Pay 2 Win Premium Tabs Features - why GGG lies

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scale_e wrote:

First of all, if it's you introducing the element of indexers other than Poe.trade to this discussion, then the onus is on you to provide examples. That's debating 101 dude.

Which is why I told you about the other indexer in my first reply...

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scale_e wrote:

And "a non zero amount of people" use these other indexers do they? Ok then. My counter is this: A non-zero amount of people manually browse the forums. Exposure the premium tab users don't get. So it all balances out right?

Of course it doesn't. Because neither of us have solid numbers on this. Because we aren't GGG devs. So how about we not clasp at straws like that?

In at least a year of having forum posts up, I had one -yes, ONE- forum message about an item. In about a month of having a premium tab up, I have had probably over a hundred messages about items. It's really not comparable. Trekking through the forums to find an item is honestly laughable when indexers are available.

Regardless, forum trading was never a good system. Trade cancer (chat) is a better system than basic forum trading, and that's just sad. Forum crawling was a better system, but is very inefficient and should NOT be relied upon. The new API is a very good system, and should absolutely be used- that's what it is designed for. The only problem is that it's not available to free players.

Why is it not available to free players? My guess would be that it's much easier to do it with premium tabs than it would be with free tabs. I'm hoping that they find a solution to this problem so we can stop this discussion altogether.

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goetzjam wrote:

Personally I don't give a shit what you think, you obviously disagree with me on many things so its going to be clear that your perspective of any argument I present is going to be skewed.

I actually agree with some of what you said, I just think it's repetitive. I do not think your arguments are the clearest on the thread, which is what I was saying and that is always an on-topic comment.

Your very well worded and concise response thoroughly pushes forward the idea that you are respectfully discussing the topic. It's totally clear that you aren't making negative verbal assaults on multiple users.

Dude, Poe's Law.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Dude, Poe's Law.

*off topic*

You are absolutely right. The inflection is, unfortunately, lost in text.

To be clear: A respectful discussion is one in which you do not tell people to fornicate themselves with randomly retrieved objects.

It is both possible and preferable to politely agree or disagree with people. Repetitive rude comments in discussions frequently convey a lack of desire to learn and grow by the presenter thereby devaluing the core concept of any argument no matter how lengthy or long winded said argument may be.

To date:

Side A:
1) 3rd party sites level the playing field for all users. Premium tabs are also worthless without 3rd party software so they convey no advantage if no one uses 3rd party sites. Furthermore, 3rd party software has been found to be equally advantageous by some assuming everyone uses the necessary 3rd party search sites
2) The game cannot be "won". PvP is mostly a dead concept in POE therefore there is no "winning" and "losing"; to say that there is either is a fallacy which assumes that one can "win" a game without clear victory conditions. Premium tabs do not make game content easier therefore they do not permit easier "victory" for any users.
3) GGG needs to make money. If the tabs do convey a small advantage it is negligible and certainly not worth the backlash they have received as a hard working game company.

Side B:
1) Users should not be forced to use 3rd party software or sites. One can list using premium tabs without using anything 3rd party and reap advantages via in-game trades that will occur as a direct result of possessing said tabs. Said trades allow easier currency accrual without 3rd party software/sites which in turn makes the game easier.
2) No QoL features in POE should be pay-only. All users deserve an equal experience which includes access to QoL trade features. Furthermore, these features were presented as being for the whole community and subsequently released for only the paying portion.

There might be some more buried in these nearly (30) pages and I sincerely apologize if I missed anything.

I'll address your side B points.

1) ALL users have to use 3rd party sites or programs currently to take advantage of the stash tab style trading system. Only in-game trade chat spam is immune to 3rd party programs\sites completely.

Easier is subjective here because even scmcb acknowledged with proper acquisition setup its the same system.

Again the way you have it phrased here is indicating that no one (buyer or seller) has to use 3rd party sites\programs to complete trades with tabs, they currently absolutely have to in regards to stash tab oriented trades.


2) No QoL feature should be pay for. Sorry, but following this logic then GGG should not sell stash tabs, its too late to go back from that now.

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Furthermore, these features were presented as being for the whole community and subsequently released for only the paying portion.

Citation needed.

By that logic about QoL stuff, even things like character slots, guild stash space, ect should all be free following the logic presented here.


The game is a free to play ARPG game. It prides itself in having an ethical MTX based system in which it is not "pay to win".


Following that logic, is it ethical to play a game and pay nothing, knowing it cost dev time? Its it ethical to complain about not having access to whatever you want, knowing they have to sell stuff to remain a profitable business?


If 90% (or almost that) of all items listed are from premium tabs, then either the very vast majority of the community agrees that the premium tabs are fine, they purchased them simply because GGG is indicating that they are actually making trade improvements after years of "nothing" or they simply want to reward the devs\company for the product and due to the limited amount of MTX's available they choose to go with one they like or they felt purchasing the tabs to not deal with 3rd party programs for selling was beneficial enough.


So the 90% thing proves that either free players aren't trading using stash space or if they are its very little, which is logical given the fact that free players are the ones least likely to purchase premium stash tabs (obviously)

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goetzjam wrote:

I'll address your side B points.

They were already addressed in the same thread. I also did a better job as concise arguments are always preferred.

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Dos_Fafner wrote:

Side A:
1) 3rd party sites level the playing field for all users. Premium tabs are also worthless without 3rd party software so they convey no advantage if no one uses 3rd party sites. Furthermore, 3rd party software has been found to be equally advantageous by some assuming everyone uses the necessary 3rd party search sites

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Dos_Fafner wrote:

3) GGG needs to make money. If the tabs do convey a small advantage it is negligible and certainly not worth the backlash they have received as a hard working game company.

Thank you for repeating what I said.

Quote from Chris's Q&A:

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Trading is a huge, core part of your game, and it allows players to act as content for each other instead of relying on you to put out new acts and features. How high on the priority list is improving trading between players?

There are a lot of questions about trade in the questions thread. We're working on several different things that make the process of getting items onto sites like poe.trade easier. These are improvements that are very possible in the short term (a month or so) and will have a big impact in the short term. There will probably be other improvements in the future - advanced tech such as cross-instance trading would of course be awesome, but requires significant investment. We're very excited about the trade API changes we're working on and look forward to talking more about it when they're closer to being ready.

Nowhere does Chris say: "We're looking into MTX effects that will streamline trading for the paying portion of the community." The question specifically asks about improving trade between players (all players as this is a community thread) ergo there is some dishonesty in this reply. That's not an attack, it's just a fact.

Obviously as you cannot read even my simple posts you could not possibly have read Chris's when it was posted as it was lengthy and involved no player-bashing.

A1. This is actually true regarding Premium tabs. It is not true regarding additional tabs.
A2. This is irrelevant, because lots of games have no PvP element or "win condition" and are nevertheless blatantly p2w.
A3. While this is true, it is an attempt to justify for p2w, not an argument that a feature isn't p2w. It would still make a statement such as "The game... will never be play-to-win" into an untruth.
B1. I disagree with this one. I'm not scared of third-party development, and actually consider it to be more resilient overall than "monopolized" development by a single entity. Basically, anything GGG official is something the community can't fix, but if poe.trade went down permanently we'd have a replacement almost immediately. It also allows for some degree of choice between indexers.
B2. In the case of Premium tabs, this is currently not p2w and unlikely to become so, because even if Acquisition died a death another free third-party tool would most likely be rapidly developed to replace it; also, archived versions of Acquisition would likely still work. (There is some chance a p2w Premium Tab situation could develop, but it is a very small chance, well within tolerances IMHO.) In the case of additional tabs, there is no equivalent third-party program, so they're still p2w.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

A1. This is actually true regarding Premium tabs. It is not true regarding additional tabs.
A2. This is irrelevant, because lots of games have no PvP element or "win condition" and are nevertheless blatantly p2w.
A3. While this is true, it is an attempt to justify for p2w, not an argument that a feature isn't p2w. It would still make a statement such as "The game... will never be play-to-win" into an untruth.
B1. I disagree with this one. I'm not scared of third-party development, and actually consider it to be more resilient overall than "monopolized" development by a single entity. Basically, anything GGG official is something the community can't fix, but if poe.trade went down permanently we'd have a replacement almost immediately. It also allows for some degree of choice between indexers.
B2. In the case of Premium tabs, this is currently not p2w and unlikely to become so, because even if Acquisition died a death another free third-party tool would most likely be rapidly developed to replace it; also, archived versions of Acquisition would likely still work. (There is some chance a p2w Premium Tab situation could develop, but it is a very small chance, well within tolerances IMHO.) In the case of additional tabs, there is no equivalent third-party program, so they're still p2w.

Please give examples of A2.


In the case of additional tabs, there is a FIRST party equivalent, which is additional mule characters and additional free accounts. There is an alternative, whether you like it or not.



@dos

No where does he say this update will be 100% free either. Its obviously using some of the premium tab technology to take advantage of tagging server side which gets pushed out to the API instead of needing to get parsed thru scrapping the forums. Which is why I said they should immediately stop selling regular stash tabs, because they are selling a clearly inferior product on purpose now (regular tabs).

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goetzjam wrote:

@dos

No where does he say this update will be 100% free either. Its obviously using some of the premium tab technology to take advantage of tagging server side which gets pushed out to the API instead of needing to get parsed thru scrapping the forums. Which is why I said they should immediately stop selling regular stash tabs, because they are selling a clearly inferior product on purpose now (regular tabs).

Agreed. I did say it was implied but this is an inference based on where the information was provided.

Is it as blatant a lie as saying the sun rises in the west? No.
Is it at least slightly dishonest by omission? Yes.

If the design intent was to charge for the added features Chris has an obligation as the provider of that information to make it clear that the features they are looking into are on an MTX/Pay basis. This is, of course, only my opinion but I think that the way it was presented is at least a small part of why there has been so much backlash.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

A1. This is actually true regarding Premium tabs. It is not true regarding additional tabs.
A2. This is irrelevant, because lots of games have no PvP element or "win condition" and are nevertheless blatantly p2w.
A3. While this is true, it is an attempt to justify for p2w, not an argument that a feature isn't p2w. It would still make a statement such as "The game... will never be play-to-win" into an untruth.
B1. I disagree with this one. I'm not scared of third-party development, and actually consider it to be more resilient overall than "monopolized" development by a single entity. Basically, anything GGG official is something the community can't fix, but if poe.trade went down permanently we'd have a replacement almost immediately. It also allows for some degree of choice between indexers.
B2. In the case of Premium tabs, this is currently not p2w and unlikely to become so, because even if Acquisition died a death another free third-party tool would most likely be rapidly developed to replace it; also, archived versions of Acquisition would likely still work. (There is some chance a p2w Premium Tab situation could develop, but it is a very small chance, well within tolerances IMHO.) In the case of additional tabs, there is no equivalent third-party program, so they're still p2w.

In regards to B2 this isn't the case because they aren't equal. You yourself illustrated the ease of use disadvantage with third party vs premium tabs.

How much an advantage is subjective and irrelevant only that there is one. This is splitting hairs at this point but like you said any amount of p2w more than exactly zero is p2w.

@Goetz; Additional tabs via mules are not equal in value to pay tabs either, again amount of advantage of paid tabs vs mules isn't the determiner.