How do YOU define "pay to win"?

Any exchange of real currency that provides a gameplay advantage over somebody else is P2W.

If 2 equal skill players were playing the game, and invested the exact same amount of time, which one would have a leg up on the other?

A. The guy with $30 to buy several more stash slots?
B. The guy with $0 who is forced to create several characters and mule?

Answering that question honestly makes this game Pay 2 Win; which taints the competitive-integrity of it as well.

And that's why I will not be "investing" in it.

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Tinwood escreveu:

There are almost enough skill gems, that having one of each will fill an entire tab, so just in order to keep your skill options open for the future takes a tab.

Say your in a group, we all know how hectic that can be. A boss is taken down and you snap up your loot, some yellows, maybe a rare. The player with the larger stash plunks that crap into his chest and heads back to the group to continue the quest. The player with limited stash space, already filled most likely to near full by skill gems and currency must stop and a make a decision now if hes going to keep gear or risk not being able to pick up anything else. The group most likely will not wait and he will lose his place in the progression or miss out on potential drops while mulling over his new items.

Yes, mule accounts could be made, but as someone else pointed out they will just take up potential names and do nothing for the sake of holding a few items that the player must log in and out in order to play musical stash with. The time spent doing that is time that could be spent playing, thus he falls behind, and out of any groups he was in.

This is probably the best argument I have read for stash tabs as P2W. But I feel like once players spend a little time with POE, they pretty much know what kind of gear they need for their specific build they are going for. In your scenario, a player with more stash tabs would go to town to stash all his loot and a f2p player would equip the gear he needs, stash the few pieces he knows he will need for later on, and sell the rest. It would only take a few seconds, maybe a minute longer. His character can still be as good as the other character.

Maybe the player with more tabs is saving gear for another one of his characters but I don't really define that as p2w either. I feel like there is enough space to store all the gems you might need and to store the gear that you know you will need for your build later on. The rest of the gear you collect is basically stuff to sell. If they sold more available inventory space on your character then that would be a little more p2w in my opinion.

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logicliker escreveu:

Any exchange of real currency that provides a gameplay advantage over somebody else is P2W.

If 2 equal skill players were playing the game, and invested the exact same amount of time, which one would have a leg up on the other?

A. The guy with $30 to buy several more stash slots?
B. The guy with $0 who is forced to create several characters and mule?

Answering that question honestly makes this game Pay 2 Win; which taints the competitive-integrity of it as well.

And that's why I will not be "investing" in it.

You can create more accounts to get more stash tabs. The extra stash tab slots from cash shop are just for more convenience.

every micro-transaction could be considered pay to win.
depends on how much advantage you consider winning.
you could buy dyes to match the ground color and gain advantage in pvp.
i know very little but still.

in my opinion exp boost and respecs are strong pay to win elements (in PoE) because you can't hit the max level yet. higher level = stronger char.

i'm fine with cosmetics and little impact things like bank slots and don't consider them to be pay to win by the common definition.

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logicliker escreveu:

Any exchange of real currency that provides a gameplay advantage over somebody else is P2W.

If 2 equal skill players were playing the game, and invested the exact same amount of time, which one would have a leg up on the other?

A. The guy with $30 to buy several more stash slots?
B. The guy with $0 who is forced to create several characters and mule?

Answering that question honestly makes this game Pay 2 Win; which taints the competitive-integrity of it as well.

And that's why I will not be "investing" in it.

Neither, it's as close to completely irrelevant as you can get. And definitely less important than whoever is luckier with RNG.

Regarding extra stash tabs and pay to win.
Extra stash tabs is a huge advantage. Someone with lots of tabs could for example start saving every rare that drops and get Regal Orbs via vendor recipes( three of the same name=orb, will need to trade with other people doing the same though to get orbs consistently).

I hope that extra stash space is as far as it goes when it comes to getting an extra advantage over other players by using micro-transactions. And just to make things clear I am not "complaining" about stash tabs because I will lack them. Probably will end up with 20 or so I think.

Heres my thought on the stash tabs:

In normal race conditions, so 2-4 hours, very few people actually utilise the stash in favour of continuing on to progress the race. So here, no advantage is gained.


In normal gameplay conditions (default, HC etc), the time saved using extra stash tabs, compared to the time used to swap gear over from different accounts isn't much in a short run, an extra few minutes or so. But these leagues are supposed to be running for years on end. In the end, the time lost from swapping gear over accounts is minuscule if that time is applied to say, farming mobs for exp. This is making assumptions from Chris' details on how long it'll take to hit level cap (according to him, someone who is level 95 has been playing for years)

Inventory space:
Clearly pay to win. Basically because the game makes you use Portal Scrolls to go back to your stash, making having extra inventory space giving you a huge advantage of not having to have to use a Portal Scroll, and also be able to hold more items at once, which is very abusive if you can do this in Endgame dungeons where you have a limited number of portals.

Convenience skills (like portal gem):
This also would be considered pay to win, since your essentially boosting your "gold" by not having to have to spend scrolls by getting this.

Stash Tabs:
Not necessarily pay to win, since you can always mule characters anyway even without paying to get the exact same effect. This is very different to having extra inventory space.

Cosmetics:
In this game, not really pay to win. In other games it might be. For example if you can get a ghili suit in a FPS game, it can give you an advantage because it makes you harder to kill.

Pets:
Again, in this game, not pay to win. This is true as long as the pets have no interaction to the gameplay itself.

Respecs:
This is arguable, but I would say its definitely pay to win in this game. Since you can actually get items to help you respec, being able to pay for a respec is basically giving you free "gold".

EXP boost:
Definitely pay to win, no matter what people say. Giving you a head start in a RPG where the top people have the advantage for the currency in the game is definitely an unfair advantage, even without a auction house. This is true for any multiplayer game, and the only way an EXP boost will not be pay to win is if the game is single player only.

Skill visuals:
Depends. If the skill itself changes in the way it works in any way, it can be considered pay to win. Even if it doesn't, its still possible to be considered pay to win if the visual change of the skill interferes in gameplay. To give you an exaggerated example, if the skill puts a gigantic fog in the middle of the screen making it impossible to see through it, it will be unfair in PvP, even if PvP is not a big element to the game.

The definition pay to win means if you are a more powerful character (with items/things equipped/in use, that you've spend money on) than a person not paying money when you both are represented as a equal level. This means, customization is not pay to win (you are still equal), extra stash is not pay to win (you are still equal), sidegrade items and skills are not pay to win (you are still equal), access to unique areas which don't give better items than you normally could get, are not pay to win (you are still equal) and finally experience boosters to let you gain levels and skills faster are not pay to win (you are still equal). These are all to make your journey with your character a more enjoyable one, not to give you an "easy win coupon" over people who didn't spend a dime on the game.

Yes one person of the two might have cooler animations, being allowed to more inventory space, having a skill or an item that the other one can't get, being able to kill those awesome looking dragons while the other one is killing plants and are having an easier time to level up than the other... However NONE of these things would result so that the one person is superior over the other in a competetive game (PvP as it's called in mmmo) if they are both on equal levels. Also none of these items/things would stop a person not spending a cent on the game to not ultimately become just as powerful as a person who spent thousands and thousands of €.

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CiceroSUN escreveu:

Game coming to OB soon, and I am sure GGG are looking into what other microtransactions they can sell in the store. Since the game has officially chosen a stance against "pay to win" elements in the game (and thereby in the shop) I am curious what you think is "pay to win".

Everything in your topic is an accurate description and I'm honestly suprised with 8 pages that you as the OP have some sense, seeing as the majority will consider anything pay to win because they want everything for free and consider conveniance as unfair.

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CiceroSUN escreveu:

The reason I ask, is that the whole F2P industry still hasnt really agreed on a shared definition, and neither has players. And for the most predominant definitions, the discrepancy between what a majority of developers call "pay to win" and what a majority of players call "pay to win", is quite disturbing.

Again the reason the community haven't agreed is because of jealousy and cheapness and people will judge anything you can buy in games as unfair compared to them who haven't spent a cent. Why? Because it's a natural thing to do, we don't want people to have something we can't have and we will therefore believe everything to be an advantage and unfair.

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CiceroSUN escreveu:

For me - and how most developers look at it - it means that if some in-game content is available only through spending real life currency, and that content gives me a distinct advantage compared to players without it, then that is a strong "pay to win" element.
If it doesnt, or if the content is also available without spending, then it isnt "pay to win".

I will also mention that absolutely nothing can be a pay to win in Poe on all the servers that aren't PVP based, as it simply doesn't matter. If a person so could buy an item at level 1 that's way better than everything else it wouldn't still mean squat, as long as this item isn't allowed to be traded to other servers where PVP is allowed... Because people are not playing a competative game, they are essentially playing a single player game with other people to cooperate (if they so choose). It would be retarded granted, cause you have essentially broken the reason to farm items and killed the challenge for a player, but it would only effect that player no one else.

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CiceroSUN escreveu:

Some examples just to ilustrate:

Pay to win
- if I can buy the sword of uberness only with real life currency, that is clearly better than all other options, then its "pay to win".
- if I can buy certain skills only with real life currency, then its "pay to win".
- if i can access certain areas, with special drops, only through real life currency, then its "pay to win"

Again this is only true in competetive gameplay, if there's no PVP all of these things are OK.

First one, I agree 100% in a competetive gameplay.
Second one, is not necessary "pay to win" if these skills aren't in any way stronger than skills you could normally get. They actually follow straight to your previous point that sidegrades aren't pay to win and items in one game is skills in another game (if it were to be made for example so that you could only have skills and not items). I'm honestly fine with people buying skills in competetive gameplay as long as these skills are properly balanced and managable to deal with for a person who haven't spent money on them.
Third one, again depends on if these special drops are better than normal drops, just having access to areas doesn't mean that they become better than other people and even if there's special loot, as long as these special loots are sidegrades to what you otherwise could get.

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BDtetra escreveu:

Inventory space:
Clearly pay to win. Basically because the game makes you use Portal Scrolls to go back to your stash, making having extra inventory space giving you a huge advantage of not having to have to use a Portal Scroll, and also be able to hold more items at once, which is very abusive if you can do this in Endgame dungeons where you have a limited number of portals.

Convenience skills (like portal gem):
This also would be considered pay to win, since your essentially boosting your "gold" by not having to have to spend scrolls by getting this.

EXP boost:
Definitely pay to win, no matter what people say. Giving you a head start in a RPG where the top people have the advantage for the currency in the game is definitely an unfair advantage, even without a auction house. This is true for any multiplayer game, and the only way an EXP boost will not be pay to win is if the game is single player only.

How is a person stronger or better than another person if both are the same level just because person A have access to pick up more shit than person B or because he need to kill fewer plants and trees than the other one?!

What prevents a person who doesn't pay a cent on a game to not have the same amount of level and money as a person who gets these three factors as they are all related to TIME, not anything related to the actual gameplay?


Also if you refer to these three solely because of that reason let me introduce a new term to the community.

I call it Play to Win! A person who plays more than another (specially true if you do not have a job or a hobby on the side) have an unfair advantage as they will be higher level and have more money faster than a person with a job and a hobby. See how retarded this is turning into?

There we have it, the pay to win is now so 2012, welcome to 2013 and the new term "Play to Win" and the methods on how GGG can stop students and unemployed to exploit their lifestyle to get an advantage over people with hobbies, work and family cause I find this really unfair and injustice!