Compendium of refutations to arguments on the topic of - "Pay to win in Path of Exile"

*shrugs* I consider PoE a $30 game with a free unrestricted trial anyway. Never told a newbie they'd be fine without buying any stash tabs. However, I don't think spending any more than that is needed, or gets you any significant advantage. The only things spending more than that on tabs does is cater to hoarders or people who play Standard and never lower their prices.

I've played since 2013, but still have only a dozen tabs - and have never used more than half that in any league. It's a bit more full in Standard, but I've still got multiple tabs of free space there too.

Currency tab, Map tab, Fragment tab, Div card tab and a Premium Bundle is enough imo. Should set you back for half the price of a AAA game on sale.

So is PoE P2W? Yes, to a point. I don't think most players need to pay more than that first 30 bucks, even in the long term. Beyond that it's just hoarding that's hurting you. Having more tabs ironically makes you worse at the game since you don't bother improving your sense of the value of items.

And yes, this has remained much the same even through all the content bloat that's been added over the years - the increased mod pool on rare items hasn't changed this, as that has simply shifted what mods are worth keeping and what are now obsolete. What does impact this is when they add stuff that isn't rares or uniques i.e. more crafting orbs such as fossils, delirium orbs, oils, catalysts, etc. which don't fit into the current currency or fragment tabs. Fortunately those league mechanics are so limited and hence the orbs so lesser in number that I consider their dedicated stash tabs not worth it.

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medicated03 wrote:

It is a %0 chance to beat someone in 30k usd of gear as a free player, you will lose 100/100 times. Infact in true pay to win games that guy will 1-2 shot every free player lol.

You're only arguing over the magnitude of it, not on the matter of instantly winning after paying money.

If you have the best free gear and I have the best p2w gear then when I went AFK, you could kill me - there, I lost although I paid money.
This is not even the most vivid example and it's not a 0% chance.
It's never a 0% chance unless the opposing player is instantly defeated after the credit card goes through.

You might say that it's unfair but this example is only to demonstrate that you're arguing about the level of advantage, not literally winning instantly after paying.

While not a fan of you in most parts, I think the argument you make here is pretty well outlined and consists of intrinsic logic, so yeah - if we take your definition of pay to win as a given then I think 90% of the points you make are totally on point.

From a less intellectual and more a personal perspective, I can also agree that stash-tabs make a HUGE difference. And that´s not only to the trade-stashtabs but also to the other ones that organize the loot like Maps, Div-Cards, Fragments, Essences, Delve... I don´t consider myself to have tons of premium-stuff but I have one of those, 2 normal trade tabs and a Quad-Tab and if you prepare like 20 Maps and just allocate the stashtab-affinities and throw your loot into a huge dumb-tab basically 70% gets already sorted correctly, resulting in a clearly lower time in the hideout than someone without any of those tabs. Clearly, here´s a difference.

I think the term P2W is fine. Most gamers understand it as a concept.

What is subjective is where the line is for you personally.

This probably a wasteful exercise, however, since the criticism is not prevalent with PoE.

That said, anyone who calls PoE P2W because they have to spend $20-$60 is just a cheap bastard.

There a few games (Diablo II, TQ, BL2, GD come to mind) that have given me more value for $60.

Still think there should be a way for an account to "earn" a premium tab from a pool of tabs bought by supporters specifically for that purpose. It would have to be bot-proof... which is really hard in today's world. It would also be restricted to one tab per account.

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gladiatorpie wrote:

I think we need to stray away from using the words "pay to win". In my opinion the term we should be using is "pay for advantage".

Nah this is the wrong take, your idea is right but if you think pay 2 win is the wrong terminology its because your frame of reference no longer includes the titles pay 2 win was actually used to describe.

Pay 4 advantage would be a pretty good term for most modern f2p games and is fine to use in discussions though

Yep.

PoE in the current iteration with all these new currencies is not literally P2W but extremly unfriendly in regards of convenience, in case you're a new player and reached maps.

Then the real spam of different maps,orbs,currencies,etc can waste a lot of time with inventory management if only 4 tabs and doing the old school way of trading with forum threads.

In my opinion players would need at least two additional stash tabs on top what the OP mentioned, to have a somewhat smooth experience after beating the campaign.

One premium for trading, currency tab (since the stack size is way bigger) and a map tab. 265 points in total.

I'm almost sick of this discussion, but I'll bite.

To me, it's all about the "scale". Are there elements in PoE which gives you an advantage in certain areas of the game? Sure, I don't think anyone disagrees with that. But to go from there, to "POE IS P2W!!!" is just too black/white in my head, putting PoE in the same box as the real P2W games out there (which isn't fair, in my opinion).

But we all know kids today have no nuance, and things have to be either black or white, there no middle ground, so it's pretty futile.

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Phrazz wrote:

I'm almost sick of this discussion, but I'll bite.

To me, it's all about the "scale". Are there elements in PoE which gives you an advantage in certain areas of the game? Sure, I don't think anyone disagrees with that. But to go from there, to "POE IS P2W!!!" is just too black/white in my head, putting PoE in the same box as the real P2W games out there (which isn't fair, in my opinion).

But we all know kids today have no nuance, and things have to be either black or white, there no middle ground, so it's pretty futile.

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There's no point in talking about the gradient if there's no consensus on the existence of the vector itself which is what the thread is for.

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To me, the scale of benefits/advantages from paying is all that matters. P2W will always be a subjective acronym, no matter how or how often we discuss it. The important part is what each player is OK with.

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There's no point in talking about the gradient if there's no consensus on the existence of the vector itself which is what the thread is for.

The vector itself? You actually wanted to debate this, when your OP ended with:

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Pretending that the game is not Pay to Win is simply dishonest.