Should PoE have been pay to play?

I've been considering the Alt Universe scenario of what would have happened if GGG decided the best option for PoE was pay to play rather than free to play?

Let me summarise what I think are the flaws with the existing approach of free to play:

1. GGG only secures revenue from players that decide to pay. That's likely to be a relatively small proportion of players with the result being that the game will be continually tweaked to conform to what paying players find rewarding. The issue with this, as with most known versus unknown data sets, is that there's a risk you move far away from a potential revenue stream by pursuing the existing realised revenue stream. You can end up in an evolutionary dead end if this is carried too far.

2. Consumer research suggests that the longer you keep someone's attention, the more likely they are to eventually spend money with you. This incentivises the game to apply the same devices that are prevalent through all modern gambling systems. It's no accident that player progress is deliberately retarded, that lights, sounds, reward systems and so on, all replicate the same actions used in gambling machines. The game is designed to make you addicted to the regulated dopamine hit rather than actually provide you with a genuinely enjoyable and rewarding gaming experience.

3. If you're not paying for the game, then it's in the interests of the game company to either encourage you to quit (because you're a drain on resources), or engineer the game in such a way that you become part of the reward system for the paying players. Essentially, there is a strong design incentive for non-paying players to become the servants to the paying Pharaohs by doing all the low level grunt work of farming Divines, Fusings and other items desirable in bulk.

Obviously this is very simplistic in categorisation and it's not so rigid in reality. There are plenty of high functioning players that have never paid a cent to GGG but would still be considered Pharaohs, but the underlying design logic is I believe relatively sound.

So how might the game look if anyone playing had to pay for it first, and then pay a small amount for each League?

Well, the game would be incentivised to actually provide an enjoyable and rewarding experience for all participants, not just those that optimise the game. There would be a lot more pressure on GGG to provide quality at the lower level which has been missing for at least a couple of years now.

The pressure to keep people playing for an unreasonable time would be removed, it's then about the quality of gameplay rather than the marathon endurance effort.

There would probably be fewer bots as each one would need to return in revenue what an account would cost before GGG ban them. Possibly not as much of a challenge to achieve as I would hope, but it's something at least. Hey, at least GGG would then be making money from bots, so good for them!

GGG might however realised their fear of appealing to the masses resulting in a product that is successful financially, but not something they are proud of. Potentially, yes, but I'm not sure how much pride they can derive from the current gambling simulator that they have developed. I believe there's an achievable middle ground and that winning in one area, doesn't mean they have to lose in another.

So what am I hoping to actually achieve here? Well, honestly, nothing. GGG are set on their path, we don't have a time machine to go back and change how things were and I doubt it's going to change in the future. As I said in another post, I'm currently bored of the game so this at least provides some fodder for some hopefully interesting perspectives that might prove more entertaining than yet another run of Acts 1-10.

NO.


NO.

thats what diablo 4 will be. so its perfect

Isn't it pay to play already?

I challenge any and all white knights to play throughout a whole league on a new account without spending any money and stashes or qol improvements and come back and tell me an awesome experience they had.

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JJJaaaMMM wrote:

Isn't it pay to play already?

I challenge any and all white knights to play throughout a whole league on a new account without spending any money and stashes or qol improvements and come back and tell me an awesome experience they had.

played long time as free player. its fine.

I think if the game started as a pay to play, in the state it was, probably would have dead like on the start, let me explain.

Back in 2012 era, people came here because of nostalgia for d2, this was a very hardcore game, not like nowadays, more like painful, slow, no crafting, similar at what ruthless is. Every boss was a real threat, every pack of monster was a real danger.

I absolutely love it, but most people not. Would have only had a niche group of players and, without the funds of skins, etc, would have probably ended soon.

The fact that was f2p is what made a lot of people playing it. And because of that, PoE was not a niche game for masochist niche players like me, it was wayy way broader. Many Diablo3 players came here in 2013, and they wanted a more fast, one click screen approeach, running from pack to pack faster, fast easy as heck campaign. Most people dont realize back in the day many bosses were threats, people skipped guys like Kole, for example. And many others. Rocks around Vaal were deathly also, even in cruel difficulty. Can one shot you even with granite ON.You had to play avoiding things, and fights were long, not like 5 seconds bosses, more like 30ish at least, during the campaign. Hellrake also was a player killer. People also were forced to do a lot of ledge merciless runs, and fellshrine runs just to get gear to progress, because no crafting resistances or life, etc. And you have to drop some gems to use them. It was a way different, niche kind of game for people like us.


But well, they were forced to make all those more a little casual people happy, so they slowly keep changing the game, going from a hard campaign to a campaign that is just meh, boring, delete everything fast, and go into endgame, which is were the magic of PoE nowadays resides.

But everything were not possible without the massive amount of money all those players gave to GGG.



So yeah, thats my vision. So in my mind, even if I would have prefer the game to remain as it was during the old days (were a lot of fun for me), PoE made the right decision, for the longevity and success to the game, which is what every developer wants at the end of the day.So I understand they did what they did, and why it was done.

And that would not work with the game being pay to play at the start. Not enough players and not enough money to endure more than a decade at the top. Would have been like 2 years and in the shadows probably.



Interesting topic, btw.

During he Expedition League Baeclast (when that legaue of nerfs went over like a lead balloon), CW did break down, generally speaking, what the revenue streams looked like. This was mostly in response to the ethical conflicts of the mystery boxes.

He said it was around 1/3 for each, Mystery boxes, tabs, and then all other mtx combined.

So clearly stash tabs, while nearly essential from a gameplay & QoL standpoint, are an important, multi-mullion dollar a year part of monetization. Quite frankly, even though it's probably the "right" thing to do, they can't stop monetizing this specific QoL area.

I do wish they would be little more creative and player friendly here though. Like letting someone upgrade 4 premium tabs to a quad tab. Or even a promotion where if you buy 1 or 2 quad tabs you get the currency, map, or fragment tab, for free. I think that would actually help with sales & retention. Playing this game without a currency, fragment, or map tab, must be a nightmare...

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Should PoE have been pay to play?

Metrics time and time again have shown the "few" willing to spend money on MTX generates far more revenue then a pay to play model has.

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Skeith4000 wrote:

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Should PoE have been pay to play?

Metrics time and time again have shown the "few" willing to spend money on MTX generates far more revenue then a pay to play model has.

Interesting take. I think P2P & P2W game do just fine.

Revenue wise, probably no, but I would 100% have preferred it that way. There's just too much cynical stuff that goes into the whole live service-equation, and all that just gets more and more apparent with time.