GGG is now doing all legit players a dis-service by keeping PoE 100% Free-to-play.,

Since the debate/argument thread on the whole "Is PoE really free to play or not?" got so many posts, I concluded that the main talk was about the fact that GGG only gives a new player 4 stash tabs to use. Thus one of the first things any serious player of PoE does is wait for the every 3 weeks (normally) Super Stash Tab weekend sale and buys a 6 pack or 2 of stash tabs. I don't care whether this mandatory (yes mandatory... please no trolling or bs'ing on "I can play entire game with only 4 stash tabs") requirement of increasing out stash space means that PoE really isn't F2P or not. Everyone has their own personal take about it and that's fine.

Here's why I'm making a new post. Since PoE is F2P and thus all the botters can have as many accounts as they want, and that's a big problem here, GGG needs to stop being entirely free-to-play and charge either $11.00 USD (cost ofthe map tab 6 pack on sale) or $16.50 USD (cost of the premium map tab 6 pack on sale) to play PoE. Then instead of only starting with only 4 stash tabs you get 10 stash tabs to use. This would accomplish:

1. a.) $11.00 = new players start with 10 stash tabs.
    b.) $16.50 = new players start with 4 stash tabs + 6 premium stash tabs.
2. Eliminate many of the botters if a new account wasn't free.
3. Stop the insane debate over whether PoE is "truly" free-to-play or not.
4. Stop inflating the player numbers with kiddies and bots. Playerbase would be the real players.

Of course I know that GGG isn't going to change their business model so this post is just a "what if" thinking out loud. But it would/could help.

If you think you think its mandatory to pay there isn't a point in making it mandatory to pay. The only group that shuts up is you, its like saying if they give me what I want i'll stop whining.

That isn't really a selling point, more like very polite ransom holding.

the rest of your points are redundant, they want bots or don't care, the debate is an argument about definition it will never die just move arena and who gives a shit if player numbers are inflated or not, I don't sit here jacking off because they reached a new high i'm busy playing the game or not depending on the content provided.

I ensured that my response was as facetious as possible to match the low level of this thread <3 love you all

The tldr is that you want to get rid of bots by making the game pay-to-play.
Did that work in diablo games? Nope.
Would it eliminate some botters? Maybe, but also some players.

EDIT: and the debate between f2p and p2p is really just whatever.

imagine if POE never exists and today is the first day that it is available on steam, what do you think it is going to happen?

I think maybe it will be a random Perma early access game with mostly negative reviews about performance and bugs that cost 80$.

lucky for GGG that they build player base since 2013.

PoE being free-to-play is definitely part of why I quit after paying roughly $30,000USD.



I've had some pretty interesting chats with GGG devs over the years regarding PoE's financial model. I've always felt the game was amazing not because it's free to play, but despite it. In the largely cruddy pool that is the free-to-play gaming world, it really does stand out. Not just for its relatively ethical mtx model, but because it's a good enough game that I think plenty of people would have just bought it.

But this is where I got it spectacularly wrong. PoE isn't just good enough that people would outright buy it. It's good enough that people would pay for it even if they didn't have to.

I used to think that GGG went free to play from the start because they lacked confidence in their own product, that they couldn't sell many units as a no-name dev studio from Garageland, Auckland, NZ. Not with Diablo 3 right around the corner, which believe it or not was a distinct threat to PoE in early 2012 before Blizzard started a series of spectacular faceplants that would last until, well, now. Maybe that fear was part of the reasoning, but the more I got to know GGG and just how canny its founders are, I started to realise that it was less a fear of being unable to sell their game and more extremely good room-reading regarding the future of online gaming, particularly games as a service rather than a one-off product. GGG made *so* much more money going free to play than they'd ever have made just selling the game, even if they'd manage to do so for a triple A price tag and sold 500,000 copies.

More realistically, PoE would have been $20USD a pop (which was Torchlight's price tag at the time) and probably not even moved 500k units on release. Despite that, it almost certainly would have made more in its first year than it did as a free-to-play (somewhere around $5M USD I believe), but what about years 2-8, in which the free to play PoE made more each year by a significant margin? Free to play is the new subscription model, perfect for the long-term 'game as service' business that hooks players into a cycle of rapidly deployed must-have cosmetic mtxes...and *at least one permanent mtx type* that flirts with functionality rather than pure cosmetic value. One type of mtx in your shop that most if not all regular players agree is essential to playing the game comfortably. As soon as another its type is released, 'everyone' has to have one.

Anyone who wants to argue that stash tab variants aren't a staple of GGG's revenue as that one mtx need look no further than just how many stash tab 'sales' GGG have or the not-at-all coincidental junction of 'new' currency bits and pieces and a suitable stash tab for them. It's a dead argument by now.

So the game simply doesn't need to be 'buy to play' when it can rely on stash tab sales *on top of* support pack sales revenue boosters every 3 months. The argument that PoE should have been buy to play was difficult to maintain back in 2012 when I made it. It's absolutely ludicrous now, especially in light of the bot/RMT issue -- they'll always find a way if there's enough money to be made, to justify the overhead of buying copies of the game. Would PoE be a better game without all that free to play baggage? Maybe; I do believe so. But would it have had all the resources to go as far as it has over the years? Almost certainly not. It would be dead by now, and we'd either be happily playing PoE 2 (and bitching about the bots) or...playing something else entirely.

So: free-to-play. Not so great for fair game design, bloody excellent for business. And if there's no business, there's no ongoing support for the game, i.e. gaem ded. This then makes it very hard to say if making and keeping PoE free-to-play is doing legit players a disservice. Do you see how tricky it gets when you factor in the benefits of a free to play model that's found out how to make that goose lay the golden eggs? Or, to use another trite little saying: maybe don't bite the hand that feeds, especially when that hand is your own. A non free-to-play PoE is inconceivable and yes that word does mean what I think it means.

We're actually back at the other argument here: that's what Path of Exile 2, the real Path of Exile 2, would be for. PoE 1's free to play experiment has been a wild success. To not then capitalise on that success and make an even better sequel that doesn't rely on the bottled lightning of PoE 1 (i.e. ethical free to play) is...well, it's hard for me to see that decision and not think it's somewhat greedy of them. PoE 1 is low risk, high profit. A true new game? Huge risk, huge investment but...isn't that why we do anything? To try to do better next time, even if it might result in failure?

Not if it's all about cashmonies we don't. Then we stick with what works and we bleed that fucker dry. We squeeze that goose laying its golden eggs until it just wants to curl up and die and its poor cloaca is ragged and raw from the strain. I mean, if you ever wanted a wholesome metaphor for Tencent's relationship with GGG, that probably wasn't it.

So it should come as no surprise that I'm happier playing an objectively inferior offline game that I've paid for and am not 'expected' to keep paying for, in which I can dye and skin my characters with in-game currency and not worry about the meta or the devs constantly fiddle-arsing with the stats because it's how they keep the addicts coming back, than keep putting money into what long ago revealed itself to me to be a carefully-calibrated tap on a certain type of gamer's wallet.

CS:GO isn't free and its one of the most hacked games I've ever seen. The price does not stop people from buying new accounts.

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innervation wrote:

CS:GO isn't free and its one of the most hacked games I've ever seen. The price does not stop people from buying new accounts.

That's correct for numerous games that I have played in the past. E.g. before I took up ARPGs I dedicated all my time to Guild Wars 1 (yes, not GW2) and even today there's people botting in that game despite servers being occupied by a maximum of 500 actual people by average nowadays (Steam numbers aren't accurate, most play by standalone client).

People will always run bots on games where bots can be used. I agree with OP that bots are an issue for a game like Path of Exile, although I am personally not even affected by it (SSF and all). However, I disagree with the offered solution. Just putting a price tag on the game won't change anything.

It's an issue that has been discussed in many gaming communities in the past and none of the discussions I've witnessed came up with a good solution to the issue. Even a system that allows people to tag suspicious accounts (e.g. when you whisper someone for a trade, get instantly invited, instantly traded etc.) and manual reviews is not really feasible since a system like that'd see some abuse.

There's just no real answer to that problem. Sad, but how things are. ^^

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

PoE being free-to-play is definitely part of why I quit after paying roughly $30,000USD.

*snip*

So it should come as no surprise that I'm happier playing an objectively inferior offline game that I've paid for and am not 'expected' to keep paying for, in which I can dye and skin my characters with in-game currency and not worry about the meta or the devs constantly fiddle-arsing with the stats because it's how they keep the addicts coming back, than keep putting money into what long ago revealed itself to me to be a carefully-calibrated tap on a certain type of gamer's wallet.

The real miracle is that gamers so willingly and repeatedly pay for MTX in a game overwhelmingly played solo just to obnoxiously stand around "in town" hopelessly anonymous. Guess I'm from a different time or something.

That said, I don't fault them their model. It's clearly hugely successful though I honestly don't get the compulsion to voluntary spend relatively large amounts of money on fluff in order "support the devs." That's on the players though, at least IMO.

"

Mythreindeer wrote:

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

PoE being free-to-play is definitely part of why I quit after paying roughly $30,000USD.

*snip*

So it should come as no surprise that I'm happier playing an objectively inferior offline game that I've paid for and am not 'expected' to keep paying for, in which I can dye and skin my characters with in-game currency and not worry about the meta or the devs constantly fiddle-arsing with the stats because it's how they keep the addicts coming back, than keep putting money into what long ago revealed itself to me to be a carefully-calibrated tap on a certain type of gamer's wallet.

The real miracle is that gamers so willingly and repeatedly pay for MTX in a game overwhelmingly played solo just to obnoxiously stand around "in town" hopelessly anonymous. Guess I'm from a different time or something.

That said, I don't fault them their model. It's clearly hugely successful though I honestly don't get the compulsion to voluntary spend relatively large amounts of money on fluff in order "support the devs." That's on the players though, at least IMO.

I don't see why your comment has any relevancy to the forum and why you felt the need to write it. Many people, myself included, by MTX for themselves. They'r ean enhancement to how the game feels and looks like. Why do you think there's hideout MTX? Why do you think there's skill MTX? Why do you think there's herald MTX? You can't see those in towns.

Pointless.

"Legit Players" lol