Premium Tabs are pay to win

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_Emperor_ wrote:

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Why is that a problem? Procurement existed before premium stash tabs for many years and will so in the next years. It doesn't matter if it's a 3rd pary programm or not. IT IS THERE and therefore it's a viable option for everyone.

It's like talking about Microsoft Office and OpenOffice. In order to be able to study, you need some kind of office programm. Most universities don't offer MS Office for free. And guess what? Students dont complain about that. Most students I know just download OpenOffice. An office programm developed by people who work for free. It's quite common to depend on free programms in our daily lives and procurement is just one of them.

And like I said: Upgrading 1 of your normal stash tabs costs you 1.50$, so it's not like you are poor. No one can say they can't afford 1.50$...

Aslong third party softwares that allow trading have more options than the trade tabs themselves i don't see how you could call that pay to win.

On an other perspective it's not worse than "installing softwares to win" like before. You can't imagine how many players started to trade now that it's here and were feeling pushed out of market before due to that.

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ghoulavenger wrote:

I included all in game and GGG provided solutions in my argument -- well, okay I didn't talk about trade chat in that last post, but I have in this thread (but trade chat is just spam). Discarding all third party programs wouldn't be cherry picking in my view. Especially since I considered them in my argument that premium tabs aren't a big deal. Cherry picking is ignoring things that aren't in your arguments favor, not considering and weighting them.

Why does it need to be ingame? What's the logic in that when there is a free solution, even if it's a 3rd party programm? If procurement will go offline at some point, this discussion might probably come again and then GGG may be willing to change something (like implementing this feature in normal stash tabs). But as long as there is a free and updated solution, I don't see any harm in this approach.

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ghoulavenger wrote:

Any reports on the official forums about scams are suppressed by GGG as naming and shaming. GGG does not endorse this practice so you won't find it here, at least very much.

I'm not just asking about reports in this forum. I also asked how many are there on reddit. If this would be such a big problem to the community, GGG would have probably adressed it already.

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ghoulavenger wrote:

I think you misunderstood. If you reduce overhead on your server costs, then that is money in the bank. Does it make money? No, but unless you make more money than you save, it is a less effective solution. But without knowing the exact math I can't say whether or not my position is valid. I don't know the numbers. It just is the way I would have gone.

Well, then there's no point in arguing over that if we dont have real numbers. Maybe they dont lose money at all or such a small amount, that it doesn't really matter to them.

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ghoulavenger wrote:

Actually I think it's a bad thing that GGG relies on third party developers. Having a community that helps the game is good, interacting with the community is good, depending on them is not. Ultimately the goal should be transitioning away from community led initiatives (not just trampling on them because that only demoralizes the community).

And that's where I think you are wrong. All Online-Game developers do exactly this. Trying to be completely independend from the community. And that usually results in the community to make illegal (or at least non-accepted) 3rd party programs. Then the developer has to implement anti-cheat software (which needs to be licensed and costs money) or other things that detect 3rd party software that influences the game somehow. And people still use those 3rd party programms, but they try to get around the anti-cheat software and then they are playing "illegal". So sometimes it is better just to accept that the community will work with the game as long as the software can't be considered cheating. And in case of procurement and indexers, the community really helped GGG out. Wouldn't it kinda be unfair from GGG now to throw all the hard work of the community away and say "gtfo, we do this now"? I mean, it's not just procurement. GGG also has a much worse skill planner on their website and they still don't update it, even knowing that there's a 3rd party programm that does it better.

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AceNightfire wrote:

Why does it need to be ingame? What's the logic in that when there is a free solution, even if it's a 3rd party programm? If procurement will go offline at some point, this discussion might probably come again and then GGG may be willing to change something (like implementing this feature in normal stash tabs). But as long as there is a free and updated solution, I don't see any harm in this approach.

I didn't say in game, I said "GGG provided". That means that it is first party, not third.

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AceNightfire wrote:

I'm not just asking about reports in this forum. I also asked how many are there on reddit. If this would be such a big problem to the community, GGG would have probably adressed it already.

GGG doesn't believe in naming and shaming, and scamming isn't a bannable offense (it's the buyers fault mentality, it does help protect against fradulent claims too though so it isn't all bad). So what will they do about it?

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AceNightfire wrote:

And that's where I think you are wrong. All Online-Game developers do exactly this. Trying to be completely independend from the community. And that usually results in the community to make illegal (or at least non-accepted) 3rd party programs. Then the developer has to implement anti-cheat software (which needs to be licensed and costs money) or other things that detect 3rd party software that influences the game somehow. And people still use those 3rd party programms, but they try to get around the anti-cheat software and then they are playing "illegal". So sometimes it is better just to accept that the community will work with the game as long as the software can't be considered cheating. And in case of procurement and indexers, the community really helped GGG out. Wouldn't it kinda be unfair from GGG now to throw all the hard work of the community away and say "gtfo, we do this now"? I mean, it's not just procurement. GGG also has a much worse skill planner on their website and they still don't update it, even knowing that there's a 3rd party programm that does it better.

I think you extended my argument much further than I wanted to go with it. I want GGG to transition out community based efforts and improve their own game, not beat the community up and try to keep them from making third party software. If everybody had trade tabs, they could close up forum trading, which would make procurement/acquisition completely pointless. Now you don't do this immediately, that doesn't give people time to prepare. Give them a league, or two leagues maybe (a league is more than enough for people playing challenge leagues since trading has to stop when the league ends, but for standard maybe it isn't) and then close up shop.

Granted, I'm all fine with them going after people map hacking, running bots, or doing RMT (which are all things against the ToS).

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ghoulavenger wrote:

I didn't say in game, I said "GGG provided". That means that it is first party, not third.

Well, then what's the problem with 3rd party programs as long as they work? If they don't at some point, GGG and the community can still think about viable solutions. But until that happens, procurement is a viable trade option we should and must consider here.

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ghoulavenger wrote:

GGG doesn't believe in naming and shaming, and scamming isn't a bannable offense (it's the buyers fault mentality, it does help protect against fradulent claims too though so it isn't all bad). So what will they do about it?

Then I don't see why we need to dicuss this matter if there is no rule against scamming. If it's not against the rules, we should exclude it from the topic.

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ghoulavenger wrote:

I think you extended my argument much further than I wanted to go with it. I want GGG to transition out community based efforts and improve their own game, not beat the community up and try to keep them from making third party software. If everybody had trade tabs, they could close up forum trading, which would make procurement/acquisition completely pointless. Now you don't do this immediately, that doesn't give people time to prepare. Give them a league, or two leagues maybe (a league is more than enough for people playing challenge leagues since trading has to stop when the league ends, but for standard maybe it isn't) and then close up shop.

Granted, I'm all fine with them going after people map hacking, running bots, or doing RMT (which are all things against the ToS).

Well, ofc it is nice to have all the features ingame. But then again, I do not understand what this has to do with p2w? Now we are talking about if it makes more sense for GGG to try to be indipendend from indexers/procurement, but that doesn't explain why this would help against p2w. Ofc your argument is, that all tabs should have the trade option, but then the argument stays that GGG NEEDS to make money somehow.

Lets not forget that GGG could have tried to get rid of procurement/indexers AND still only introduced the trade option for prem tabs. Because THEN the prem tabs would have been the only options to trade and THEN I would go along with your argument that GGG implemented a p2w feature. But they didn't try to shut down procurement or the indexers and therefore (like said above) procurement is a viable trade option we should and must consider here.

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AceNightfire wrote:

Well, then what's the problem with 3rd party programs as long as they work? If they don't at some point, GGG and the community can still think about viable solutions. But until that happens, procurement is a viable trade option we should and must consider here.

Nothing is wrong with them, I just don't want to consider them as part of a reason why a feature isn't pay to win. I consider the elements of the game itself. I've said that or something similar a few times already.

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AceNightfire wrote:

Then I don't see why we need to dicuss this matter if there is no rule against scamming. If it's not against the rules, we should exclude it from the topic.

A potential advantage to players should be excluded because it doesn't break rules? Well whatever suits your fancy but I don't see why it should be.

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AceNightfire wrote:

Well, ofc it is nice to have all the features ingame. But then again, I do not understand what this has to do with p2w? Now we are talking about if it makes more sense for GGG to try to be indipendend from indexers/procurement, but that doesn't explain why this would help against p2w. Ofc your argument is, that all tabs should have the trade option, but then the argument stays that GGG NEEDS to make money somehow.

Lets not forget that GGG could have tried to get rid of procurement/indexers AND still only introduced the trade option for prem tabs. Because THEN the prem tabs would have been the only options to trade and THEN I would go along with your argument that GGG implemented a p2w feature. But they didn't try to shut down procurement or the indexers and therefore (like said above) procurement is a viable trade option we should and must consider here.

It doesn't matter if it is in game -- the forum posts themselves aren't in game and I considered the posting manually. The real important part is that it is GGG provided. What GGG has provided us with are premium trade tabs.

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ghoulavenger wrote:

Nothing is wrong with them, I just don't want to consider them as part of a reason why a feature isn't pay to win. I consider the elements of the game itself. I've said that or something similar a few times already.

Well, then that's your personal opinion if this should be included or not. For me, it doesn't make sense to exclude it. Procurement is there, it's free and it's available to everyone even before prem stash tabs. Just because it weakens your argument, it shouldn't be excluded. It's still cherry-picking for me. But ok, lets leave that aside...

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ghoulavenger wrote:

A potential advantage to players should be excluded because it doesn't break rules? Well whatever suits your fancy but I don't see why it should be.

You CAN'T get scammed unless you're stupid enough to not use poe.trade or simply ask someone else with some knowledge. That's the whole point. And prem stash tabs won't help you against people trying to scam you. If you habe enough knowledge to know where to look for credibility of a player, you also will have enough knowledge to compare prices on poe.trade or ask someone else. So it's not an advantage, you're just trying to find anything at all that justifies your p2w argument (and excluding things that weakens it)...

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ghoulavenger wrote:

It doesn't matter if it is in game -- the forum posts themselves aren't in game and I considered the posting manually. The real important part is that it is GGG provided. What GGG has provided us with are premium trade tabs.

... And you can just ignore the prem tabs and use procurement with your standard stash tabs.

Well, I guess it's safe to say we start to circle around the same arguments now. Lets summarize:

1. 3rd Party-Programs, in- or exclude?
- You think it's p2w because you think everything that's not ingame should be excluded in the p2w argumentation
- I think it's not p2w, because there is an alternative (procurement).

All in all we will not get on the same page when it comes to this.

2. Do prem tabs grant advantages procurement or manually setting up doesn't?
- You think it does. Faster listing and you can check for credibility of a player, making scamming less possible and it's ofc faster then manually setting the forum shop up (but not really faster then procurement). Also the player and the developer doesn't have to depend on a 3rd party programm, which risk isn't evaluated by the developers themselves.
- I think that those advantages are non-significant, since you will still easily sell items with procurement with the only disadvantage, that you will get messaged for an item that you have sold minutes ago already. I also think procurement is pretty safe and it worked for years, so why should that change now. Furthermore, it also brings the community and developers closer together, since they depend on each other. Checking the credibility is no real advantage for me, because if a player does know how to check that, he can also use other ways to check that (comparing prices on poe.trade or asking someone else). And since you said yourself, that they are not a big deal, I think it is save to say that the advantages are not big enough to justify such a big discussion or to call it p2w.

Same here, we will only agree to disagree to that question.

3. Are Premium Stash Tabs pay2win?
- You think yes, because in your definition every feature that is INGAME and provides an advantage, is p2w
- I think no, because by my definition of p2w, it must be an advantage that only players with money have access too and since I don't exclude procurement, I won't call it p2w. Furthermore, the advantage must be really gamebreaking. Like getting better equipment when you pay or getting better items or not being able to level up efficiently without paying. Player managed to make currency and level up long before prem stash tabs were released, so why should that change now because of prem stash tabs?

So this is the 3rd thing we will never agree on. I think it's safe to say that it doesn't make any sense anymore to keep the discussion between us up, because our definitions of things (p2w, significance of an advantage, inclusion of 3rd party programms etc.) are just to different. Feel free to answer on this post too, but I won't reply anymore, because this discussion already consumed enough time in my opinion. I made my point clear and you yours. So if GGG really reads this, I let GGG decide which argumentations (yours or mine) were closer to their own ways of thinking.

no.

and lab is awesome :D