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[nenjin]

Or you're like me and have paid zero attention to PoE's economy since the game was in closed beta because it's not even remotely required to play and enjoy the entire game.

[Aklyon]

pay to win...what? What object is there in game (with ingame effects beyond cosmetics) that is literally impossible to get without money? Everything that exists as a item that has been found is either in Standard or Hardcore, and may show up in Perandus via Cadiro too. You can find all of the normal items, the currently-existing legacy version items, and all of the non-league exclusive uniques there. And for the league exclusives there is Zana maps (depending on the currently available league modifiers), or if you insist on needing one now, right this moment, you can trade for it if someone is selling it.

They didn't even specify trade (with public premium stash tabs only, cross-instance), they said trade (no qualifiers) between instances. The only reason I'm even paying much attention to trade at all is to see how the public tabs work, I'm not expecting to get anything that leads to uber gg BiS faceroll Malachai in merciless as a low-life MF melee witch paid benefit out of it like you're making it out to be, miljan. (although I would not be surprised if the seperate garena realm has that. I've heard nothing good about it the few times I've seen it mentioned.)
The trading improvement will make no difference in whether I make it to lv.80, or whether I find cool things, whether I get through a particular labyrinth layout or not, or whether cadiro tries to rip me off selling a unique for thousands of perandus coin or just another rare ring for 10 coins. At best I might get a few alts out of the tab's contents after it doesn't sell and I just vendor it all. I could get more than that just running around playing the game, ignoring trading completely.

[miljan]

pay to win...what? What object is there in game (with ingame effects beyond cosmetics) that is literally impossible to get without money? Everything that exists as a item that has been found is either in Standard or Hardcore, and may show up in Perandus via Cadiro too. You can find all of the normal items, the currently-existing legacy version items, and all of the non-league exclusive uniques there. And for the league exclusives there is Zana maps (depending on the currently available league modifiers), or if you insist on needing one now, right this moment, you can trade for it if someone is selling it.

They didn't even specify trade (with public premium stash tabs only, cross-instance), they said trade (no qualifiers) between instances. The only reason I'm even paying much attention to trade at all is to see how the public tabs work, I'm not expecting to get anything that leads to uber gg BiS faceroll Malachai in merciless as a low-life MF melee witch paid benefit out of it like you're making it out to be, miljan. (although I would not be surprised if the seperate garena realm has that. I've heard nothing good about it the few times I've seen it mentioned.)
The trading improvement will make no difference in whether I make it to lv.80, or whether I find cool things, whether I get through a particular labyrinth layout or not, or whether cadiro tries to rip me off selling a unique for thousands of perandus coin or just another rare ring for 10 coins. At best I might get a few alts out of the tab's contents after it doesn't sell and I just vendor it all. I could get more than that just running around playing the game, ignoring trading completely.

Is something possible or impossible to get in game doesnt matter.  Game can be balance where things are hard to get without paying for items, but they can still drop, so that type of logic fails. Things that you can not get in game without paying are stash tabs, character slots and premium stashes. Every player gets 4 stash tabs and you can use them for items and transfer between characters, and character slots. Premium stashes where used for coloring and changing your text description. But with the new update they implemented indexing items for trade. PoE is the most competitive arpg game out there. If offers live leaderboards where people compete, including very often real rewards from different sponsors GGG gets. Now this is known that if you want to compete you will need to have more stash tabs as they do bring a very good benefits to players. The premium stash tabs make that even more obvious and worse, including that it limits the mechanic from other players. I dont know what we need to talk about here, there is nothing good in this. Putting in game mechanics of trade behind a pay wall is bad, no matter is the game competitive or not, but being competitive it just makes the things a lot worse.

The implementation of the indexing of items is the first step in fully implementing the trading improvements. Instance trading will be directly tided to premium stashes because they can not work with normal ones as they do not offer same function of storing information on them (otherways you can have same functionality for all stash tabs, but GGG didnt want it to be implemented like that, probably because of wanting to sell them more for $$$). Having a automated trading will even more increase the pay to win elements in this game, as trading is essential part of the game, as the whole drop rates and progression is balanced around it. Is it possible to play without trade? Yes. Is the game balanced around not trading? No. You will need to invest a lot more time in farming making PoE one of the least rewording arpg on the market to this date, and only arpg that has such huge focus on economy.

[nenjin]

For a game that has not charged a single dime for access, for you to now be upset because you have to shell out for a premium stash tab (fuck even I've bought them at this point) so you can get indexed trading...

Suffice to say, 99% of their playerbase isn't going to give a shit and I'm not sure why anyone else should. If you've clocked even a fraction of time in PoE that I have and you still haven't spent a dime on it, you don't have the right to be upset. At all. I don't play competitively nor give a shit about any upper level gameplay. But after hundreds of hours, I felt like GGG earned their $20 or whatever completely affordable price they put on a non-essential part of the game.

[miljan]

For a game that has not charged a single dime for access, for you to now be upset because you have to shell out for a premium stash tab (fuck even I've bought them at this point) so you can get indexed trading...

Suffice to say, 99% of their playerbase isn't going to give a shit and I'm not sure why anyone else should. If you've clocked even a fraction of time in PoE that I have and you still haven't spent a dime on it, you don't have the right to be upset. At all. I don't play competitively nor give a shit about any upper level gameplay. But after hundreds of hours, I felt like GGG earned their $20 or whatever completely affordable price they put on a non-essential part of the game.

Dont want to disappoint you but majority of community already see the problem as there a lot of threads about this on the forum and reddit, where people do talk about the game going pay to win and trying to make suggestion how should GGG fix it (including bigger streamers). It is at the moment a little lost in the uproar because of the labyrinth problems, but it's very hot topic the moment GGG announce this crap.

Everyone has the right to be upset the moment GGG or any other developer implement any pay to win mechanic, and it doesnt matter did you pay a dime or not or is a game free to play or not. Implementing paywalls and pay to win crap no matter is the game sold or free is a bad fucking thing.

[Aklyon]

For a game that has not charged a single dime for access, for you to now be upset because you have to shell out for a premium stash tab (fuck even I've bought them at this point) so you can get indexed trading...

Suffice to say, 99% of their playerbase isn't going to give a shit and I'm not sure why anyone else should. If you've clocked even a fraction of time in PoE that I have and you still haven't spent a dime on it, you don't have the right to be upset. At all. I don't play competitively nor give a shit about any upper level gameplay. But after hundreds of hours, I felt like GGG earned their $20 or whatever completely affordable price they put on a non-essential part of the game.

They even have consistant sales on the stash tabs every two weeks or so, which makes them even cheaper to get.

And miljan, the reddit gets in an uproar about anything, thats what subreddits do. Do try not to get 'majority of the community' and 'loudest shouting people' mixed up. And most of the uproar wasn't even about the stash tabs. It was worry about whether poe.trade would continue indexing shop threads (The answer was yes) when the new api is rather simpler to look through according to the exiletools dev. The rest of it is just complaints that ggg didn't turn one tab of everyone's into a premium tab for free, and while I saw one good argument for that (free advertising on what the premium tabs do), its mostly just people complaining about not getting free stuff in their free game when they already were able to use (less convenient, but no less free or effective) 3rd party tools for the exact same thing. You can keep shouting about nonexistant trade paywalls all you want, it doesn't make them more real.

[nenjin]

A real trade paywall would be "people without a premium stash tab cannot trade at all, by any means."

You're mad because their in-house system is going to require a paid feature so your life can be more convenient. There's still 3rd party web sites and tools that will do the job, for free.

GGG is one of the few F2P dev house that I think has truly struck by their "pay only if you want to" mantra. That they're in effect monetizing an add-on to the game by requiring it uses a piece of paid content is not out of line for a company that has given their entire game away for free for YEARS. I can appreciate people who are deep into trading feel like this is impinging on them, but if it is, it's doing it in just about the fairest way possible.

And seriously, if you've played the game enough to care to that point and you still haven't shelled out even a single additional stash tab...maybe kick them some money for once and suddenly, your problem has become a non-issue.

[miljan]

I dont need to shouting  about anything. The facts are simple, they are implementing trade system that is behind a pay wall. And there is nothing more to it. The game is moving slowly in pay to win category, and it will only get worse over time. Its a shame, but expected in one way or another.

[nenjin]

The facts are simple, yes. Your conclusions are your own though, not fact.

[aristabulus]

GGG has to balance front-end and back-end issues with everything they do/add/change.  In the announcement for the stash tab change + API, Jonathon stated:

...
For quite some time now, users have relied on third party tools to create posts of their stash tabs in the Path of Exile trade forums. There were always a few problems with this approach, though.

The first is that it wasn't that user-friendly. Downloading a third-party application that you need to give your login credentials to rightly sets off alarm bells for many people. A lot more users just didn't find out about these tools or were not willing to put in the effort to use them.

The second is that it was really inefficient. The trade forums were never designed to be scraped by indexers, nor updated that frequently. As more and more users have been using that system we have been running into more and more scaling issues.
...

(bold emphasis mine)

So the changes (as they relate to back-end) were meant to relieve pressure on the forums because of all the scraping; more data harvesting will go through the API, which has to be more efficient than loading innumerable forum threads just to check for changes.

From there, it is also reasonable to consider how the changes might enable fraudulent behaviour, and the server load that might come with it.  (GGG keeps pretty hush-hush about what really happens in those trenches, but the little mentions infer that they are swift and merciless in dealing with shenanigans)  Making the public tab thing not-available to churn-and-burn accounts nips the problem in the bud before it has a chance to flower.

Lastly...

Please do not feed the troll(s)

-----

On other notes...  I got a Tabula Rasa from Cadiro, 80-something coin.  Any ideas on what I should do with it?  I'm not sure I want to splice it into my bog-standard lazy ranger build I'm playing right now.

[Aklyon]

Aside from 'make a character for it?' I could repay you for that in coins if you're feeling up to trading it instead, ari.

[aristabulus]

Aside from 'make a character for it?' I could repay you for that in coins if you're feeling up to trading it instead, ari.

Yeah, the "make a character for it" was (supposed to be) implicit... but I'm not sure I have room in my brain to fiddle with a totally new-to-me build.  Maybe a witch+elementalist?  She could plan around the lack of stats from the body armour more easily, I think.  I'd consider loaning the Tabula Rasa, but until one of us finds another (plausible+affordable @ Cadiro), I would like it back eventually.

Hell, I'm not really feeling my lazy ranger either, but it's a tolerable "I cannot brain anymore, but I'm not sleepy" time-filler.

So ready to be done with school.  >_<

[Aklyon]

Izaro has been adjusted to be easier in Normal Difficulty. His life has been reduced by 20%. Izaro's Ground Slam and Radiant Slash now deal 10% less damage. The life of Gargoyles, Idols, Portals (Thresholds), Essences, Fonts and Lieutenants has been reduced by 20%. The Goddess of Justice's Mortar Barrage has been reduced by 20% damage, and she no longer uses Teleport. These changes only apply to Normal difficulty.

Enabled the Perandus Manor map. This map can be sold by Cadiro in Tier 5 and above maps for 2500 coins. We hope you enjoy exploring its secrets!
Perandus Guardians that are revived will provide experience when slain for a second time. They stop granting experience when they've been revived two times.

The important bits of the patch.

[kcwong]

Izaro has been adjusted to be easier in Normal Difficulty. His life has been reduced by 20%. Izaro's Ground Slam and Radiant Slash now deal 10% less damage. The life of Gargoyles, Idols, Portals (Thresholds), Essences, Fonts and Lieutenants has been reduced by 20%. The Goddess of Justice's Mortar Barrage has been reduced by 20% damage, and she no longer uses Teleport. These changes only apply to Normal difficulty.

Enabled the Perandus Manor map. This map can be sold by Cadiro in Tier 5 and above maps for 2500 coins. We hope you enjoy exploring its secrets!
Perandus Guardians that are revived will provide experience when slain for a second time. They stop granting experience when they've been revived two times.

The important bits of the patch.

I only ran the normal labyrinth once on my level 78 cyclone marauder. Trying to learn Izaro's mechanism this way is futile - he didn't do anything to me before dying.

What I did learn is labyrinth can be extremely dangerous for ES/CI characters. I ran into a long patch of floor spikes, it led me around for more than two screens, a long corridor at first, then zig-zag with those lever-knifes on the left, obstacles on the right, ending with some those gears-on-rails.

As life/regen based I tanked 4 hits easily with potions; a ES/CI would be dead for sure.

[Aklyon]

Floor spikes are always very sequential and include random safe spots, unless its one of those patches of pressure plate spikes. Plus you can regen ES besides the recharge afaik, or use vaal discipline, and its still percentage damage anyway. ES characters will have health still anyways, and CI characters will either have sorted out things already (including be careful and move quick) or they've picked it up too early.

I haven't had an ci characters, but I also haven't had to use a flask more than once in the labyrinth itself rather than while fighting izaro (I also have not tried the cruel lab yet). When in doubt, quicksilver flask or lightning warp into a safer area.