POE is not a FREE TO PLAY

Man... I played poe with 4 tabs for a week and I went insane.
Now I literally got 104.

I really recommend:
8regular
1currency
2premium (easy selling poe trade)
1map tab

I understand many are unable/willing to spend 1$ on a game.
But as bare minimum I'd go for currency tab if your finances allow no further.

If you are a smoker, a pack a day, 2 to 3 days no ciggies = 6premium tabs where I live...

The complain, that being able to buy Stash Tabs would give you an unfair advantage is as old as the offer of stash tabs is. The defense back in the days was, that GGG still gave everyone plenty, so buying additional tabs is more a comfort-thing than required.

It is fair to say, that with all this added stuff this defense is not holding up anymore - The more they add, the less those 4 free tabs are worth.

BUT!!!

I would be the last to complain, if the game changes and develops. I like itt, that new stuff is added. Would be someone, who is able to hoard, be in an advantage? Yes. But how big would that advantage really be?

For a game to be "Pay to win" the advantage would have to be so big, that no reasonable person is able to compete with the paying person. But if i think about all the other things that has a way bigger influence on your winning chances connected to welth, that GGG has no influence over, like how good your internet connection is, how powerful your computer is, if you are able to affort an SSD-Disc drive or not, ect., the ability to buy stash tabs just seems not too be big of a deal.

And last but not least: Have you ever watched someone, who end the league in the TOP 10, playing? I speak of people like RaizQT, Zizaran or CuteDog. If you do, you will realize, that they rarely even use their stash. Most of them are far into maps before touching their stash for the first time at all, since stashing items only is considered a waste of time.

Not everybody is able to play as they do, but it still shows, that the ability to stash items is not that much of an advantage as many people believe it is.

It started to be p2w, when they introduced trade stash tabs. Now we have currency, map, essence, card... Too much QoL. Time=money. Skins are also expensive, because some armor are two days wage-worth in poorer countries. There's no regional pricing there, so maybe for USA or Western Europe the prices are fine, but for non-first-world countries this is absolute joke.

No one needs skins. You don't need tabs to play. You confuse the terms "want" with "need" and there's no way to argue with that.

I remember my thought process during the open beta of PoE, wondering how they were going to make money because they gave us more stash space/shared stash and more character slots than Diablo 2 has. Diablo 2 is still $25 today where I live and gives less content and stash space than PoE.

PoE is Free to Play. It is the FULL game with no restrictions that you can play for free. Extra stash tabs are a convenience thing that are in no way needed.

I have to agree with the majority pointing out the mistakes the OP is making with his basic stash tabs and saying that it's entirely possible to play with 4 tabs. I played the game for quite a long time with 4 basic tabs, learning to ignore so much junk that it became easy to play with 4 basic tabs.

The biggest lesson was to stop hoarding. Most of the stuff I used to keep was useless garbage. My biggest leap toward ignoring or vendoring that stuff once I started using poe.trade. Once I found out exactly how useless that crap was, and how readily available better gear was for much less than the number of stash tab grids it was wasting, the hoarding problem vanished.

Now, years ago I got up to 6 stash tabs (including premium). I don't remember the exact combination, but those 6 were gained through race season points, making a small purchase and/or a holiday gift box. Yes, the currency tab is a huge QoL improvement. Yes, being able to list some of my junk for sale is nicer than using acquisition or procurement (not by a ton, but still easier for someone like me with limited time to play and a tiny inventory of items for sale).

Still, I always end up with useless crap taking up space. But that simply means I don't really need all 6 of those tabs. I need one for currency, one for selling, one for maps, and one for miscellaneous. This means I do NOT have a maps tab. I use a standard basic tab for maps. Cards, shards, quality gems (for recipe) bits and pieces of gear end up across wasting space on the rest of the tabs I have. If I had only 4 tabs, that junk would be on one tab. Since I have 6, that junk is spread across 3 tabs.

Having said all that, while I disagree with the OP's point, there is a mild criticism to be leveled. Let me preface this by repeating what many, many others have said before me; MTX are not necessary to play the game. I completely understand this.

I'm going to use Arctic Crystal Armour as a quick example. Say I want to deck my character out in this set, with the four armour pieces, the cloak and the cute little polar bear cub. That's $80.00. That's a lot of clams. For that much, I'll just go buy a game or several. (After I get burned out on PoE of course! ;) )

Please don't take this the wrong way, I really enjoy PoE and I'm grateful GGG both put this game out and continues to find ways to make it better and better. I completely understand the MTX and other sales help drive that development. But I also wonder how many more people would buy MTX sets if those points prices weren't so high. Just food for thought.

This topic is retarded. You can complete whole 10 acts campaign and try beginning of the endgame. Then if you like it you buy some tabs for 20-30 euros and it will be enough. DON'T FORGET THAT STASH TABS ARE PERMANENT AND WILL TRANSFER TO NEW LEAGUES. Most games nowadays have 60 euro price and seasonal dlc's for 15-20 euros each. If you can't spend that little for a game that you play constantly then maybe play less and work more. GGG is a business and not open source project and it needs money to pay staff, servers, etc.

There are people who play 15h a day, exceeded 4000hours and still refuse to pay 30€

I'm not here to tell what anyone has to do with his money.
And I understand 30€ can be alot of money to some people, certainly in places in the world with lower incomes.

Entertainment for me is a 1€/hour rate.
60€ game must at least provide me with 60€ of gameplay.
Poe probably falls well under that rate and I have plenty of tabs

"

Earthslug wrote:

There are people who play 15h a day, exceeded 4000hours and still refuse to pay 30€

"but the game is free 2 play, I don't have to spend"

It's just such a dumb point of view, then they turn around and spend the 30€ on a 90 minute movie at the cinema or 60€ on a triple-A game they play for 15h and never touch again.

Not one to tell people what to spend money on, but this game is one of the most well balanced f2p models out there, if you just don't want to spend at all - don't complain about the inconvenience you get for rejecting to pay for like the smallest supporterpack once in a lifetime (tabs on sale + 250 points last you an eternity).

I remember paying a quarter to play pac-man in 1980. Many quarters. Those have a present value of over a dollar. I probably paid more for pacman than I did for PoE.