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

"

Exile009 wrote:

Lastly, the single/one-time payment model thing is itself kind of a pointless thing to say - you're basically saying PoE wouldn't have mtxes if it ... didn't have mtxes. That's just a truism. So even IF he'd said that, it would still be bad. It wouldn't be wrong - because truisms by definition can never be wrong - but it would be rather empty. He'd just be assuming the issue away. It'd be like saying Jack the Ripper wouldn't be a murderer if he didn't kill people. Well obviously, duh! Saying PoE wouldn't have mtxes if it's business model didn't involve using mtxes is similarly vacuous. No point in saying it.

I will stop you right there. The prime focus we are talking about is "bloated design" not mtxes. It is totally possible to not have "bloated design" without mtxes. That wasn't difficult to understand.

"

I am not sure what “advantage” having 4 vs 40 stash tabs creates.

Google defines advantage as “a condition or circumstance that puts one in a favorable or superior position.”

To have an advantage there would need to be a competition and outside of the gauntlets and other community funded events there is no real completion for anything, and maybe a requirement of any race event should be played on accounts with no extra stash tabs to insure parity. What I am saying is PoE is at its core not a race, unless you want it to be.

It’s just an experience, a way to pass the time, or more a puzzle that can be solved over and over again.

Does someone who buys stash tabs have a different experience than someone who does not? Yes.

The folks who don’t buy tabs are not competing nor are actually negatively effected by those that do. They will have an inefficient experience and will have difficulty making it deep into the end game, but they can play.

There is an illusion that is at play that somehow our experience in Wraeclast are shared ones. Unless you are playing in a group they are not. Each league my journey is different than yours. It’s mine and I own my experience.

So saying that purchasing stash tabs is P2W is a bit of a stretch. It more pay for a different experience or at the very least pay for QoL.

Thanks for reading and try not to worry so much about what other people are doing.

There are lot of p2w games that are mostly PVE. That is totally not compeititive, with truck load of P2W?

Competition as in the activity or condition of striving to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others.

Life is a Competition in itself, you might not think of it as such if the environment isn't cut-throat or competitive, or the pressure to succeed isn't constant and intense but rest assured it is one.

Let's say it is a competition for LOOT and everyone is in it. Any advantages that allow you to gain more loot is an advantage. And TIME is a very precious commodity to gain LOOT. And EXTRA stash tabs as the valuable feature that allow you to save time. The more time you save the more loot you gain. Bigger, Stronger, Faster, and Better.

"

MrSmiley21 wrote:

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!

Unsurprisingly, Kotaku liked Tales of Arise - https://kotaku.com/tales-of-arise-the-kotaku-review-1847682321

EcksDee

"

awesome999 wrote:

"

Exile009 wrote:

Lastly, the single/one-time payment model thing is itself kind of a pointless thing to say - you're basically saying PoE wouldn't have mtxes if it ... didn't have mtxes. That's just a truism. So even IF he'd said that, it would still be bad. It wouldn't be wrong - because truisms by definition can never be wrong - but it would be rather empty. He'd just be assuming the issue away. It'd be like saying Jack the Ripper wouldn't be a murderer if he didn't kill people. Well obviously, duh! Saying PoE wouldn't have mtxes if it's business model didn't involve using mtxes is similarly vacuous. No point in saying it.

I will stop you right there. The prime focus we are talking about is "bloated design" not mtxes. It is totally possible to not have "bloated design" without mtxes. That wasn't difficult to understand.

Possible? Sure. But he claimed it follows - that if PoE charged for access i.e. wasn't F2P, then it would not be. That is a statement of consequence, and a blatantly wrong one at that, as is shown by plenty of paid games. Ironically, the one who discounted possibilities is the guy you're defending so hard.

As for the paragraph you're quoting, it didn't say anything about possibilities. It merely pointed out that the observation that single payment model games don't have mtxes is meaningless, as that's the very definition of said payment model.

"

Let's say it is a competition for LOOT and everyone is in it. Any advantages that allow you to gain more loot is an advantage. And TIME is a very precious commodity to gain LOOT. And EXTRA stash tabs as the valuable feature that allow you to save time. The more time you save the more loot you gain. Bigger, Stronger, Faster, and Better.

In PoE we are not competing for loot. It’s not like there is a mirror weapon sitting on the ground and the first one there gets it. This is a slot machine game and the loot is generated as you play and what you have access to it strictly dictated by the amount of time you play. This goes for items or currency.

Even with trade you are not competing with the other that have dropped or crafted the items they are trading. That’s more of a cooperative situation not a competitive one. You are helping each other one with items the other with crafting materials.

So there is no real advantage because there is no real competition in the game. Any aspect of competition is brought into the game by a players perception. You don’t win if you have the most exalts or chaos orbs. You don’t win if you are decked out in all mirror tier gear. You don’t win if you are the first to 100. You don’t win if you record the first (enter boss name here kill).

Basically this is a puzzle that can be solved millions of ways. The fun is trying to solve it in a new and novel way with a different build. GGG keeps it interesting by changing how the pieces fit together and introducing new pieces every 3 months which is fantastic.

Stash tabs help to organize the pieces like little trays where you can store the edges and sort by color patterns. They are QoL and a reasonable amount of them cost the price of an average AAA game. Which is fine because those folks deserve to eat and feed their families.

You can play PoE for free take it for a test drive. You can get to maps with just the 4 tabs. You can even get to yellow maps it’s tricky and clunky but you can do it. Once you get beyond that it gets much harder and you cannot really hoard maps or crafting materials. That is still 8-40 hours of game play for free for each character to get to that point. That’s not too shabby.

MrSmiley, where are you? You promised to defend PoE against any accusations of P2W. You threw down the gauntlet. It seems there is a challenger or two that has accepted the challenge.

"

But then you are also saying that it would be totally okay if GGG started to sell xp, buffs and exalts for real money, and that it would not be pay-to-win.

How are we supposed to take this seriously?

Um... that is a nice slippery slope into an ad hominem.

But I will entertain the concepts.

The answer is nothing about PoE as a game would change, other than perception and public opinion, which is what prevents GGG from doing just that.

If they decided that for $10USD you could have a character skip the campaign and start at level 70 in maps with a “starter” build they absolutely could, and it would have zero effect on anyone else’s experience in playing the game. People pay for privilege it is a fact of life. Would I do it? Hell no but that’s me, I like playing the game.

An exalt is only a currency outside of the game. In the game it’s just another crafting material that adds a suffix or prefix and can be used in benchcrafting. So what does it matter if someone buys them or grinds them? In game they are marginally useful. On the trade site they are used to short cut the grind. Buy em, trade em no skin off my nose how you get them.

Xp boosts again you are only cheating yourself and it cuts down on the grind. Again would I do it heck no, but if some chump wants to pay $10 a whack so I get a better expansion. Fine by me.

So GGG has not decided yet if this thread is GD or off-topic :)

1st thread I see in both simultaneously...

I´m just tired of this Play2Win or Pay2Win.
Path of Exile is Download and play and pay if you so wish for stuff.

And only thing they ever sold here is Bling-Bling which is WAY TOO EXPENSIVE.!

out of every p2w game out there path of exile is one of them

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Kundarin wrote:

And only thing they ever sold here is Bling-Bling which is WAY TOO EXPENSIVE.!

Didn't know my stash tabs are bling-bling.