PoE might be free but their cosmetics are just as predatorily priced. $60 for an armor and accessory set is pretty bad. Their default armor has the trend of being fully which incentizes shop purchases. Add week at forcing you to login to see other people each time to advertise their mtx.
Not too mention you can include the stash tabs are nearly being required as a base cost.
I hope the sequel is good but overall I wouldn't rate them much better in terms of practices.
It’s a bit of a gray area, but at the end of the day PoE is totally free. There’s 0 p2w, and all game features are available to a free account.
GGG finances themselves purely from MTX sales, so yeah, they want to expose you to other players’ skins in town, trades, and party play to hopefully get you to buy some. You still don’t have to though.
The gray area comes in with the stash tabs. I think default free account comes with 4, and you really want at least 10 or so to play comfortably. You need to spend 20 bucks to get the most useful stash tabs for your account, and it’s a 1 time spend that applies to all leagues available forever.
So, maybe not exactly free unless you’re willing to deal with the pain of mule accounts like we did back in the D1 days. But also pretty dang’yo ethical when compared to D4 tactics of charging AAA price for the game, then gouging you on MTX as well.
The game is free...if they want to monetize it in a way that does not affect the f2p experience, who cares?
I do agree with your point about the stash tabs basically being price of entry to really play the game, assuming you want to delve into endgame.. still tho, they go on sale often and you really only need a few of the special tabs unless you are really blasting, and in that scenario you can easily make the argument that a power poe gamer gets their moneys worth of enjoyment each league and really wants to support the game financially.
Last Epoch is definitely on my list to grab on release. I tried original PoE and my only issue is with the currency system. I get that it's unique and I can see how it would be cool, but I don't want to barter useful stuff for other stuff and be hit with analysis paralysis every transaction. Give me straight up currency that's has no use except to buy stuff.
The currency in PoE makes more sense if you view is purely as currency, and the fact that it can be used for crafting as secondary. Realistically, unless you have hundreds of hours in the game, thats how you should use it.
In other MMOs you would make money by farming iron ore, trading that ore for gold, and buying things with gold. OR you could craft something with the ore. In PoE, you farm, get a divine orb, and then can use the orb to craft, or it just is the currency. No gold conversion required.
There really isnt that much bartering to be done on the currency end. the market has some pretty set prices. 1 divine is 125 chaos. View them as gold and silver, and never use them for crafting and suddenly the economy is basically like any other game.
The actual trade mechanics on the other hand. The game director has said he actively wants it to be a miserable experience. Its literally a game for masochists who find fun in the struggle.
Just remember this when Diablo 6 "looks good" and "they've finally changed". If people took a little more time to consider the historical value of what their abusive ex did instead of taking them back we'd not be in this situation.
What kills me is that the game WAS fun, and blizzard patched out everything that made it fun. Like they were scared people would get a taste of standards and want more.
PoE is a mess lol. They charge you for having the inventory space to store their 50,000 different kinds of currencies that are all just gigantic slot machines. And the whole way they set up trading is a disaster. I say this having played a lot of PoE and wishing they did it better every step of the way because it has so much promise.
It doesn't have a lot of room to take the high ground on microtransactions, though. Like half of the characters can't wear pants without a paid cosmetic.
These games are so big that I don't know why you'd even need Diablo 4. D2 and D3 are still lots of fun, as are Grim Dawn, PoE, Titan Quest, and I feel like there's several more. I used to care about Blizzard's stories, but that ended in the D2/WC3 era for me.
Wait... For $30 you get all five colors. That's totally different. The title kind of implies they're $30 each since it mentions the class restrictions. Maybe it just sounds that way to me. Language is so ambiguous.
And it's basically only $20 but you are also forced to buy 1000 platinum at the same time. That's real value! Diablo 4 players should be rejoining! This is an exciting offer!
I’ve been very much enjoying D4. Especially since season 4. The town portals they’re talking about here are purely cosmetic, you don’t need them. No one needs them. They’re there for the whales who will buy them, they don’t expect the average player to buy them.
If you were going to play a game but now won’t because entirely cosmetic items that have no gameplay impact cost money, why did that stop you?
good thing my kids and i can't play it. it's not very Diablo in our eyes and terribly boring. we still play 3 from time to time but 4 is some other thing i guess. just not our cuppa. feel bad we liked the hype teaser video so long that when it came out we tried hard to like it but couldn't.
I played it for a couple hours until i got to the first town and got bombarded by irrelevant sidequests and holiday special events and whatnot. AND THEN I left town and discovered its an open world where you can go wherever tf you want because monsters scale with your level which discourages you from progressing the main storyline. I shut it off and have no intention of going back.
At the very least i got it for free in the xbox holiday bundle sale and didnt directly buy the game