Let's talk about P2W - What is it? What is it not?

I'm thorn on this question.

On one hand,
Do stash tabs give you an advantage? Sure, in many cases they do. Does that make PoE 'P2W'? Sure, following many (popular) definitions of 'P2W', it does.

On the other hand,
Stash tabs are a one time purchase. They stick with you forever. Stash tabs also don't give you "more power the more you buy". You can't by yourself to the top of the ladders in PoE, and you can't buy power. There's nothing in PoE you have to buy over and over again to stay 'competitive'.

So one thing is claiming stash tabs are 'P2W'. Another thing is claiming PoE is a "P2W game". Putting PoE in the same booth as REAL 'P2W' games, where you can buy yourself further and further up "the ladders" is not fair, nor correct.

So, all those people unable to see nuances, so eager to generalize for whatever reason, are missing the mark. The more important question we should ask, is;

"Is the "fact" that stash tabs are 'P2W' a huge problem for PoE"?

And that's a question for another debate/discussion.

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Phrazz wrote:

I'm thorn on this question.

On one hand,
Do stash tabs give you an advantage? Sure, in many cases they do. Does that make PoE 'P2W'? Sure, following many (popular) definitions of 'P2W', it does.

On the other hand,
Stash tabs are a one time purchase. They stick with you forever. Stash tabs also don't give you "more power the more you buy". You can't by yourself to the top of the ladders in PoE, and you can't buy power. There's nothing in PoE you have to buy over and over again to stay 'competitive'.

So one thing is claiming stash tabs are 'P2W'. Another thing is claiming PoE is a "P2W game". Putting PoE in the same booth as REAL 'P2W' games, where you can buy yourself further and further up "the ladders" is not fair, nor correct.

That's why I said it's best to just consider PoE a $30-$50 game and be done with it. You don't really need to spend much more than that - unless you're a hoarder it won't do much for you. Just get your standard set of highly recommended stash tabs, on sale of course, and you're set (unless GGG pushes out even more obnoxious leagues that add even more crud to store, in order to sell tabs for them later...). So perhaps a better question might be: Is PoE still truly free-to-play? Maybe it's best to consider it more of a try-before-you-buy kinda game.

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Exile009 wrote:

That's why I said it's best to just consider PoE a $30-$50 game and be done with it. You don't really need to spend much more than that - unless you're a hoarder it won't do much for you. Just get your standard set of highly recommended stash tabs, on sale of course, and you're set (unless GGG pushes out even more obnoxious leagues that add even more crud to store, in order to sell tabs for them later...). So perhaps a better question might be: Is PoE still truly free-to-play? Maybe it's best to consider it more of a try-before-you-buy kinda game.

Its still free to play. People confuse that with "no payment required ever" and thats just not how it works. Nothing is ever truly free. Games are first and foremost business. Players tend to forget that. Thats why we for example cant have 4 months leagues, cutting off 25% of income would be the most stupid move ever on GGGs part. It all boils down to how pressured you are to pay.

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Exile009 wrote:

Is PoE still truly free-to-play? Maybe it's best to consider it more of a try-before-you-buy kinda game.

Sure it's free-to-play. People can argue it's pay-to-win. People can argue it's a "predatory" business model. But to argue it's not free-to-play, in today's jungle of strange free-to-play games on the market? Good luck with that.

Is it "100% free", as GGG so eloquently advertises? Not really. But people have this weird obsession mixing "free" with "free-to-play", and the moment a non-paying costumer doesn't get the same experience as a paying costumer, it's "not really free-to-play". Free-to-play does not mean - and have never meant "no P2W elements".

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kuciol wrote:

Its still free to play. People confuse that with "no payment required ever" and thats just not how it works. Nothing is ever truly free. Games are first and foremost business. Players tend to forget that. Thats why we for example cant have 4 months leagues, cutting off 25% of income would be the most stupid move ever on GGGs part. It all boils down to how pressured you are to pay.

The problem is right in all of their advertisement they say "The game is completely free and will never be "pay to win"." It's this line that makes stash tabs a problem. They've explicitly said something that isn't true. As far as I'm concerned you can monetize your game in whatever way you want as long as you're upfront and honest about it.

If they just said "yea we're kinda pay to win, but not really too much" it would be fine, but they didn't they said they were "never pay to win".

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j33bus wrote:

The problem is right in all of their advertisement they say "The game is completely free and will never be "pay to win"." It's this line that makes stash tabs a problem. They've explicitly said something that isn't true. As far as I'm concerned you can monetize your game in whatever way you want as long as you're upfront and honest about it.

If they just said "yea we're kinda pay to win, but not really too much" it would be fine, but they didn't they said they were "never pay to win".

But its not pay to win, thats the point. You try super hard to give this term some kind of levels when its very simple. Do you have to pay to "win"? If not then its not p2w. Somebody who didnt pay a dime can do exactly the same things you can or you want to argue with that? Advantage in itself doesnt make things p2w. On top of that game is not competitive, doesnt limit you in what character to make or how much currency you can get, you cant directly buy power, so what the hell are you winning?

Stash tabs are totes pay to win

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kuciol wrote:

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j33bus wrote:

The problem is right in all of their advertisement they say "The game is completely free and will never be "pay to win"." It's this line that makes stash tabs a problem. They've explicitly said something that isn't true. As far as I'm concerned you can monetize your game in whatever way you want as long as you're upfront and honest about it.

If they just said "yea we're kinda pay to win, but not really too much" it would be fine, but they didn't they said they were "never pay to win".

But its not pay to win, thats the point. You try super hard to give this term some kind of levels when its very simple. Do you have to pay to "win"? If not then its not p2w. Somebody who didnt pay a dime can do exactly the same things you can or you want to argue with that? Advantage in itself doesnt make things p2w. On top of that game is not competitive, doesnt limit you in what character to make or how much currency you can get, you cant directly buy power, so what the hell are you winning?

Advantage totally does make things pay to win. That's the common definition. You're shifting to goalpost. Just like when you said Warframe was pay to win when they're literally selling power. The game is of course intended to be competitive that's why it has several ladders and competitions at the start of the game, and have the daily labyrinth race. Just because some players can choose to ignore that aspect doesn't mean that it's not there up front in the game's design.

Of course if you're answer is "you can't win the game so the game can't be pay to win" then you have to admit advertising the game as "never pay to win" is as deceptive as advertising a clothing line as "uranium free" and still problematic on GGG's side since they would be implying that their competitors who also cannot be pay to win no matter what they do are.

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kuciol wrote:

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j33bus wrote:

The problem is right in all of their advertisement they say "The game is completely free and will never be "pay to win"." It's this line that makes stash tabs a problem. They've explicitly said something that isn't true. As far as I'm concerned you can monetize your game in whatever way you want as long as you're upfront and honest about it.

If they just said "yea we're kinda pay to win, but not really too much" it would be fine, but they didn't they said they were "never pay to win".

But its not pay to win, thats the point. You try super hard to give this term some kind of levels when its very simple. Do you have to pay to "win"? If not then its not p2w. Somebody who didnt pay a dime can do exactly the same things you can or you want to argue with that? Advantage in itself doesnt make things p2w. On top of that game is not competitive, doesnt limit you in what character to make or how much currency you can get, you cant directly buy power, so what the hell are you winning?

You've already had someone (Turtledove fyi) link you a literal definition list of what pay2win means. That's what the wider internet thinks of the term. Your borrowed definition here is little more than one persons' opinion on what it should be, and itself disputed by multiple other people in this very thread.