poe is still the most p2w game ive ever played

before people tell me ive never played a real p2w game before: i played both lost ark and genshin. its true that in both of these games, if you pay money, you get to shortcut your way to a much larger increase in character power. but none of things you buy in these games are objectively unobtainable from playing f2p and with reasonable time investment, your characters can be very close in strength compared to the whales.

to name some examples of myself, a whale in lost ark will have max item level and full level 10 gems, my character is about 20 levels max item level, and she also has a few key level 10 gems. despite what it looks, the difference in power is actually very minimal, so much so that there is little pressure to make players open their wallets

genshin is a bit of a tougher one to f2p. but even still, i got myself a c2 raiden shogun and its bis weapon + nahida. for what its worth, this setup is much weaker than a whale's team, but its counteracted by the fact that the hardest content in the game can be obliterated even with my f2p party. the game was designed so that any waifu you want to play can steamroll everything.

for these games, ive put in $0. in poe, ive had to put in a few hundred dollars. now to be fair, i couldve done away with maybe $20-$50 worth of stash tabs but poe is the only game ive played where it is advertised as f2p but in a practical sense, you will need to pay money just to be remotely relevant in endgame trading

for the people saying you can make a million mules: the personal discomfort of using only the default tabs is only half the reason i had to pay money. the other half is that every other buyer that i told to wait while i log over to a mule.. simply left and found another seller. the personal discomfort may be subjective even if 99.999% of players agree with the sentiment, but the buyers ditching you because they don't want to wait is an objective minus

its a bit ironic that the one game that flaunts being "not pay to win" (as advertised in the poe website).. is more p2w than many major p2w titles themselves

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yamface wrote:

remotely relevant in endgame trading

Nice measuring stick

I can finish all of PoE's content and hit 100 on default stash tabs in less time than getting through a single mandatory grind phase in LA that you bypass with your wallet. You can only justify this circle jerk of an argument once you narrow a gameplay objective to one an overwhelming majority of players have absolutely no interest in nor would perceive as an objective to begin with.

Which you also know because you play SSF to begin with yamface :p

From a perspective of concept, I don't really see how any PvE game is P2W anyways...

In the industry there is paid QoL, paid time savers, paid cosmetics (which fashion matters to many), and more, but in the end, what exactly is anyone "winning" here?

So yes, depending on what people consider "winning", PoE is P2W, LA is P2W, Genshin is P2W, Warframe is P2W, almost every mobile game is P2W, the Assassin Creed games are P2W, honestly most every game is P2W to some degree of interpretation. I guess we could say PoE is P2W-Lite?

Subjectively, PoE is p2w as stash tabs give you leverage over how much you can have, which in a game about loot is basically everything.

Objectively, stash tabs gives you nothing in the gameplay aspect.

Your assessment is fair, but misses the mark. Convenience is a form of p2w which is the ball park of PoE's stash tab mechanic, but Lost Ark and Genshin are miles away from what PoE monetizes. They are nothing alike and shouldn't be compared as such.

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AdRonZh3Ro wrote:

Subjectively, PoE is p2w as stash tabs give you leverage over how much you can have, which in a game about loot is basically everything.

Objectively, stash tabs gives you nothing in the gameplay aspect.

Your assessment is fair, but misses the mark. Convenience is a form of p2w which is the ball park of PoE's stash tab mechanic, but Lost Ark and Genshin are miles away from what PoE monetizes. They are nothing alike and shouldn't be compared as such.

I'm sorry but paid PoE stash space, and the QoL offered by specialized tabs, is just as P2W as buying stash space or QoL in LA, or similar games. That's not subjective.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

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yamface wrote:

remotely relevant in endgame trading

Nice measuring stick

I can finish all of PoE's content and hit 100 on default stash tabs in less time than getting through a single mandatory grind phase in LA that you bypass with your wallet. You can only justify this circle jerk of an argument once you narrow a gameplay objective to one an overwhelming majority of players have absolutely no interest in nor would perceive as an objective to begin with.

Which you also know because you play SSF to begin with yamface :p

if endgame trading was of that little importance then everyone would be playing ssf.. but theyre not

you must be talking about the 1370 ilv push in lost ark. that is no longer a thing anymore. ever since the first legion raid came out, all you had to do was hone each piece of gear 1 time and youre ready for the next raid. its also not fair to compare (at least timewise) a game intentionally designed to be timegated to one that isnt, but also the fact that poe isnt timegate is precisely why the stash tabs are all that much more important. its because of this that the first couple of hours in poe season launch has much weight to the direction of your wealth for the rest of the league. objectively speaking, the player with more stash tabs will accumulate wealth exponentially compared to a guy using only the default stash tabs, and the wealth is what is used to buy starter sets for other builds. in other words, poe can soft lock you out of builds, neither genshin nor lost ark does that to you

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DarthSki44 wrote:

I'm sorry but paid PoE stash space, and the QoL offered by specialized tabs, is just as P2W as buying stash space or QoL in LA, or similar games. That's not subjective.

As Draegnarrr said, it is subjective because you can clear the game with base stash tabs. Convenience is the only thing they sell and that's a fact. To compare it to games that you can literally progress with your wallet is an ignorant and blatantly misguided comparison.

We all have our own interpretations and definitions of "P2W". And while I do consider PoE to find itself in the "P2W landscape", I tolerate it. Why? Because while the game heavily "encourages" you to make a few purchases in form of stash tabs, you do not need that many of them - and they're a one time purchase and will stay with you for the rest of the games life.

And after that purchase, the game doesn't really bother you too much about purchases (except a rare chat message and the login advertisement), and doesn't put an "upgrade" button, "amazing deal" banner or "deal of the day" sign in every menu - unless you decide to press the store button. You more or less have to seek the transaction experience yourself, and the game doesn't really push you towards it.

There may still be some brilliant examples of F2P games that gives non-paying players close to the same experience as paying players, but I think those days are more or less behind us.

It's not mandatory to buy anything in this game, however it's nice to have a few things like special tabs and stuff.
This game is fp2 after all and it's not much of an issue to trow in a few bucks for a few tabs if you enjoy the game. Considering the fact that most new AAA games these days cost 60-70 bucks and offer less playtime than PoE in many cases lol.

First of all, I dont understand why this topic comes up every 4-5 weeks again. Everything has been said already, so there is really no reason to roll it up once more. But since you do, here´s the argument I always bring up:

Stash Tabs are necessary to be able to compete, but you don´t need hundreds of dollars for it, you need the cost of just a normal AAA-title. If you buy your stash-tabs on a sales-weekend you can get all that you ever need with roughly 40-50€.

What you cannot purchase is the ability to actually bring them to use. PoE is so dependant on knowledge that if a newbie buys stash tabs for 5k I and many others with experience still outperform him very easily.

Hence I dislike the pay to win argument.