POE 2 early access paywall

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Nubatron#4333 wrote:

GGG sells points and EA for a price. The buyer gets points and early access for that price. The transaction has nothing predatory about it. No one is coerced into it. There isn't any tangible impact to the buyer if they opt to not buy.

Mate... what on earth are you even replying to here? You sure you are quoting the right person? Because whatever you are arguing here, it has nothing to do with what I talked about:

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

Then you have this other major issue, where buying a weapon skin for 1H weapons requires you to buy 2 of them for dual wielding, turning a $24 weapon skin into $48. But oh, what's that? Right, you also need to buy the weapon effect twice, so that's another $48. Oh, and you don't like the ugly aura buffs of your character? Pay $5 EACH to turn them off.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game and I love the MTX, but the pricing is absolutely ludicrous and predatory in every way. The whole pricing structure with points is set up in a way where you need to buy more points if you want to buy something else, because you'd be like 5-20 points short each time. THAT'S HOW IT WORKS.

December 6 is a defacto soft lauch of the game. And its buy to play. Pay to play. Dont really care what anyone says, you have to dole out $$. Money has had to leave your wallet in order to play on December 6. Unless you, while making your argument, are not playing until the game launches maybe in 2025. Then you have some ground to stand on. If youre in queue with the rest of us on December 6, you paid to be there.

Think of it this way... for the longest time in POE1, we had three acts. Then a fourth. Then they removed difficulties and upped it to 10 acts. Free. THAT was free to play. "official" launch or not, the game was live, with leagues, updates, additions, acts being added, systems being tweaked,etc. Launched. Free.

Not anymore. The game won't be free to play until hopefully sometime in 2025 and by then I'd reckon 90% of people that have any interest in POE will have had spent $$ on getting into the EA.

Did you think through this post? POE is free because of the players who support GGG. If you want to play for free you can wait for the full release. If you can't shell out $30 there are like 10k keys available over on reddit, play the lotto.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

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Nubatron#4333 wrote:

GGG sells points and EA for a price. The buyer gets points and early access for that price. The transaction has nothing predatory about it. No one is coerced into it. There isn't any tangible impact to the buyer if they opt to not buy.

Mate... what on earth are you even replying to here? You sure you are quoting the right person? Because whatever you are arguing here, it has nothing to do with what I talked about:

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

Then you have this other major issue, where buying a weapon skin for 1H weapons requires you to buy 2 of them for dual wielding, turning a $24 weapon skin into $48. But oh, what's that? Right, you also need to buy the weapon effect twice, so that's another $48. Oh, and you don't like the ugly aura buffs of your character? Pay $5 EACH to turn them off.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game and I love the MTX, but the pricing is absolutely ludicrous and predatory in every way. The whole pricing structure with points is set up in a way where you need to buy more points if you want to buy something else, because you'd be like 5-20 points short each time. THAT'S HOW IT WORKS.

Last response because there is clearly a disconnect here. You don't have to buy anything. Literally nothing. I could even argue that since accounts are free, you don't even have to buy stash tabs if you have enough patience with logging in/out (to be clear, I don't view that as reasonable....just possible).

You think the point system is predatory. Okay. I would argue it's a great added value to a lot of the support packs. You get MTX and points to spend as you please on other MTX. You don't like how they've monetized the MTX, the price of the MTX or the way they have decided to sort out the logistics of MTX for specific slots or auras? Fine. Don't buy them.

That's the point. You lose nothing if you choose to do nothing. If you had to buy those things, maybe. But you don't.

Stash tabs is the one place where there is some debate on this topic, but since stash tabs are forever across both games and you can get enough for the cost of a AAA game, it seems fair. And then you're set up for the life of the game. No expansions to pay for. No classes added later to pay for. No subscription fee to keep bleeding you. Nothing.

To reiterate the point, it's not predatory because you lose nothing by choosing to buy nothing. If your character being ugly as fuck bothers you, then that's completely on you. And oh btw, there are enough MTX through challenges now that you can fix the ugly as hell problem too.

Anyway, last response on my part. This is going nowhere very fast.

Yeah well, technically you don't Have to go to the casino, either..

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Nubatron#4333 wrote:

That's the point. You lose nothing if you choose to do nothing. If you had to buy those things, maybe. But you don't.

Whether or not you are forced to buy anything isn't even relevant. The points system with its strategic pricing points is inherently predatory by design.

Here's an interesting paper you can read (download the PDF): link

Specifically these sections:

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An extreme case of this confusion over currency conversion
appears to occur when there are multiple currency types, in
which players report being disoriented by the presence of
multiple in-game currencies, and believe that this multiplicity disguises the true cost of in-game transactions.

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Video games commonly constrain the specifc amounts of
real money that can be exchanged for in-game currency.
Players felt that the design of these exchanges may be tactical, in order to maximise profits: currency exchange amounts
and microtransaction costs are perceived as misaligned in
order to encourage increased subsequent spending.

Here's a study conducted by someone from my country: link

Price is ok, but 6 months long : HELL NO. Max should be 1 week.

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AlvinL_#4492 wrote:

Yeah well, technically you don't Have to go to the casino, either..

Nope, you don't. And anyone who goes in there expecting to keep their money is a fool. Casinos are in the business of making money just like every other business. If you go in with a set amount of money to lose and enjoy the games in spite of losing money, then great; both parties got what they wanted.

The predatory nature of casinos is not the transaction or the empty hope of making money. The predatory nature of casinos is the preying upon addicts. That's a completely different discussion about whether something should be removed because of addiction by some which opens up a host of other categories like alcohol, drugs, gaming, and even sex. That's a can of worms not worth opening here.

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Here's a study conducted by someone from my country: link

I searched for poe. Nothing.

I then searched for diablo. Several matches.

To continue the "let's appeal to authority" train - case and point.

I think I'm getting a free key. I didn't see that announcement though and already bought the $60 key supporter pack. I think the EA will be just fine if you don't want to pay for it, although I imagine they need an influx of cash.