Please explain what we are winning by buying premium stash tabs?

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Filousov wrote:

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HeWhoAnswersTheCall wrote:

Technical issue. Premium tabs are enabled for player manipulation. Standard tabs are not. It's a basic distinction.

This must be relatively easy to overcome - it's just to show some dialog on those too. And most likely some database storage thing at the back-end. But nothing ground breaking in terms of development. Must be easily doable.

Not necessarily. It's entirely possible that they could be stored as entirely different data types in their system. Regular stash tabs only have two pieces of information associated with them, the tab# and the contents. You're limited to a maximum of 65535 tabs, so that's 16 bits. Add in another 16 for a pointer to the stash contents and you could have a single integer value representing both.

Premium tabs had at least two other attributes associated with them, color and name. The name could be of arbitrary length. And they may well have planned in advance for the possibility that they would want to add extra functionality to them, even long before the trade system came up as an idea. So these would already have been coded as some kind of structure that would allow variable size.

Adding an extra attribute or two on to the premium tabs might have been relatively simple. Trying to add them on to basic tabs might have required changing their data type entirely. Which in turn would require rewriting EVERY single piece of code that references those tabs.

Of course, we have no idea how things are coded internally, so it could be completely different than this example, but this is at least one way where it would NOT be so easily doable as you think.

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HeWhoAnswersTheCall wrote:

Perhaps a less jaded me would start a thread asking the very simple question: is truly fair-to-all f2p a sustainable business model?

But the current me would just post under that: lol, don't be stupid.

God do I ever love GGG for daring to be stupid though. They've done better to avoid biased treatment of paying customers than ANY company ever should. It couldn't last. Not as long as paying supporters are treated like fools by free players and not as long as free players are seen as entitled parasites by supporting players. It wasn't always this way. There was a brief period where paying supporters were appreciated by free players and free players were welcomed by paying supporters. Everyone was just damn glad PoE existed for any and all seeking refuge from You Know What 3. But then PoE stopped being a refuge and more and more people resented GGG for failing to make PoE perfect. Paid supporters started looking like saps and white knights, like fan boys. And free players who had less overt investment in the game started looking like trolls happy to attack a company that does its best not to be Glu or Gameloft or Zinga or any truly p2w f2p "freemium" developer you care to name, if you even have that much experience with genuine p2w f2p.

Despite GGG's best efforts, we created the divisions between paying supporter and free player long ago. No, we didn't even create them. We just accepted the reality of the situation.

The game itself is only now catching up.

I doubt GGG ever will. I hope they never do.

Even cosmetic items are unfair. "Free to Play" is an advertising gimmick. They eventually have to earn their money somewhere. It is unfair advantage one way or the other. It is just a matter of whether it customers think it is acceptable or justifiable. Cosmetic items are just more acceptable.

I thought companies are inherently self serving. The consumer is not an idiot and react poorly to manipulative advertising. It is more a question of do you emphasized short-term monetization or value long-term retention?

Can pay to design a unique, which you can then use to make your character stronger. Pay2Win.

Wraeclast's eternal love?

No wait, that's something else.

Chris Wilson's eternal love?

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Hodari wrote:

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Filousov wrote:

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HeWhoAnswersTheCall wrote:

Technical issue. Premium tabs are enabled for player manipulation. Standard tabs are not. It's a basic distinction.

This must be relatively easy to overcome - it's just to show some dialog on those too. And most likely some database storage thing at the back-end. But nothing ground breaking in terms of development. Must be easily doable.

Not necessarily. It's entirely possible that they could be stored as entirely different data types in their system. Regular stash tabs only have two pieces of information associated with them, the tab# and the contents. You're limited to a maximum of 65535 tabs, so that's 16 bits. Add in another 16 for a pointer to the stash contents and you could have a single integer value representing both.

Premium tabs had at least two other attributes associated with them, color and name. The name could be of arbitrary length. And they may well have planned in advance for the possibility that they would want to add extra functionality to them, even long before the trade system came up as an idea. So these would already have been coded as some kind of structure that would allow variable size.

Adding an extra attribute or two on to the premium tabs might have been relatively simple. Trying to add them on to basic tabs might have required changing their data type entirely. Which in turn would require rewriting EVERY single piece of code that references those tabs.

Of course, we have no idea how things are coded internally, so it could be completely different than this example, but this is at least one way where it would NOT be so easily doable as you think.

Agreed that the case can be one you have described. But I still don't see that it would be that difficult to merge regular stash tabs to premium ones - add bool column to the premium stash tab table distinguishing the type. And then of course little bit painful conversion script code to do that on whole database. Those things are happening, it's not entirely trivial, but can be done with some mediocre effort.

The limit of 65K is so high, I think it wouldn't matter at all. If it matters, then upsize the ID to 32 bit as part of this. :-)

In US courts there's something referred to as "standing"... and I see this as lacking in all the complaints. Basically, you can't sue someone or something simply because you don't like what they've done. You have to be damaged by it.

Every argument I've seen put forth puts the "damage" on some mythical player. Find me that player who is damaged. Let him make his case. I just don't see that happening. Anyone trading extensively (running a successful shop with frequent trades) has access to premium tabs. They might not use them on their shop account, but definitely use them on their playing account.

30 minutes advantage to sell your item is the first thing. The ability to make notes and tell the buyer info that would save you all you hassle and time of not having to do it while mapping is another. Not needing an extra program running while you play is the third one . Not having to bother downloading and setting up third software tools that you might or might not trust is a fourth.

P2W is just the easy acronym people use and being soo damn picky about if it fully represents this case just proves how desperate the defense is.These are advantages that come up at the top of my head , when applied to something that can make me earn 100 exalts in 5 hours you understand how important that extra time and quality of life is , when you think that this is just the first fucking step it just becomes obvious. Its nowhere compare-able to that extra colors and storage you get .

Personally though , the main problem i have with this is the principle GGG is breaking with this. Its not about the $5 or the $10 you will have to spend.Its about a f2p game that supposedly was never going to go further then stash tabs in the p2w territory .They are charging for content , content that was promised 3 years ago and is still highly wanted. So please guys , just because you have money to spend and you don`t care it does not make the people who do leechers and entitled bastards , in this game that is always been marketed as 100% f2p the point IS about playing free. Supporting the company is an entire different things and that should be never tied to paying for things that are obviously advantaging you. If you fuckers think you are supporting GGG by buying those 20 premium stash tabs please wake up , luckily your sub-consciousness is more logical than you.

GGG knows this , they have always said how important trading is in their game and they know how much it affects us.The fact that people are just assuming things and we get no reply from them , the announcement being after 99% of the cool stuff in the new league , them not defending their stance at all but allowing this to die out and fanboys doing what they know to do best tells us what people just don`t wanna admit. They are GREEDY , they want that money , they know they can get it this way and they don`t care about principles or promises they have made.

Other than being mad about one of the fairest f2p games failing like this i just can`t understand how people can support the idea of GGG being both greedy and fair in the same time. This lack of empathy about people who get discriminated by this or not going against something fundamentally wrong just because you do not get harmed by it is something that can really harm this game.Not the nerfs to pixels , this. After all :

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out. -quote by Martin Niemöller

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Shagsbeard wrote:

In US courts there's something referred to as "standing"... and I see this as lacking in all the complaints. Basically, you can't sue someone or something simply because you don't like what they've done. You have to be damaged by it.

Every argument I've seen put forth puts the "damage" on some mythical player. Find me that player who is damaged. Let him make his case. I just don't see that happening. Anyone trading extensively (running a successful shop with frequent trades) has access to premium tabs. They might not use them on their shop account, but definitely use them on their playing account.

Anybody successfully trading will already do whatever it takes to squeeze advantages out of it.

This also means utilizing third party tools and they offer the same functionality.

The only difference i could come up with between third party trading tools and premium tabs are

-need to tab to price items individually
-slight delay in indexing speed

First one can be argued as an advantage, quite clearly.

The second one also holds that same potential assuming a buyer looks for gear and two people post the exact same potential item for him. However, this point gradually decays as the market has more items available.

So the chances are pretty slim to begin with if we exclude unique items and the advantage erodes over time.

- if we consider unique's, then it becomes visible that unique's are highly desired early on in a league due to the absence of saturation on the market.
This almost indirectly imply's that the second unique, being posted a few minutes later will still be a highly desired item in such a market setting.

So early on, the disadvantage is countered by the market requiring a high volume of them and later on it is eroded by the saturation itself which makes the competing post time irrelevant compared to actual listing price.

At least, that's how far i took this thought experiment. Feel free to poke holes in it though.

Peace,

-Boem-

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Filousov wrote:

Agreed that the case can be one you have described. But I still don't see that it would be that difficult to merge regular stash tabs to premium ones - add bool column to the premium stash tab table distinguishing the type. And then of course little bit painful conversion script code to do that on whole database. Those things are happening, it's not entirely trivial, but can be done with some mediocre effort.

The limit of 65K is so high, I think it wouldn't matter at all. If it matters, then upsize the ID to 32 bit as part of this. :-)

Yeah, they've already said that they could increase the 65k limit if they ever actually needed to. I'm pretty sure even if someone like Charan had spent ALL of his points on nothing but stash tabs, it wouldn't be enough to hit that limit. And there would be absolutely no practical reason why anyone would ever need that many tabs. If someone wanted to donate that much money JUST to force them to hit the limit, I'm sure that would at least be enough money to make it worth GGG's time.

But yeah, they probably could merge the stash tab types like you suggested. There are two issues with that though:
1. As you said, they would have to run that script on the entire database which would involve SEVERAL hours of extra downtime.
2. The whole point of having the two separate data types in the first place would have been that the normal tabs take a LOT less memory to store. Not a big deal when you're looking at just a few tabs, but when you have millions of them, it would really add up. If they converted all of the tabs like that, it really takes away the whole point of having normal tabs in the first place.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

In US courts there's something referred to as "standing"... and I see this as lacking in all the complaints. Basically, you can't sue someone or something simply because you don't like what they've done. You have to be damaged by it.

Every argument I've seen put forth puts the "damage" on some mythical player. Find me that player who is damaged. Let him make his case. I just don't see that happening. Anyone trading extensively (running a successful shop with frequent trades) has access to premium tabs. They might not use them on their shop account, but definitely use them on their playing account.

This is a really good point.

Which makes me think what GGG really needs to do is be open and up front why they chose to pay wall this feature. I think if they just explained it from a business standpoint cooler, mature heads will prevail and people would be more understanding.

I think the problem comes when GGG tries to pretend this isn't p2w when people clearly understand it to be what it is, gating a part of the game behind money.

If they explained why that isn't such a bad thing it would soothe the disconnect GGG is partially creating with this issue.


Also it would go a long way if they were open about how much future trade improvements were dependent on this premium stash tab feature. If this is a one off instance of p2w and doesn't impact access to the rest of the trade improvements they need to be open about that.