by the official definition of the term) are not pay to win. Ours is to show that it's a false dichotomy to begin with, and unless we have a standard for 'pay to win', everything comes down not to labels but to individual value.
FWIW I think PoE is WORSE than pay to win, which at least is an honest transaction and takes into account that money is the bottom line (as if we didn't know that by some of GGG's reprehensible decisions of late in that regard). Stash Tabs aren't pay to win -- they're pay just to stay in the fucking race masquerading as 'optional'.
And paying to participate is no one's idea of winning...unless they enjoy that participation, in which case the question of whether or not it's pay to win is moot. Paying for one's enjoyment is rarely considered loathsome in and of itself.
Bet you didn't think there was anything more insidious than pay to win, did you? Surprise: pay to sustain makes pay to win look fucking tame. Because again, we're in the realm of need vs greed, and if you can convince someone the latter is actually the former, well, shit, as Chris might put it, then you have their soul. You can't get addicted to something you merely want. You have to believe you need it.
I'll assume your appreciation of my not-inconsiderable effort here and end with a simple 'you're welcome' and promptly fuck off back to Wolcen, which cost me a whole 20 bucks, one and done, and has so far given me 2,300 hours of solid ARPG entertainment. And I'm far from done.
Convince me THAT isn't winning. :)
