Is offline trading pay to win?

Just wondering if this leaves a bad taste for anyone else. I already bought tons of premium tabs, and will probably go back to SSF next league, so I have no interest in buying merchant tabs, but I was excited to try trade for the first time in years. It was obviously a bit disappointing to see that I cant use it.

This seems a bit unethical to me. I am interested in the opinions of trade players.

Turns out I can upgrade old premium tabs to merchant, so I am less bothered by this. Still was pretty well hidden, hard to really know this was an option, maybe it should say it ingame one the faustus NPC?

Does anyone know, what happens to these upgraded tabs in SSF? do they stay as premium, or will they be effectively unusable? It is hard to check as I dont know which ones I am upgrading.

Also is there a time limit on the upgrade?

From the asynche trade FAQ: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3828185

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If I convert Premium Stash Tabs to Merchant's Tabs, will they still be available to use as Premium Stash Tabs in SSF leagues?
No. Stash tabs are not league specific. Converting a tab converts it everywhere, and Merchant's Tabs are not available to be used in SSF leagues.

looks like they just get deleted in SSF, this stinks...

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dookleeto#7813 wrote:

This seems a bit unethical to me. I am interested in the opinions of trade players.

The implementation of the new trade system doesn't change my opinion of PoE's monetisation.

Shades of grey tend to be rather subjective... and I'd be rather nonplussed by anyone who claims the game is Pay To Win now but hadn't been before. I'm sure there are those (e.g. streamers) who have gone pretty far in the game without buying any tabs, but, 1) those tend to be above-average players to put it mildly, and, 2) if people view doing so as a challenge, then that kind of says it all.

Well, first, its 30 coins, which is like... 30 cents? If you ever found a quarter on the ground, or in a vending machine, thats basically all you need?

Second, you can still do the old trade, and it saves people gold when you do it, so, meh?

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dookleeto#7813 wrote:

Is offline trading pay to win?

No. You are not winning anything when you trade.

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trixxar#2360 wrote:

Well, first, its 30 coins, which is like... 30 cents? If you ever found a quarter on the ground, or in a vending machine, thats basically all you need?

Second, you can still do the old trade, and it saves people gold when you do it, so, meh?

30 coins is actually $3. But yeah its very cheap and useful.

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Sarno#0493 wrote:

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dookleeto#7813 wrote:

This seems a bit unethical to me. I am interested in the opinions of trade players.

The implementation of the new trade system doesn't change my opinion of PoE's monetisation.

Shades of grey tend to be rather subjective... and I'd be rather nonplussed by anyone who claims the game is Pay To Win now but hadn't been before. I'm sure there are those (e.g. streamers) who have gone pretty far in the game without buying any tabs, but, 1) those tend to be above-average players to put it mildly, and, 2) if people view doing so as a challenge, then that kind of says it all.

I wouldn't exactly say it's pay to win, more like pay to play. The game becomes increasingly difficult to play the further you get without buying more tabs. You become very burdened and waste tons of time and can't function with all the content without the extra space, even using a bunch of character slots for more storage. The game is designed to overwhelm you with items and make it difficult to play without buying the custom tabs. You're not really playing the full game without buying some of them. Paying more doesn't make you win, but you can't win without paying because you can't compete when you're effectively massively gimped. You can't save up items or currency because it all takes up a lot of space and more time to manage it all and you have to toss everything that isn't strictly useful for your one character. It limits your mapping and content strategies.

And buying the various tab types is NOT cheap. You're paying for a full game and then some, but you don't get to own the game at all as they'll never actually sell it. And they can break things at any time with updates and there's nothing you can do about it. POE is a fun game to play, but the money/control model is quite unfriendly and anti-ownership and you get disrupted every content update. They've been doing it for over a decade and it's quite unlikely they'll ever actually release the game or change their ways as this model works for their purpose.

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HaguruDoushi#7163 wrote:

And buying the various tab types is NOT cheap. You're paying for a full game and then some, but you don't get to own the game at all as they'll never actually sell it. And they can break things at any time with updates and there's nothing you can do about it. POE is a fun game to play, but the money/control model is quite unfriendly and anti-ownership and you get disrupted every content update. They've been doing it for over a decade and it's quite unlikely they'll ever actually release the game or change their ways as this model works for their purpose.

The cost of playing...for which there is always an option not to.

No need to be disgruntled.