GGG completely giving me mixed signals. This is bad news.

"

Deadpeng wrote:

Well OP you do not deserve the laptop then. That is all I can say.Even I could reach the beast in like half an hour?

Everyone watch out, we got a highly skilled player here.

OP:

- surprised that people are in Belly in under 3 hours, thinks this must be pay to win (how exactly does one pay for this?)
- "my chances of winning a laptop are slim"

ahahhahaha


brought a tear to my eye, made my morning brighter

cheers mate

Ty OP u made me laugh.

"

Bars wrote:

- surprised that people are in Belly in under 3 hours, thinks this must be pay to win (how exactly does one pay for this?)

In all fairness, I can actually see this accusation:

- Racing content is effectively impossible if you are not familiar with it. At least a basic familiarity of the mechanics of it are necessary; things like what direction the doors are, how a boss fight handles, etc. It's not something you do blind. (case-in-point: no one does speedruns of OTHER games they'd never played before; it's all about practice, practice, practice and developing the strats one uses)

- Act 4 is particularly thorny for PoE content, and full of massive surprises. So the above goes double, really. To say nothing of how now one's beaten Malachai on their FIRST try without a RIP; learning to fight him involves taking some hard knocks; no one is "born" gud, which is why everyone says to "GIT" gud.

- Until the launch of Awakening about 11 hours ago, the ONLY access to any of its content was through the Closed Beta. If you weren't lucky enough to get into the beta, (I was lucky) then all of the content is brand-new, and you're running it blind.

- A minority of us were lucky enough to snag a beta key through a giveaway or the lottery. For most, though, getting a beta key was done by virtue of paying $$$ for a supporter pack; let's be real here; the "awakening supporter" pack only really existed for those that wanted SPECIFICALLY the beta key; the soundtrack was secondary, you'd be better off with the $20 for points. I'm willing to bet that well over >95% of those that bought the pack... Would not have done so were it not for the included beta key.

That is where the "Pay-to-win" aspect comes from: for most folk, you had either paid for the beta previously, or this was a race that wasn't even really possible for you. Is it good/bad? I can't say. But that WAS a side-effect, however unintended it might've been.

Except you could've watched streams for the past couple months.

"

SL4Y3R wrote:

Except you could've watched streams for the past couple months.

Except anyone worth their salt knows that there's a huge void between having "watched someone do it" and "doing it yourself."

The feel is VERY different from the sight, otherwise all it'd take to master, say, DOTA2/LoL is to just watch a high-ranked streamer for a while.

A better argument would be that the race is inherently unfair due to beta. It puts anyone who has experienced the beta at a significant advantage to those who have not, regardless of how good are racer/speedrunner they are.

Marathon runners can reliably train their body and mind for an upcoming race. They know what and how long the track is so they can actually train with real experience. So long as all races are told they have the same opportunities as everyone else.

This is not the case with The Awakening due to the beta being limited. Now an entry fee for a race isn't a new concept and that's fine, the issue is the competition was not announced until 5 days prior when the beta was basically almost over and no one would have a reasonable amount of time to practice unless they were in it already.

Personally I don't care because it's a cheap publicity stunt by Dell/Alienware. GGG and AlienWare likely do not care that it's inherently unfair and it's likely not supposed to be. It's a marketing gimmick, nothing more, nothing less.

I do however believe it is unfair, just not for the reasons OP stated.

The argument is ultimately useless. After reading this topic no one is willing to actually see reason so for either side. Either you're a casual scrub or you're a generalizing asshole so you may as well say your piece then play the game anyway.

Online arguments are as much of a waste time as political debates are.

"

MrTastix wrote:

A better argument would be that the race is inherently unfair due to beta. It puts anyone who has experienced the beta at a significant advantage to those who have not, regardless of how good are racer/speedrunner they are.

That is definitely true; in the most accurate scope this is the best way to describe the whole ordeal. I learned a great deal in the beta, even though I only had a few days to familiarize myself with it; but it, however, was enough that at this point (had I wanted to race; I'd decided I'd rather play with my friends) I could've at least been mostly through, if not finished, with Cruel in Warbands. By comparison, Warbands was won what, 4-5 hours ago? And Tempest just got its winner; that'd make me about 40% as fast as the actual speedrunners.

Nowhere near a chance to even show up remotely near the ladder, but sufficient that I'd probably best almost everyone who hadn't gotten into the beta, in spite of my relatively inferior playing skill.

"

MrTastix wrote:

This is not the case with The Awakening due to the beta being limited. Now an entry fee for a race isn't a new concept and that's fine, the issue is the competition was not announced until 5 days prior when the beta was basically almost over and no one would have a reasonable amount of time to practice unless they were in it already.

Yeah, that's what made the contest a bit of a joke to begin with. With actual, genuine races, people know them ahead of time and practice; we see this with the Race seasons here.

"

MrTastix wrote:

Personally I don't care because it's a cheap publicity stunt by Dell/Alienware. GGG and AlienWare likely do not care that it's inherently unfair and it's likely not supposed to be. It's a marketing gimmick, nothing more, nothing less.

Dell doesn't even care at all, I don't think. They just know that they've thrown another one of their overpriced laptops out for yet more exposure. The more interesting question for them might be if this "exposure" is actually yielding anything positive for them.

Chances are, most likely not. I'd imagine that within a couple days, almost no one will even consciously remember this whole thing.

Ahahahahahhahahahaha

AHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

Oh OP *wipes tears* you're so cute.

Funny to read you crying over a racers getting a prize aaaand then non-racer gets hc kill.