Ever played a "free" game where the requirement to be an elite player is to spend THOUSANDS of $$ ?

"

Cadumal wrote:

Charan, having a strong-worded private conversation with a GM or support staff is an excellent way of getting banned without getting your point across.

That's a load of shit and you know it. Support aren't even empowered enough to make that call. But go on, tell me more about how the system works when I was actually instrumental in the changeover from volunteer moderation to paid support. When folks like me, Wittgenstein and Pneuma basically held Bex's and Henry's hands those early months, because we wanted them to do it right, to treat this community the way it deserved to be treated.

You have all those other threads in which to wage your little war and in which to make your vapid claims. I chose this one because it has sympathetic ears and what strike me as rational thinkers.

Do me a favour and be content with 99.999% of the forum. You and yours have won. Be gracious in victory.

"

DexterousGecko wrote:

And yes, we do have the moral highground because all you pretty titled people told us for years how "good" and "moral" GGG was because they refused to add an advantage for paying customers.

claiming the moral high-ground almost instantly refutes the claim itself.

Just saying, i lolled.

Peace,

-Boem-

edit : also lul at the "being banned for using harsh statements or words".

I would be banned years ago if that where the case.

Assumptions, assumptions for everybody!

"

HeWhoAnswersTheCall wrote:

"

Cadumal wrote:

Charan, having a strong-worded private conversation with a GM or support staff is an excellent way of getting banned without getting your point across.

That's a load of shit and you know it. Support aren't even empowered enough to make that call. But go on, tell me more about how the system works when I was actually instrumental in the changeover from volunteer moderation to paid support. When folks like me, Wittgenstein and Pneuma basically held Bex's and Henry's hands those early months, because we wanted them to do it right, to treat this community the way it deserved to be treated.

You have all those other threads in which to wage your little war and in which to make your vapid claims. I chose this one because it has sympathetic ears and what strike me as rational thinkers.

Do me a favour and be content with 99.999% of the forum. You and yours have won. Be gracious in victory.

I made that remark in regards to Allods and other f2p games that you had mentioned in your previous post -- but I'm sure that even with PoE's lax laws of conduit, if one crosses the line in a private conversation with the staff he/she will get the hammer. So no, I don't think that's a lot of crap. I just hope you'll never have to have that "much sharper conversation" with the GGG staff.

Kudos for entirely missing the point though. This isn't a fight or a war, not against GGG and not against you. There is nothing to win. I apologize for having upset you.

"

HeWhoAnswersTheCall wrote:

Oh, I'm well aware, Antpile. Just pointing out the possible irony (or maybe significant point) of one of PoE's biggest financial supporters being very, very stingy when it comes to any other free-to-play.

And I did get burned on Allods as well. I swore off F2Ps after that debacle. As I've said before, and will no doubt say again, I play and support PoE despite it being F2P, not because. If there were even a true inkling of pay to win introduced to PoE, I wouldn't bother posting about it. I'd be talking directly to the people responsible. And it would be a much sharper conversation than whatever Cadumal and the others are going on about with their 'you lied to us!' diatribe. I swear, you'd think they'd never even paid attention to politics or big business. Those people change their ways all the time. It's only lying if you can prove they had intent to deceive at the time of the declaration. Otherwise it's what adults call 'adapting to survive'. Businesses that don't do it tend to die.

This trade situation remains, at worst, grey area. As you've pointed out, and no doubt will be largely ignored, PoE is still far, far below the threshold of most f2p games in terms of p2w. A lot of people don't realise there's a technical reason for all this: only premium stash tabs can be manipulated by the player. Standard tabs are static. As for the 'give everyone premium tabs' argument, I personally don't mind but I know GGG's stance on giving away things that others have already paid for, because I've suggested they do just that in the past, to no avail.

It's not that PoE has an intrinsically entitled community -- in their naivete, GGG have made them this way. Chris figured being generous (but still making money, of course) would engender a sense of appreciation. And for a while it did. For a while, the moral card earned GGG a lot of cash, including mine. But now? All it's done is give these people a very false sense of what is right and what is wrong. Of what they deserve and what they don't.

I don't know many real life situations where you get as much for free as with PoE, to the point where sometimes I wonder how the hell GGG stay afloat. So it must be disheartening for them to see this sort of backlash after years of being easily, EASILY the most generous, morally-upstanding free to play developer on the planet.

This is why the really smart, successful people in the world are just bastards all the time. Idiots get used to that and accept it for what it is. Take the good with the bad and all that. If a bastard does something good for once, it's a big deal. Cue fanfare. But when someone who's always good does something potentially even vaguely bad, oh my god, END OF THE WORLD. HOW. DARE. THEY?

That is how every single person bitching about this looks to me. Like someone who has no idea how good they've had it whingeing about the slightest change towards what is actually a normal situation for the rest of the world. Like people who've had a free ride for ages and somehow think that's the way things should be is now being charged a few bucks to stay on board. Oh, but it's the PRINCIPLE of the matter right?

Easy to say when it's not your business to run. When you're not the one making sure food gets to the tables of all your employees. When the well-being of literally dozens of families doesn't rest on your shoulders.

These people think they've the moral high ground, when all they're doing is attacking a business that has for years treated them better than *any other game company out there*.

Way to go.

PS If you really, really thought supporters would never have any sort of advantage over freeloaders, you were lying to yourself. The key is how much advantage are you willing to accept before you feel the game has become immoral? If extra storage instead of having to mule (which is a laborious process) didn't push you over the line, I don't see why this is any different. It's not as if everyone who owns a premium stash tab is even going to trade. I likely won't. Oh, man. That must really piss someone off. Me with my whopping 70 premium tabs, and not even going to use them. Wow, I feel like that rich bastard with 70 Ferraris in his garage he never drives...except not really.

Just read this again more carefully. One of the best posts ive ever read on these forums.

Not even in my top ten, Antpile, I think, but cheers. :)

__

Another thought I had: GGG have access to all sorts of metrics and data we don't. For example, they can almost certainly look up how many accounts are active and have premium stash tabs. And for all the whingeing and complaining here, it's equally possible that a MAJORITY of active accounts have premium stash tabs. If that is true, then there is all the reason in the world for them to make this move, given their business model has to be 'keep the customers happy' and not 'keep all the players happy' because let's face it, the latter would have sunk more robust companies than GGG by now. But it's not as simple as 'keep the customers happy' because, as we've already made abundantly clear, GGG play the moral card proudly. Free-to-players have all the rights of supporting players when it comes to the forum; they have access to all the same content. All of it. There has to be some head-shaking at GGG right now over this, some shrugging of despair. This is the perfect example of them giving an inch to free players, and them expecting a mile -- except if we're being honest, it's more like giving a mile, expecting an Astronomical Unit.

And I know for a fact that GGG do not make these changes lightly. Too much is riding on the game's health. So can we perhaps consider that there are factors GGG have taken into account that we simply cannot? This is the long game for them. All those stash tab sales (and they are very successful) had to be leading to something. I'm not saying people should have expected it, but there *has to be* functionality for these paid features beyond something you can overcome with a mule or ten. You can be absolutely sure this is going to result in more supporters trading, and perhaps in turn keep them as supporters as they broaden their horizons thanks to the new resources at their disposal. We know that GGG hold the PoE economy as sacred, and while this move may slightly damage GGG's image as squeaky-clean (a smudge, at best, not this apocalyptic dust cloud some people are making it out to be), it's definitely going to make the economy stronger as it pulls more players in.

One of the toughest things GGG have had to deal with this whole time is finding ways to make paying players feel special. Titles? Pfft, they're silly. Design-a-thingy? Not cost-effective, trust me on that one. Pets? They're cute but unless you're going to make a zoo, mostly just a perk. Indeed, all the aesthetic mtxes in the world don't amount to much when 99.999% of the game is played either privately or with friends. We don't have huge public hubs like those MMOs where you can just sit and be amazed at some of the costumes running around. No, in the end, more stash tabs are about the *only* thing a paying player can say they have over a free player, and by 'over' I don't mean a direct advantage. I just mean a clear distinction. It can be used to an advantage -- I don't think anyone would argue against that. But again, it's not a straight line to p2w. Never was, never will be.

So if this new feature makes things more convenient for paying players without directly hampering non-paying players, and the biggest complaint the non-paying players (and their paying allies, let's not forget those) can up with is 'this person is paying to play and getting something I'm not and they can now do something that takes me ten minutes in five minutes' then I'd say it's well worth the move...especially if it gives proven supporters more incentive to support.

Because speaking as one of the first non-investing financial supporters of GGG, it's becoming increasingly difficult to justify further support. And it doesn't help that a lot of the decisions so far seem to favour non-paying no-lifers, or worse (in this context), people who actively make money out of PoE one way or another. For the first time in a very long time, GGG have done something that directly and clearly benefits the paying customers before anything else.

You can make a scene about that all you want, but I for one am vaguely reassured they still know how to function as a business intent on making money in the most logical way: keep your paying customers happy with a gesture of goodwill here and there...because GGG specialise in gestures of goodwill not just to the paying customer, but to everyone.

And of course that's going to be taken for granted. I've seen people go as far as to call GGG a charity. To refer to support as donations.

I call such people fools...knowing I'm the fool paying for their ride.

What I don't get at this point is why these blithe, spoiled freeloaders are crying, not laughing. Laughing and laughing and laughing.

"AntPi1e_
"HeWhoAnswersTheCall

"never_born

"

Imaginaerum wrote:

I still think at least 1 trade tab should be given to everybody since it'll all most of the complainers need. The people who plan on having 471238 trade tabs already bought premium tabs back in 2013

Although it would be interesting to know how much money the number 1 ladder guys have spent on this game

you know what? i almost guarantee that the majority of people who complain about this, if they're given a free premium stash tab wouldn't even use it for trading. thats just how people are and how this issue is, it isn't about the trading system its about them

Hm, addressing this issue of supporters who only bought regular stash tabs: I empathise with that quandary. I think GGG's best move there would be to offer a one-time only chance to upgrade 1 bought regular stash tab to a premium for free. Just one. And, of course, you can expect the regular-->premium upgrade to go on sale quite regularly.

Note that I feel this should *only* apply to stash tabs 5 and above. I know I may be sounding a bit like an elitist there but given just how much of this game you get for absolutely free, I want to draw the line somewhere when it comes to free play experience compared to paid, and premium tabs are absolutely that line for me.

But if they do decide to give a free premium tab on every single account, eh, whatever. I just don't think they will, for reasons already given.

We will have to see what the rest of the trade improvements are.

"Ever played a "free" game where the requirement to be an elite player is to spend THOUSANDS of $$ ?"

No, and I don't ever plan to.

"

HeWhoAnswersTheCall wrote:

Hm, addressing this issue of supporters who only bought regular stash tabs: I empathise with that quandary. I think GGG's best move there would be to offer a one-time only chance to upgrade 1 bought regular stash tab to a premium for free. Just one. And, of course, you can expect the regular-->premium upgrade to go on sale quite regularly.

INDEED. I thought maybe you were deliberately staying out of it, but this is what I've been ranting about for a bit.

Well, that and reminding people who say "just trade the old way" that poe.trade said they're not going to continue indexing the old way, so we might only be able to do it through the stash until...

"

We will have to see what the rest of the trade improvements are.

Hopefully soon, but possibly the year 2024. In 2012 they started talking about a trade system, and in 2013 laid out a pretty great plan that has, sadly, not taken any form as of yet.


-VG-