questions from a Diablo player

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Raycheetah wrote:

GGG has made plenty of questionable decisions, but selling stash tabs was not one of them. Aside from being perhaps the biggest source of revenue keeping the servers running, stash tab sales were really the only solution, even if imperfect, to the question of how to make more stash tabs available to the players.

GGG could have simply left everyone limited to the initial four tabs (which was, relatively speaking, a pretty generous number to start with). Otherwise, they would have had to do one of two things, only one of which makes any sense: Give them away in unlimited numbers on demand, or sell them.

The rest, as they say, is history. ='[.]'=

Hey Ray! Good to see you!

Yes, selling stash tabs was the rational choice. It's when people - people who have bought more tabs - say that extra tabs, premium tabs, currency tabs, etc. do not provide an advantage that I disagree.

I have a 4-tab alt account for extreme SSF, and I remember how painful it was before resonators could stack.

There is no content in the game locked behind any shop purchase.

There is nothing you can purchase that will increase your character's power.

There is nothing you can purchase that will speed up your character's progression.

Because of those facts, I personally don't think PoE falls under the P2W umbrella.

But

The free stash space you get is way too small to feel comfortable after more than a handful of hours of playing, and you will feel the desire to add more, and that will cost a modest amount of money.

If you want to participate in the player economy, you will feel the pressure to purchase the "premium" tabs that allow easy listing of your items in the marketplace.

You absolutely *can* play every bit of content in this game without ever spending a bit of money. But you'll want to, eventually. And that's ok.

p2w conversation topic GO!!!

to me to answer the question "is a game p2w"?

to me the definition of p2w for gaming is, "can i buy something using real money from within game that can give me advantage over a player that did not".

i would also add an additional line to specify that the in game purchase is directly between the player and the game devs/publishers.

thus any argument over "all games are p2w because if you buy a better PC, the game is smoother/loads faster" is invalid. this is because you're buying thing OUTSIDE of whatever is offered in game.

i would give an olive branch by saying that its not wrong to say buying a better pc is p2w, but this is only true if you're not using the commonly agreed upon term of p2w. its a different angle as the definition is not the same. its like is d4 a good game? in a broad sense it actually IS a good game. but if we narrow it down to is d4 a good ARPG? then the answer starts becoming different.

similarly, trading is p2w too but thats also from a different angle.

thus before starting to go down this topic we need to agree that the definition of p2w in gaming is "Can you gain advantage by in-game purchases over players who do not?"

simple and succinct.

if you do not agree to this then you do not need to read further as all my next points build upon this foundation.

if you do then you are agreeing with my statement and thus i will be able to invite you to test POE's purchases against this definition of p2w.

1. stash tabs.
If you dont buy em, you need to create mules or decide are your goods worth keeping and you have agency to make more decisions.

creating mules take time. transferring items via mules is cumbersome, you also may need to take time to create a new account, level it up to 25 so you can start muling uniques. etc.

the amount of free tabs is 4. you definitely will run out of space. having 20 tabs definitely frees you up from spending time creating mules or making harsh decisions on whether or not to keep an item NOW. instead you could just dump it in stash and deal with it later.

2. currency tabs.
i played poe as a free player for a long time and i've played poe before currency tab existed. i needed to spend time organizing 1 entire stash tab, placing one sole unit of currency into a tab in multiple slots so that i can spend less time organizing my currency in the future. even then the amount of currency i can own is limited.

with the currency tab i FORGET about all this inconveniences, i dont spend zero time "counting" how much currency that i own. have you even had to open up your non premium stash tab and count how many stacks of chaos orbs you own? i have. it takes time. the currency tab tells me precisely how much i have at a glance.

3. poe ingame trade
anyone remember how much effort was required to setup a shop using the forums? anyone remember how players created apps like acquisition to streamline the process of opening a shop in the forums? anyone remember how we needed to LEARN how to use acquisition?

premium stash tabs solve all that hassle. just set the tab to public and list the prices of each item individually.

4. Stash affinity
ever remember having to individually open up every stash tab to the proper tab before dumping your goods inside? all these micro actions add up.

why not just ctrl click and have everything "automatically" sort themselves up?

you can! just buy the premium tabs! and yeah for sure you can do it with basic tabs but even then you're bottlenecked with only 4 tabs.

TIME and EFFORT are valuable resources. as much as you want to say it isnt an advantage, time savers actually are. on the extreme end of things, you CAN play POE as a totally free player, but can you speed up your game a HUGE lot with stash tabs. you can.

POE is NOT fully f2p.

but i will say POE is accepted as f2p as we TOLERATE the amount of advantage given. we close an eye because we love ggg/poe enough and because its not too a very direct in your face advantage.

games that you can buy actual power or items from ingame shops are blatantly p2w, while POE is f2p but secretly p2w. the p2w aspect is there but in hiding. it is not blatant p2w but instead tolerated p2w.

if you want to see if a game is p2w or not, one way is to ask the question "can you buy something other than in game cosmetics from the game".

in POE you can, and thus it fails the test. in a truly pure f2p game the ONLY thing you can buy is in game cosmetics.

just because you love POE/GGG so much you shouldnt blind yourself and twist the definition of p2w. stash tabs are an advantage. click savers are an advantage.

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exsea wrote:

thus any argument over "all games are p2w because if you buy a better PC, the game is smoother/loads faster" is invalid. this is because you're buying thing OUTSIDE of whatever is offered in game.

This argument is indeed invalid, but because something else...

On a great many games, pro-gamers actually compete on minimum settings(really, the spectators transmit the game on the highest setting for the viewers, but the players themselves often play on the absolute minimum), not just to garantee no frame drops, but because theres less visual clutter if you remove all the pretiness and thus, it helps to ensure no critical info goes unnoticed. Minimum specs tend to be tailored towards removing all unecessary stuff and just keep the essencials on the screen

In a sense, if you buy a top gaming pc that can run on highest settings, you are sorta handcapping yourself by polluting the screen with unecessary pretiness that may drown an actually important cue. Pay to lose

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feike wrote:

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exsea wrote:

thus any argument over "all games are p2w because if you buy a better PC, the game is smoother/loads faster" is invalid. this is because you're buying thing OUTSIDE of whatever is offered in game.

This argument is indeed invalid, but because something else...

On a great many games, pro-gamers actually compete on minimum settings(really, the spectators transmit the game on the highest setting for the viewers, but the players themselves often play on the absolute minimum), not just to garantee no frame drops, but because theres less visual clutter if you remove all the pretiness and thus, it helps to ensure no critical info goes unnoticed. Minimum specs tend to be tailored towards removing all unecessary stuff and just keep the essencials on the screen

In a sense, if you buy a top gaming pc that can run on highest settings, you are sorta handcapping yourself by polluting the screen with unecessary pretiness that may drown an actually important cue. Pay to lose

lol you re right on that, for example fps. if you play on potato graphic settings, the brushes/foliage becomes reduced/transparent in a way that you can see enemies more easily.

i actually prefer if ggg allowed players to use potato mode by default but GGG doesnt like the idea that if the game was streamed that way it could give a negative perception of poe having bad graphics.

ggg pls. you're famous now! give the peasants a bone so they can play poe on their cardboard pcs!

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AcrylicHercules wrote:

There is no content in the game locked behind any shop purchase.

There is nothing you can purchase that will increase your character's power.

There is nothing you can purchase that will speed up your character's progression.

Because of those facts, I personally don't think PoE falls under the P2W umbrella.

But

The free stash space you get is way too small to feel comfortable after more than a handful of hours of playing, and you will feel the desire to add more, and that will cost a modest amount of money.

If you want to participate in the player economy, you will feel the pressure to purchase the "premium" tabs that allow easy listing of your items in the marketplace.

You absolutely *can* play every bit of content in this game without ever spending a bit of money. But you'll want to, eventually. And that's ok.

Maybe. But as a F2P player in Diablo Immortal, I was able to play every bit of PvM content in the game and experience all the PvP content (getting snuffed by whales). What makes that game P2W is that the Shadows/Immortals endgame (among other things) pushs everyone toward PvP, where whales dominate. (In a number of ways, I think Immortal is a good game, but a balanced review would be something for another time.)

Taking that as inspiration, I'll posit that P2W isn't related to game content, but to competition between players. In PoE, I think the list is: direct PvP, race seasons, race gauntlets, and league ladders:

- I'm leaving out league challenges, because I don't think it matters whether I got to 40/40 before or after someone else. I suppose that if GGG offered a t-shirt to the first 20 people who got to 40/40, it would matter.

- Direct PvP might as well be non-existent (after all those leagues where I went to the effort of earning a Leo hideout!).

- We haven't had a race season in a long time, but in a short race, messing with any kind of stash tab at all is a losing proposition.

- I haven't tried any of the gauntlets, so someone else would have to tell me if specialized tabs like maps or currency make a difference there.

- That leaves the league ladders. Stash tabs save time. For example, listing items for trade without a premium tab takes longer. Do people racing to 100 list items for trade? Are the league ladders important?

But your final words "And that's ok." - I completely agree with.

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CelticHound wrote:

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AcrylicHercules wrote:

There is no content in the game locked behind any shop purchase.

There is nothing you can purchase that will increase your character's power.

There is nothing you can purchase that will speed up your character's progression.

Because of those facts, I personally don't think PoE falls under the P2W umbrella.

But your final words "And that's ok." - I completely agree with.

time and effort is advantage. if you ask any gamer is wow's instant max level feature p2w? most players would say it is. technically anyone who plays wow even with basic competency would eventually hit max level. all it takes is time.

stash tabs saves a huge load of time. every second saved adds up. its also why i decided to p2w irl by upgrading my pc. before sd hdd, loading a map took at least a literal minute. with an sd card its literal seconds. the more maps you run, the more time saved from this purchase. assuming it tooks players 100 maps to level up to 99. thats easily a rough 100 minutes saved.

whenever anyone says that time savers are not an advantage, i really feel theyre downplaying it a huge lot. it adds up a huge lot.

in fact, whenever theres any poe competition where speed is of concern having premium tabs help too much.

organizing takes valuable time.

"

exsea wrote:

time and effort is advantage. if you ask any gamer is wow's instant max level feature p2w? most players would say it is. technically anyone who plays wow even with basic competency would eventually hit max level. all it takes is time.

stash tabs saves a huge load of time. every second saved adds up. its also why i decided to p2w irl by upgrading my pc. before sd hdd, loading a map took at least a literal minute. with an sd card its literal seconds. the more maps you run, the more time saved from this purchase. assuming it tooks players 100 maps to level up to 99. thats easily a rough 100 minutes saved.

whenever anyone says that time savers are not an advantage, i really feel theyre downplaying it a huge lot. it adds up a huge lot.

in fact, whenever theres any poe competition where speed is of concern having premium tabs help too much.

organizing takes valuable time.

I understand perfectly your point

I just cant really agree because one thing:

What the hell is "winning" on a game like poe? On games that i would say its definetly pay to win, theres either some sort of competition or the game is tailored in a way you technically can complete it without paying on the same way you can technically move a mountain carrying it stone by stone

Poe is none of those: Theres no competition outside races and those are not only super rare, only a really tiny fraction of the players seriously go into it to compete
Poe final content is also not something that is undoable to reach without forking money, its been proved that one can get there at least on the 4 months of a league

I completely agree that extra tabs will allow you to get to the end of the line faster, but... well, so what? Because you completed you build or killed all ubers or got all 40 challenges in 1 month, you won over the guy that took the whole league to get there? You won because you was the first guy in the server to get a mirror worth of currency? You won because you had the most mirrors and divines stashed at the end of the league? What is that thing you call "winning" on a game like poe?

On competitive games: Many p2w games hold tourneys or matches between players and theres a clear victor and a loser there and the winner is almost certainly the one that spend more cash, thus p2w
On unreasonable to complete games: Theres a clear finish line that you would call "winning" if you can cross it. That line will take decades, maybe even centuries of playtime if you dont use the advantages paid packs gives you, again, clear p2w

Poe has none of these things

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CelticHound wrote:

"

Raycheetah wrote:

GGG has made plenty of questionable decisions, but selling stash tabs was not one of them. Aside from being perhaps the biggest source of revenue keeping the servers running, stash tab sales were really the only solution, even if imperfect, to the question of how to make more stash tabs available to the players.

GGG could have simply left everyone limited to the initial four tabs (which was, relatively speaking, a pretty generous number to start with). Otherwise, they would have had to do one of two things, only one of which makes any sense: Give them away in unlimited numbers on demand, or sell them.

The rest, as they say, is history. ='[.]'=

Hey Ray! Good to see you!

Yes, selling stash tabs was the rational choice. It's when people - people who have bought more tabs - say that extra tabs, premium tabs, currency tabs, etc. do not provide an advantage that I disagree.

I have a 4-tab alt account for extreme SSF, and I remember how painful it was before resonators could stack.

Heyya, Celtic!

No one can rationally deny that having stash tabs beyond the basic set is, to some degree, a tangible advantage. Where I disagree is when people imply that there is a deliberate and exploitative motive behind selling them which equates to P2W found in certain other games. GGG, whatever their faults and shortcomings, has done a pretty good job avoiding those sorts of shenanigans, overall.

Extreme SSF? Izzat also Ruthless? And only four tabs? My, but you DO like to suffer, don'tcha?

Seeya 'round the sunny shores of Wraeclast! =^[.]^=

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feike wrote:

I understand perfectly your point

I just cant really agree because one thing:

What the hell is "winning" on a game like poe?

Poe is none of those:
On competitive games:

Poe has none of these things

i ll summarize what i've said earlier. can buying something from the ingame cash shop give a player an advantage over a player who doesnt?

the short answer is yes.

and thus that makes it p2w