I'm here to defend PoE against any accusations of being a "pay to win" game

This new weeb shit game called "Tales of Arise" - they charge $60 for this complete weeaboo slop, just to stuff it to the brim with free level ups, permanent double exp boosts, and additional stat points and attacks locked behind DLC costumes, AKA "titles". And even OP weapons to boot!

PoE is free to play, and it's not even 1% as close to as pay to win as this weeb shit for $60 is.

This isn't the first game to do this by far, but it's one of the newer major infringers on "pay to play" + "pay-to-win". So, it's more recently relevant to the point.

Stash tabs are pay to win. They're also a permanent, diminishing returns purchase, which makes the p2w more palatable — but classy p2w is still p2w.

I have 190 p2w stash tabs. Been waiting for years to find out what I win by having them.

I did mention diminishing returns. I don't know if that's the correct terminology or not. Maybe asymptotic would be better?

I would indeed have difficulty explaining how you would win more by going from 40 stash tabs to 190 stash tabs. But it is obvious to all but the most deliberately obtuse that it's pay to win to go from the default 4 stash tabs to 19 stash tabs.

The fifth stash tab, the first one purchased, is extremely fucking pay to win. The sixth is still pay to win, but not so much. The first specialized currency tab is obviously very pay to win. But there's a kind of hard cap, past which future purchases do not correspond to more winning. It's vaguely reminiscent of the old shareware model used by games like DOOM (1993) and DOOM 2. Either you're a f2p player (reduced features) or you have purchased the comfy number of tabs, and that's pretty much it, it's almost a binary.

It is mostly not P2W. Scrotie brings up the only counter example, which is not too bad really. As a counter counter example, when GGG released tab affinities I had guessed that they would charge for it. I was a bit surprised when not only did GGG not charge to access the tab affinity function, they made tab affinities available on premium stash tabs.

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Turtledove wrote:

It is mostly not P2W. Scrotie brings up the only counter example, which is not too bad really.

I agree that many other games are much worse, but I wouldn't say it's mostly not p2w. It stops being p2w past a certain point of purchase, but there is a question of what is meant by the player population of a game. If we just mean raw, registered accounts, at one time GGG revealed that the median player quits somewhere around Normal Brutus — I don't think a lot of stash tabs are being bought there. If instead the player base is people who have played through the conclusion of maps, then I'd wager at most have bought enough tabs to be comfortable and wouldn't particularly want more even if they were free.

Or to put it another way, the monetization GGG has constructed does an excellent job of conveying to the new player that they need to pay (usually, buy a supporter pack) to enjoy the game, but after that becomes largely invisible such that those who have already supported don't feel like the game is harassing them for additional money. That's smart, but I wouldn't call it mostly not pay to win, because it's really only mostly not to the tiny minority who already have.

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aggromagnet wrote:

I have 190 p2w stash tabs. Been waiting for years to find out what I win by having them.

You win STASH STABS!.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Or to put it another way, the monetization GGG has constructed does an excellent job of conveying to the new player that they need to pay (usually, buy a supporter pack) to enjoy the game, but after that becomes largely invisible such that those who have already supported don't feel like the game is harassing them for additional money. That's smart, but I wouldn't call it mostly not pay to win, because it's really only mostly not to the tiny minority who already have.

Sound Cheezy. Like saying it is not pay to win if people pay for it; it is a feature. Just like buy 1 get 1 free except you totally paid for it.

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awesome999 wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Or to put it another way, the monetization GGG has constructed does an excellent job of conveying to the new player that they need to pay (usually, buy a supporter pack) to enjoy the game, but after that becomes largely invisible such that those who have already supported don't feel like the game is harassing them for additional money. That's smart, but I wouldn't call it mostly not pay to win, because it's really only mostly not to the tiny minority who already have.

Sound Cheezy. Like saying it is not pay to win if people pay for it; it is a feature. Just like buy 1 get 1 free except you totally paid for it.

I didn't want it to sound cheesy, because it's not. It's more like one and done, than buy one get one.

Imagine if stash tabs lasted only as long as the league they were assigned to, and that's how most freemium developers would handle the core monetization of PoE. But that's not the false dichotomy of pay-to-win vs "cosmetics only;" it's game as purchased product, vs game as rented service. When you pay for the pay-to-win stash tabs in PoE you own them. This is why PoE doesn't feel nearly as money-grubbing as other developers.

Do people read themselves when they ask others "just loot less?" on any ARPG where it's all about loot?

Sounds pretty stupid.

Path of exile is the clear case of create a problem then sell the solution.

This happened already with the "league" stash tabs. Then they realized it was getting ridiculous and decided to make heist/expedition tabs for free.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I didn't want it to sound cheesy, because it's not. It's more like one and done, than buy one get one.

Imagine if stash tabs lasted only as long as the league they were assigned to, and that's how most freemium developers would handle the core monetization of PoE. But that's not the false dichotomy of pay-to-win vs "cosmetics only;" it's game as purchased product, vs game as rented service. When you pay for the pay-to-win stash tabs in PoE you own them. This is why PoE doesn't feel nearly as money-grubbing as other developers.

If we need to be more precise, You don't own anything, GGG does including your account and your stash tabs. They are providing a service which they can terminate at any time. Buying stash tabs is them providing the service to unlock the stash tabs feature which they intentionally locked because they knew you would pay for. You don't own a product, they are providing a monetized service.

The analogy would be similar to famous quote “Let them eat cake”. It is not a problem if they are rich. The royalty doe not see the problem sitting in their ivory towers but her starving peasant subjects had no bread.

Or it is not not so bad if people pay for it. But it is bad when they don't.