GGG are "Wallet Watchers"

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nman99 wrote:

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Jeff_GGG wrote:

Hello PrettyPanther,

We don't run or manage a Xbox Club, the club you're referencing would be ran by a 3rd party. I'm sorry for the experience you've had with them, but this isn't an area we're involved with.

I'm just glad GGG responded to this post. Without this hitting the GGG tracker I would have missed this gold thread, thanks!

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MesostelZe wrote:

I'm someone who early on in the game's development dropped $1000 on it -- not because of any microtransactions, but rather because I liked the idea of a quality ARPG that anyone can play for free, on a competitively-level playing field regardless of money spent.

I think of the microtransactions as just being a way that GGG thanks their patrons. As such, the "price point" doesn't really bother me too much. If you'd rather not spend your money helping Path of Exile succeed, you're still free to play it all you want -- from most people's perspective, that's pretty good value.

But GGG are far from greedy. They set up their monetisation strategy in such a way that they could focus on making the best game they could for the long-time players. If the game simply cost $60 up-front, they would have little incentive to make something that people would want to play for thousands of hours. Instead, the focus would be on getting the widest audience possible rather than trying to keep their existing audience satisfied. This would (and has, in other games) likely result in a much shallower experience that focused on ease of consumption, rather than on mechanical depth and complex interacting systems.

The existing playerbase of PoE includes many people who continue putting money toward the game and effectively are funding the development of new content out of their collective pockets. This is who GGG is really looking to get money from: players who have some extra cash to throw around and want to see them make more of this game. In exchange, you also get some stuff that doesn't hugely affect the way the game plays, but might add some additional convenience, or make your character look pretty... but the main thing you get is the continued development of the game itself, free for everyone to enjoy.

Over the past several years, GGG have repeatedly and continuously proven to their patrons that they're capable of making the kind of game that we'd like to see, and giving us value for our dollars. They keep putting out lots of great content on a regular basis, and have given patrons and non-patrons alike often hundreds or even thousands of hours of entertainment exploring this ever expanding world.

As an aside, I would say that I think it's about time they reconsidered the number of initial stash tabs, given the way that different sorts of items have proliferated in the game, and there's many more things you might want to collect than when they decided on the original amount of initial stash space. Giving everyone one additional premium stash tab to start with would perhaps be nice at this point, and it would remove any question about the additional ease of trade using premium tabs being "pay to win" (which is debatable given the software which exists to manage forum shops). But I know that many players manage to get by just fine in a totally free-to-play way, or more often spending only a small amount of money (the normal price of a game, for instance) and getting a few tabs.

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MesostelZe wrote:

I'm not being paid by them -- as I said, financially, more than $1k has gone in the other direction. Pretty sure that's the opposite of a shill. I have played the game for probably as many hours as I've paid dollars for it though, which is decent value.

As I pretty much said before, if you don't want to pay, then just don't!

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PrettyPanther wrote:

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MesostelZe wrote:

I'm someone who early on in the game's development dropped $1000 on it -- not because of any microtransactions, but rather because I liked the idea of a quality ARPG that anyone can play for free, on a competitively-level playing field regardless of money spent.

I think of the microtransactions as just being a way that GGG thanks their patrons. As such, the "price point" doesn't really bother me too much. If you'd rather not spend your money helping Path of Exile succeed, you're still free to play it all you want -- from most people's perspective, that's pretty good value.

But GGG are far from greedy. They set up their monetisation strategy in such a way that they could focus on making the best game they could for the long-time players. If the game simply cost $60 up-front, they would have little incentive to make something that people would want to play for thousands of hours. Instead, the focus would be on getting the widest audience possible rather than trying to keep their existing audience satisfied. This would (and has, in other games) likely result in a much shallower experience that focused on ease of consumption, rather than on mechanical depth and complex interacting systems.

The existing playerbase of PoE includes many people who continue putting money toward the game and effectively are funding the development of new content out of their collective pockets. This is who GGG is really looking to get money from: players who have some extra cash to throw around and want to see them make more of this game. In exchange, you also get some stuff that doesn't hugely affect the way the game plays, but might add some additional convenience, or make your character look pretty... but the main thing you get is the continued development of the game itself, free for everyone to enjoy.

Over the past several years, GGG have repeatedly and continuously proven to their patrons that they're capable of making the kind of game that we'd like to see, and giving us value for our dollars. They keep putting out lots of great content on a regular basis, and have given patrons and non-patrons alike often hundreds or even thousands of hours of entertainment exploring this ever expanding world.

As an aside, I would say that I think it's about time they reconsidered the number of initial stash tabs, given the way that different sorts of items have proliferated in the game, and there's many more things you might want to collect than when they decided on the original amount of initial stash space. Giving everyone one additional premium stash tab to start with would perhaps be nice at this point, and it would remove any question about the additional ease of trade using premium tabs being "pay to win" (which is debatable given the software which exists to manage forum shops). But I know that many players manage to get by just fine in a totally free-to-play way, or more often spending only a small amount of money (the normal price of a game, for instance) and getting a few tabs.

[Removed by idiots in Support]if GGG were anywhere near as good as this [Removed by asshole Support] suggests they are, we wouldn't be seeing and hearing so many complaints about the quality of their "free" product, would we ...GGG are nowhere near as good as [Removed by moron Support] would suggest ...save it for a prospective sheep.

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PrettyPanther wrote:

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PrettyPanther wrote:

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MesostelZe wrote:

I'm someone who early on in the game's development dropped $1000 on it -- not because of any microtransactions, but rather because I liked the idea of a quality ARPG that anyone can play for free, on a competitively-level playing field regardless of money spent.

I think of the microtransactions as just being a way that GGG thanks their patrons. As such, the "price point" doesn't really bother me too much. If you'd rather not spend your money helping Path of Exile succeed, you're still free to play it all you want -- from most people's perspective, that's pretty good value.

But GGG are far from greedy. They set up their monetisation strategy in such a way that they could focus on making the best game they could for the long-time players. If the game simply cost $60 up-front, they would have little incentive to make something that people would want to play for thousands of hours. Instead, the focus would be on getting the widest audience possible rather than trying to keep their existing audience satisfied. This would (and has, in other games) likely result in a much shallower experience that focused on ease of consumption, rather than on mechanical depth and complex interacting systems.

The existing playerbase of PoE includes many people who continue putting money toward the game and effectively are funding the development of new content out of their collective pockets. This is who GGG is really looking to get money from: players who have some extra cash to throw around and want to see them make more of this game. In exchange, you also get some stuff that doesn't hugely affect the way the game plays, but might add some additional convenience, or make your character look pretty... but the main thing you get is the continued development of the game itself, free for everyone to enjoy.

Over the past several years, GGG have repeatedly and continuously proven to their patrons that they're capable of making the kind of game that we'd like to see, and giving us value for our dollars. They keep putting out lots of great content on a regular basis, and have given patrons and non-patrons alike often hundreds or even thousands of hours of entertainment exploring this ever expanding world.

As an aside, I would say that I think it's about time they reconsidered the number of initial stash tabs, given the way that different sorts of items have proliferated in the game, and there's many more things you might want to collect than when they decided on the original amount of initial stash space. Giving everyone one additional premium stash tab to start with would perhaps be nice at this point, and it would remove any question about the additional ease of trade using premium tabs being "pay to win" (which is debatable given the software which exists to manage forum shops). But I know that many players manage to get by just fine in a totally free-to-play way, or more often spending only a small amount of money (the normal price of a game, for instance) and getting a few tabs.

[Removed by Support]if GGG were anywhere near as good as this [Removed by Support] suggests they are, we wouldn't be seeing and hearing so many complaints about the quality of their "free" product, would we ...GGG are nowhere near as good as [Removed by Support] would suggest ...save it for a prospective sheep.

If you aren't a "shill" you're deffinitely a "whale", and by your own admission, which leaves your opinion of this Greedy developer suspect at best, i'd give you my real opinion of you but the "Company Buzzards" are already interfering.

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Tetlanesh wrote:

Looking at the way You express Your opinions I would assume whatever You wrote on that site You are referencing would be taken down just for that.