Essence Tab free edition:

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ladish wrote:

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JoeShmo wrote:

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ladish wrote:

what other f2p games are you talking about perchance? The ones that make you pay to progress and/or access content? Yes those aren't the same kind of games as poe with its entirely free to play construct.

But I guess we could pretend companies that provide entirely free to play games don't require money to function? And any mention of profiteering is to be frowned upon because of all the money trees to be found outside? And magical fairies that keep internet servers running on love and kisses?

The game is fantasy but unfortunately reality isn't.

Some games gate you via content.

Some games gate you via space.

PoE is one of the later. It's not actually "F2P" like people keep believing. At some point shortly after starting up the game ...you have to pay for space, unless you don't like progression at all.

Which makes this entirely ironic.

Except for the fact that people have reached lvl 100 with 4 tabs. Not saying buying tabs doesn't make life easier but it isn't necessary to progress in the game. The big point for me is someone can try the game for free and if they hate it they can leave without spending a dime. If they like it they have the option to continue playing and if they still don't want to spend money then they can keep playing just without certain qualities of life.

The essence tab isn't even very useful not like the currency tab.

well said.

1: GGG just ignore those no-supporter whiners, its like this in every singel game.

If you give them what they ask for they will just ask for more, its the greedness of human nature, atleast in the no supporter brains.


2: People who say this isnt f2p because of space, learn to create a damn alt character, not hard, takes maybe 1-2min max.

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ladish wrote:

Except for the fact that people have reached lvl 100 with 4 tabs. Not saying buying tabs doesn't make life easier but it isn't necessary to progress in the game. The big point for me is someone can try the game for free and if they hate it they can leave without spending a dime. If they like it they have the option to continue playing and if they still don't want to spend money then they can keep playing just without certain qualities of life.

The essence tab isn't even very useful not like the currency tab.

And some people have leveled to max level killing level 1 boars.

Anecdotal exceptions don't make for standards.

Every f2p game allows you to try it out for free, and most people do and never reach the point where any form of gating is a concern, since they quit well before seeing most of the game.

F2P games have huge attrition issues, so its rather hard to consider "being free" as an incentive to lure players into keep playing a game. Paying up front has a much larger impact on whether someone will continue playing their game, because they have monetary investments already in place. It's great to think that F2P offers this giant safety net for new players or old players alike, but that is never the case. The money always comes into play early on in a player's experience with the game.

Take Warframe for example. That's an "entirely" free to play game, and yet as soon as you jump into it for a while you realize the daunting task you have ahead of you as a "free" player. You can play for free..but it's actually costing you time, and stress to do so. Not an inconvenience ...its a huge investment to play "for free".

Take D&D Online That's an "entirely free" to play game, and yet to progress you need to earn store currency in game at an extremely slow pace and often overly difficult challenge. You can do it, if you have the gusto to put up with it. It fits your standard of "free to play. Proper", but it's a logistical nightmare.

The same thing happens with PoE. Yes, you can play for free, but it's actually costing you time, and stress, to do so. Managing storage space is not a quality of life, its a fundamental of these games. And in a game like PoE ..just reaching max level is not good enough; you can do that naked with fists if you wanted, it doesn't mean its not tearing at your soul doing it. You want to trade? Great, have a good time with that without having spent any money. You want to play more than 1 class ( 1 is bad enough )? Great, have a good time with that without having spent any money.

Yea, it's all doable, but is that the only standard / metric that matters? "That its' doable" ?

That's like scoffing at someone who can't afford medical care. Could they live through it? "Yeah, it's doable". That's a quality of life right?

The question is, "What's reasonable?" . That's what typically differentiates one game from another, and one pay model from another. And I don't see how 4 stash tabs for PoE today is reasonable at all; and I didn't think it was that much more reasonable 2 years ago, but that's a far cry from the amount of storage requirements that we have in game today.


I'm fine with compromise, giving new players a "dumbed down" version of the currency tab and essence tab at say, 1/10th or 1/20th the stack size. That's entirely reasonable I believe.

But for people to keep saying that PoE is a "true f2p game" is really stretching the definitions. Like saying you "can experience all the content available" is stretching it for any game. It's technically possible, but is it plausible? No.

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marremurt wrote:

1: GGG just ignore those no-supporter whiners, its like this in every singel game.

If you give them what they ask for they will just ask for more, its the greedness of human nature, atleast in the no supporter brains.


2: People who say this isnt f2p because of space, learn to create a damn alt character, not hard, takes maybe 1-2min max.

I love when people try to state that "non supporters" are whiners or that they can tell if someone is a "non supporter" just by what they say.

Really? You know that buying things on the store doesn't contribute to a silly forum badge right?

For all you know, I could have 64 stash tabs, 20 pets, 40 character slots, more gem skins than I know what to do with, and points just sitting there for no reason. And I wouldn't have a "Buys too much on the store Supporter" tag under my forum name to show for it.

And Id still be saying that new players deserve something more than what they get. Shocking.

By giving the player one extra tab, they will soon be asking for another.

For example, recently in D3, the player can earn 1 extra tab by playing a new season and doing some achievements. What happens? The playerbase complaint that the extra tab is gated behind "difficult" content, which is not difficult at all, some even said it's not >>>> enough <<<<

HOW MANY IS ENOUGH?

learn to manage your space, don't pick up junk, use mules, sell cheap, sell junk uniques to vendors.

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kelongngu wrote:

By giving the player one extra tab, they will soon be asking for another.

For example, recently in D3, the player can earn 1 extra tab by playing a new season and doing some achievements. What happens? The playerbase complaint that the extra tab is gated behind "difficult" content, which is not difficult at all, some even said it's not >>>> enough <<<<

HOW MANY IS ENOUGH?

learn to manage your space, don't pick up junk, use mules, sell cheap, sell junk uniques to vendors.

This is a false equivalency.

"Asking for 1 tab" is not the same as "this 1 tab is gated"

One is a question, one is a statement.

Also, yes, doing the requirements to get a stash tab in Diablo 3 is difficult, especially since the 2.4.2 patch that increased the difficulty requirement from Torment 10 to Torment 13 for the last 3 brackets. 3.

I got the stash tab for the first 2 seasons it was available..and haven't bothered since for the last 2 ( to get my max of 10 ); solely because of it being gated behind Torment 13 and speed run requirements that are absurd for most characters / builds to do.

The players asked for more stash space, and they got it, via a convoluted progression system that sees to it that 50% or more of the playerbase can't even get it each season. By questioning that condition, they were not asking for more stash space. That would mean that they wanted more than 10, before they even got their 7th stash tab.

Get real.

Also, "use mules" is not a valid statement. Characters are not storage space, they are characters. That's like saying "you want more storage space? Get Friends to hold the items for you. Stop being lazy"

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kelongngu wrote:

By giving the player one extra tab, they will soon be asking for another.

For example, recently in D3, the player can earn 1 extra tab by playing a new season and doing some achievements. What happens? The playerbase complaint that the extra tab is gated behind "difficult" content, which is not difficult at all, some even said it's not >>>> enough <<<<

HOW MANY IS ENOUGH?

learn to manage your space, don't pick up junk, use mules, sell cheap, sell junk uniques to vendors.

Good luck selling shit without premium tab... Good luck storing anything once currency, maps, divination cards take up all your 4 tabs. With introduction of essences we are reaching the point where you cannot reasonably play with only 4 tabs. It's really not about storing junk, you will not have space to store anything and you won't be able to trade because of that either (Or maybe spend few hours in trade chat after each and every single decent drop you get). And yes, you can forget about vendor recipes.

The combination of limited space and the lack of trade system is really extremely harsh on f2p players. You can't play the whole game with just 4 tabs, so to say. Learning to manage anything will not help with this.

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wiggin wrote:

Good luck selling shit without premium tab... Good luck storing anything once currency, maps, divination cards take up all your 4 tabs. With introduction of essences we are reaching the point where you cannot reasonably play with only 4 tabs. It's really not about storing junk, you will not have space to store anything and you won't be able to trade because of that either (Or maybe spend few hours in trade chat after each and every single decent drop you get). And yes, you can forget about vendor recipes.

The combination of limited space and the lack of trade system is really extremely harsh on f2p players. You can't play the whole game with just 4 tabs, so to say. Learning to manage anything will not help with this.

Yeah, it's like giving someone a paper cup and saying "this is your storage limit for all your water, food, clothes, bathroom needs, etc. This is the only thing you can use. And it's good enough, it's free".

Could you get by with just a paper cup? I'm sure people can figure it out.

Is it practical? Not in the least.

Is it justifiable if we let you live rent free in a mansion? Ha ..... serious? What can I do with a mansion and a paper cup?

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JoeShmo wrote:

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wiggin wrote:

Good luck selling shit without premium tab... Good luck storing anything once currency, maps, divination cards take up all your 4 tabs. With introduction of essences we are reaching the point where you cannot reasonably play with only 4 tabs. It's really not about storing junk, you will not have space to store anything and you won't be able to trade because of that either (Or maybe spend few hours in trade chat after each and every single decent drop you get). And yes, you can forget about vendor recipes.

The combination of limited space and the lack of trade system is really extremely harsh on f2p players. You can't play the whole game with just 4 tabs, so to say. Learning to manage anything will not help with this.

Yeah, it's like giving someone a paper cup and saying "this is your storage limit for all your water, food, clothes, bathroom needs, etc. This is the only thing you can use. And it's good enough, it's free".

Could you get by with just a paper cup? I'm sure people can figure it out.

Is it practical? Not in the least.

Is it justifiable if we let you live rent free in a mansion? Ha ..... serious? What can I do with a mansion and a paper cup?

tl;dr at the bottom

So i supply water for everyone, i gave everyone a free paper cup, i then offer an option for them to buy more paper cups. The paying customers can get and store more water since they have more cups to play around with, the non-paying ones gets less water and thus need to spend more time and effort to get the same amount of water, everyone still gets water.
However, in order for me to keep providing water, i need to replenish it from time to time. In order to do that, i need to rely on paying customers to bring in more water for everyone.

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I came from Garena, we didn't have poe.trade.
Yes, i'm a secondary citizen so my opinions probably don't matter so you can stop reading here if you want but we're here to stay, like it or not.
Premium or extra tabs did nothing to help us sell stuff, we still get stuff sold using the trade channel. Sure, it was slow and painful but we managed SO YES WE SOLD SHIT WITHOUT PREMIUM TABS OR RATHER POE.TRADE.

If you don't have space and refuse to buy extra tabs, vendor the 1-2c below junk, sell 3c and above, some even sell 10c+ only because time is more precious. If your shit can't sell, it's probably not worth selling or you are overpricing.

Vendor recipes? Pretty sure its head(4), body(6), hands(4), feet(4), 2h weapon(8), belt(2), rings(2), amulet (1) for a grand total of 31 slots for 1 set. 1 tab can easily keep 2 sets for chaos and 2 sets for regal with leftover slots.

hence

1 tab for currency, cards, essences:
convert currency up always, offer to buy exalts for 80c, pretty sure people will sell you.
keep useful cards, if you insist to keep carrion crow/scholar/hermit etc, i will slap you.
keep useful high tier essences like woe/whatever your build uses, convert up in general.

1 tab for vendor recipes:
see above

1 tab for maps:
level your zana
buy maps from others
keep t10 and up
level your zana
convert lower ones into chisels
do map rotations
level your zana
join free map runs
did i mention level your zana?

1 tab for whatever nice rare or unique you want to sell.
you can keep leveling uniques on another character, sure character slots are limited but so are your tabs, you'll need to weigh which is more important.

tl;dr
You can't afford to hoard everything if you refuse to get extra tabs.

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kelongngu wrote:

hence

1 tab for currency, cards, essences:
convert currency up always, offer to buy exalts for 80c, pretty sure people will sell you.
keep useful cards, if you insist to keep carrion crow/scholar/hermit etc, i will slap you.
keep useful high tier essences like woe/whatever your build uses, convert up in general.

1 tab for vendor recipes:
see above

1 tab for maps:
level your zana
buy maps from others
keep t10 and up
level your zana
convert lower ones into chisels
do map rotations
level your zana
join free map runs
did i mention level your zana?

1 tab for whatever nice rare or unique you want to sell.
you can keep leveling uniques on another character, sure character slots are limited but so are your tabs, you'll need to weigh which is more important.

This is unrealistic with current state of the game. I have played in closed and open beta with just 4 tabs as well, ever since we are getting more maps, fragments, offerings, essences - items.



The truth is game changed, we need to store a lot more items since CB, back then 4 tabs was pretty OK, now it's really crossing the line with the introduction of essences which alone, if you want to experience them will take up a little over half a tab.

It's not up to me to judge whether this is good (more sold tabs = money for GGG = development of our favorite game) or bad (f2p players getting disgusted and quitting). But it's definitely wrong to pretend 4 tabs are still enough to play all of PoE.