Can we stop pretending that Path of Exile is free to play?

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jtggm1985 wrote:

Arguing with both Boem and Aynix is pointless, especially when it comes to the very minor pay to win advantages of stash tabs. I don't dispute the game is free to play, but the definition of pay to win is literally any advantage you pay the game for that others who don't pay can't get within the game. The fact that third party apps allow you to list items is irrelevant. Same is posting on the forums to list. Neither are in the game, and therefore, the automatic listing advantage qualifies as pay to win, albeit one of a very mild form of advantage.

I agree completely!

"

Boem wrote:

If i lost you, its because you didn't understand or read my post in its entirety or chose to ignore parts of it which already explained your contention.

Peace,

-Boem-

You can not make a page-long argument based on wrong premise and than just add a sentence at the end "acknowledging" the flaw and expecting anyone will buy it.

More importantly, you keep coming back to racing. Racing is absolutely miniscule part of PoE that concerns ever smaller portion of PoE community. Pretending that racing is the only context, in which you can objectively evaluate impact of stash tabs and whether they make Path of Exile a pay to win case is wrong. Such presumption clearly skews the scales as we already know that most racers spend very little, or any time at all, dealing with stash tabs.

If such premise is to be accepted, you also have to accept that you play PoE for a definite amount of time-same as races-rather than for days or weeks. And that is clearly not happening.

I like the unique tab because you can only keep one copy of each unique and so just keep the best one you find, kinda helps you keep a limit on your hoarding =P

"

Turtledove wrote:

Spoiler

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Boem wrote:

"

Turtledove wrote:

At the end of the day, we play the game for fun. If some people have fun doing the chaos recipe then that is fine in my opinion.

Arguing that many tabs is a disadvantage because it leads to bad habits was not Boem's argument. His argument was repeated many times, that was that having more stash tabs was a disadvantage because chaos recipe, vendoring for scraps, and hoarding would slow down racing to the win condition. When I said people didn't have to do those things just because they have extra tabs he pretended like I was not making sense or at least he couldn't understand such a thing.

My favorite Turtle comes home with the strawman again.

Point me to my post where i mention chaos recipes or vendoring for scraps or how i considered racing in the win condition.

I defined "winning" as

- beating the story line
- reaching lvl 100

Neither of those include racing since both can be achieved without that in mind and in somebody's personal time, which is exactly why stash tabs aren't a relevant factor to begin with.

Competition isn't a relevant factor in achieving either of those win conditions because they are PVE win conditions and not PVP win conditions.

But please carry on thinking you grasped my argument and then formulating a strawman to shoot down as if its relevant.

Start to steelman your opposition, maybe if i tell this to you a hundred times it will sink in.

Peace,

-Boem-

Boem, you just seem to frequently ignore what people say and then lie about what you yourself said. Below are two examples of you stating that having more tabs slows one down in play.

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Boem wrote:

It's perfectly easy to make an argument that people with less stash tabs progress faster, the evidence for this is not hard to locate because that's exactly what all racers demonstrate.

In your post below I'll even underline and bold your words for you. As well as bolding my own post inside your post that you are responding to.

"

Boem wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

You stated that extra stash tabs slows one down. This is ridiculous. It does not magically slow one down. I'm not addressing the deeper layers of your poorly argued position, just this top most stupid and ridiculous level.

Of course it does, if you have more stash space you pick up more loot.

You quoted like 1/6th of my post and want me to explain the later half of it again?

If you don't understand that you value stash space differently depending on the amount you have maybe you have been playing with multiple stashes for to long to remember.

I played for three years with four stash tabs and it made me learn to be efficient with my space and time management and i could easily compete with players who had triple my stash amount.

Also it isn't about "slow" or "fast", the argument was that players with more stash tabs save time or have more efficiency because of them.
People have already done the tests, picking up exalts and chaos from pure drops compared to picking up rares and selling them for allts/a chaos in trade is simply better.

The fastest and most efficient strategy to play PoE requires the least amount of stash space.
You simply spam content and only pick up T1 loot.

Peace,

-Boem-

I think your just blind and dont understand how you strawman my argument.

1) my win conditions dont require a racing context, which is exactly why i can argue "non p2w", your argument on the other hand requires racing or a PVP context for its P2W argument to succeed.

2) you posted i stated something about chaos recipe of picking up scraps and then post two quotes that don't mention either.

You fallaciously bring up two non-relevant claims in a post claiming you know my argument, your a "fill in the blank" in most social contexts for such behavior.

My racing arguments are to attack the efficiency argument made from your side, i don't need it beyond that since they aren't relevant for me or my win conditions since both are PVE oriented.

Peace,

-Boem-

"

Baron01 wrote:

"

Boem wrote:

If i lost you, its because you didn't understand or read my post in its entirety or chose to ignore parts of it which already explained your contention.

Peace,

-Boem-

You can not make a page-long argument based on wrong premise and than just add a sentence at the end "acknowledging" the flaw and expecting anyone will buy it.

More importantly, you keep coming back to racing. Racing is absolutely miniscule part of PoE that concerns ever smaller portion of PoE community. Pretending that racing is the only context, in which you can objectively evaluate impact of stash tabs and whether they make Path of Exile a pay to win case is wrong. Such presumption clearly skews the scales as we already know that most racers spend very little, or any time at all, dealing with stash tabs.

If such premise is to be accepted, you also have to accept that you play PoE for a definite amount of time-same as races-rather than for days or weeks. And that is clearly not happening.

Tell me what the flawed premise is.

Because you can state that all you want, but relying on subjective time interpretations is not something GGG can do to create a business model around because the amount of subjective interpretations is infinite.

As for the racing part, it's the easiest way to talk about efficiency to utilize the high-end examples.

The claim made by the "P2W" crowd is that having stash tabs automatically and without doubt makes you more efficient then people without additional stash tabs.

There was no nuance and it's a stupid claim, because like i pointed out instantly, reality refutes this to be the case.(ergo = look at racing)

So i was using racing not as the backbone of my argument, but simply as a clear cut case were it refutes the "stash tabs always give benefits" arguments.

I see no reason to not utilize racing to undermine a redundant argument on its face value.
It simply shows "no what your saying is wrong, look at this example", nothing more and nothing less.

Peace,

-Boem-

"

jtggm1985 wrote:

Arguing with both Boem and Aynix is pointless, especially when it comes to the very minor pay to win advantages of stash tabs. I don't dispute the game is free to play, but the definition of pay to win is literally any advantage you pay the game for that others who don't pay can't get within the game. The fact that third party apps allow you to list items is irrelevant. Same is posting on the forums to list. Neither are in the game, and therefore, the automatic listing advantage qualifies as pay to win, albeit one of a very mild form of advantage.

I agree completely!

"

Turtledove wrote:

"

jtggm1985 wrote:

Arguing with both Boem and Aynix is pointless, especially when it comes to the very minor pay to win advantages of stash tabs. I don't dispute the game is free to play, but the definition of pay to win is literally any advantage you pay the game for that others who don't pay can't get within the game. The fact that third party apps allow you to list items is irrelevant. Same is posting on the forums to list. Neither are in the game, and therefore, the automatic listing advantage qualifies as pay to win, albeit one of a very mild form of advantage.

I agree completely!

Except that his argument fals flat on its face because everybody has access to the data stream.

You know, thats how people made the trading apps in the first place right? Before GGG made their own trading feature on the web-site and provided a stash tab that links with it.

It wasn't worth responding to since the chain of events is backwards, but since you brought it up, eh.

Peace,

-Boem-

edit : here is how stupid his and by extension your argument is, since you agreed with him.

GGG copy's a tool designed by the community that is free for everybody, puts its stamp of authority and approval on it and sells it and now its a P2W feature.
All the while the tools are still available for everybody to use with the same features that GGG copied.

The only people that could come up with such a line of reasoning are ignorant, either on the trading tools and their functionality's or about the chain of events and what GGG did.

All GGG did was cash in on the irrational fear of people that don't trust third party software and also delivered on a long standing issue of the game not having a solid trading platform which gave rise to the third party tools in the first place.

Alright, let's look at this from a different perspective. Lots of people saying that stash tabs aren't power or don't count as P2W.

Okay, if there's no advantage given by them, why not make them free? There's plenty of cosmetic MTX that GGG would still make money on (and let's be real, few to no people have EVERY cosmetic that ever came out). So if there's plenty of purely cosmetic things to spend money on, and tabs don't give any advantage at all, why bloat the store with things that we obviously don't need?

Moreso, do you think that GGG would lose money by making tabs free? If your answer is anything but "definitely", you're not only wrong, you're also missing the entire proof to the point.

GGG could remove virtually any cosmetic (not all of them, but one), and people would find other ways to spend money. Remove the ability to buy a currency tab, and I guarantee GGG would lose money...because it's all but required for 90% of the people playing.

If you think that GGG wouldn't lose money from removing the purchasable currency tab, then why not make it free as a QoL improvement?

I guess what I'm saying is: Either it's not an outlet for profit, or it's a sneaky P2W feature. There's nothing else in the game like a currency tab, and there's no way to get one without paying real money. It changes the landscape of the game based on whether or not you have it, and the fact that so many people have bought it proves an advantage for having it.

I don't understand the fighting against this notion. I don't think it's even inherently evil. As was said before, I think the people trying to convince everyone (including themselves) that some of these items aren't P2W, are just trying to avoid feeling guilty for buying into a system that actively punishes players for not paying money.

It's fine, and there's way worse examples out there in the world...but it's not great. Let people spend money on cosmetics, as many do...and as many games survive from. I've got my tabs already, I'm just sick of friends quitting the game due to feeling pressured to buy in-game accessibility.

The whole reason I started this thread, was because a big part of the game that has pushed me to quit after 2500 hours, is that it's so unforgiving for new players nowadays, and the co-op is SO bad. There's better single player options out there than this, and this just isn't a MP game anymore. It's single player with a bad (albeit better than AH) trading system.

^Why wouldn't they charge people to hoard?

Server space isn't free and neither is keeping the game up and feeding their children.

The fact hoarding is optional, just like running around with mtx makes it a fine thing to put monetary purchase on.
You don't need it, but if you want it you can pay money to do it without breaking the game-play of others.

These games are targeted towards hoarders, but that doesn't refute the point that hoarding is optional or not required to beat the content.
The stash tabs indulge a big part of the community in their hoarding behavior, people can discuss ethics or morality on this front and how it prays on target demographic tendency's etc but thats besides either the P2W or F2P issue.

So why do people purchase stash tabs instead of colorfull mtx's? Because they value hoarding higher then visual appearances, obviously.

Stash tabs provide a hoarding advantage, not a gameplay advantage, they aren't correlated.

Like i mentioned earlier, you cant throw your stash tabs at a map boss and neither does he care that you collected all the unique's of the game in some special collectors tab or 5000 chaos in another special tab.
The boss "cares" about your character items and game-play relative to him.

You force a few flawed premisses in your post which are easily disputed, i suggest ruminating over them for a bit longer or being prepared for a post like this to undermine your assesments.

Peace,

-Boem-

"

Redthorne82 wrote:

I don't understand the fighting against this notion. I don't think it's even inherently evil. As was said before, I think the people trying to convince everyone (including themselves) that some of these items aren't P2W, are just trying to avoid feeling guilty for buying into a system that actively punishes players for not paying money.

Its more like a bunch of players that have never experienced pay2win are salty they have to give GGG 5$ for their 3000 hours of entertainment if they want a currency tab. (by a bunch of players i mean like... 5)

The game actively punishes you for choosing melee far more than it does for anything to do with your wallet