this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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No such thing.
The only ethical free model is giving shit away. Any form of charging money inside a video game is an abuse.
Just sell games.
Trash take
Use your words.
GGG has been actively developing and supporting PoE for more than a decade post launch. Other studios develop 3-4 full scale games during that time frame. If they wanted to price all of this into a one time cost, PoE would have cost 150-200€ at release, a price no one would be willing to pay for a new game of a new studio with no track record. The game just wouldn't exist.
And yet you're claiming that them financing development primarily via optional cosmetic micro transactions is abuse. People have spent thousands of hours in this game without spending more than like 50 bucks on quality of life stuff. Your comment tells me you know nothing about PoE or GGG. That's why I'm calling it a trash take.
TBF I would have much rather played 4 finished PoE games than watch them milk whales for a decade. No offense to people who speedrun both acts and maps, that shit takes massive skill, but it's not a game for the wider audience.
Is PoE a pay for power type game? I thought about getting into it, but then looked at the skill tree and uninstalled.
No, and yes. You can start a brand new account on the first day of a league and be at par with everyone else. The vast majority of the game is accessible with no demands on you aside from time and skill. Every purchase you make is cosmetic only, simply changing the way some spells look or giving you a pet that follows you around and looks cool while doing nothing extra.
The one exception? Stash tabs. Tabs that specialize in holding certain items for you in your stash. Tabs that let you sell items to others with greater ease. It has gotten to the point where if you want to be best of the best, you should probably have the extra tabs. Why? Because at the endgame, you'll need to start trading for items that make your build sing, or simply eke out the extra 15% damage that multiplies with other sources to make your dps soar into the millions, because PoE is all about finding something that you can push past where it was supposed to stop being good. Without those stash tabs, making cool items or easily trading with others is much more difficult.
Now, how much would it cost you to be 'competitive' with tabs? Probably $10 at most. For a game that I've played for over a decade and probably 1000-2000 hours at this point, I think the <$100 bucks I've thrown their way is worth it. I have friends who love the game and likely have 3k+ hours in it, and they've only spent $150 or so. I think that's pretty reasonable for that much enjoyment.
The cost/benefit for hours played vs money spent is ridiculously good.
I will probably give PoE2 a shot once it comes out since they are keeping the same cost system. Thank you for the answer.
That depends on which version you're playing. On the Chinese version upon character creation you get the option to buy into the pay-to-win version of the league server, where you get better item drops. You can also directly pay for better exp rates over there.
In the US/New Zealand version of the game most purchases are cosmetic, except for bank tabs. A lot of people have come to the conclusion that the reason for poorly balanced leveling and enemies is because balance was built around the heavily buffed Pay-to-Win Chinese gameplay, so playing the US version in comparison is like playing hell mode with nerfs on.
Or they could release 3-4 full scale games. A price people are plainly willing to pay, over more than a decade. More games would exist.
They're only able to drag out this one game by turning it into a factory for manufactured discontent. Their revenue comes from keeping people hooked, and while they are hooked, influencing them to keep forking over more money. People have spent thousands of hours in this game. Can you even quantify how much impact the most subtle and "ethical" mechanics have had on their decisions?
Every game with real-money charges is the same pattern. This business model is built on addiction and frustration. You have to be unhappy enough that some of you will fork over money - ideally for the least content possible - sometimes for the same content over and over. But you have to be hooked or you might not put up with that tickling denial for just one more daily challenge. There have to be people who will blow hundreds or thousands of dollars, or this whole gross mess wouldn't be so much more profitable than just selling games.
This is half the industry's revenue, now. It's in single-player games. The format of this abuse is the same, no matter how openly gross its details are, in any particular game. Insisting otherwise is like saying gambling isn't gambling if the amounts are smaller. The mechanism is the same, and the mechanism has intense intrinsic problems. It is inseparable from exploitation of humans' sloppy grasp of value. That's the only reason it works.