If you approach it as a casual single-player game, it is certainly a wholesome free-to-play model. For everyone else, microtransaction tabs are 100% mandatory to progress without spending inordinate amounts of time managing scarce inventory space.

Since 2.4, many of the 3-month content updates (which are always either good content or at least good-faith mistakes) have introduced mechanics which effectively require more microtransaction purchases (see 2.4, 2.5/3.7, 3.1).

Sure, you can technically play through all the content without microtransactions, but have fun organizing the 159 different maps, 104 essences, 42 (ordinary) currencies, endless cards, and all your actual items with the four default 12x12 tabs. Even then, your best bet for listing items for sale without premium tabs is to use a 3rd-party tool to generate a forum thread.

Not to say that PoE isn't one of the better F2P models out there, but GGG shouldn't get away with pretending to be a small indie studio when they have >100 employees and sold a controlling share to Tencent for >100M NZ$. They have (rightfully earned) one of the best reputations among game developers, but their insistence on selling (what should be) standard game features as $15 microtransactions is absurd.

Looking through the store now, what I would consider to be "mandatory" for someone investing significant time into the game comes out to about $70. The free trial is wonderful though!

I see your point but I don't really see this as a problem.

If you're going to play this game for a significant amount of time, I think it is only fair that you pay it. The question is then if it's worth $70, which I would guess it is.

The only problem I see is that usually if you buy a game for $70 it doesn't have (seemingly intentionally) all the gear designed in a way that looks extremely bland to get you to spend another $70+ in skins.

When I recommend this game to friends, I introduce it as a $70 game with a pay-as-you-go model.

My point is not that it makes the game bad, but that it's disingenuous to assert that the microtransactions are purely cosmetic or unnecessary. For my case at least, I would prefer if I could just buy the game for $70 and not have to buy more microtransactions if/when some future patch makes them advantageous.

I survived with a $20 premium stash bundle for most of my over a thousand hours in the game, and there have been leagues where the first player to reach max level has done it with just the basic storage. I can agree that they've added a lot of stackable items, and the 4 tabs may not be enough for serious players, but at that point $20 gets you most, if not all, the way to being fine.

I'd similarly call out Warframe for this. No required buy ins, but their premium currency can be used for inventory expansion, crafting instant completion (although you can simultaneously craft as much as you want), or trading with other players. Meanwhile they continually improve the game. The trading component also means people with time but not money can still get premium currency just by trading valued loot.

Warframe is pretty guilty of the many resources trade off, and starting out the game you're basically forced to pay for more warframe slots because you don't really have good enough loot to grind the good loot that people will trade plat for. It's a strange design decision because one of the main draws is how fun/different the different frames and weapons are. I'm hopeful they will address that in the future new player experience rework because I believe they make the majority of their money from the primes and cosmetics.

They support the hell out of their game though. I just started playing again and there's so much new stuff to do.

I dunno. Warframe feels "cool" from the start, while PoE requires $50 to not walk around with tin pot on your head and bad renfest garb at max level, even though the level 3 next to you is creating and destroying dazzling universes of light because they paid $250.

> although you can simultaneously craft as much as you want

Weird, I played ~70 hours earlier this year and I couldn't craft more than one item at once.

Warframe is a grind designed to make you spend money.

If you like grind then it's free, if you hate grind and won't spend money the game is bad.

The game didn’t feel like a grind until about a thousand hours in, when I quit. Up until then it was a fun series of learning curves and minmaxing builds. It’s a grind from day 1 if the gameplay doesn’t interest you.

The game felt like a grind from the 10th hour. Playing in public, people don't even play the game, they jump-dash through the entire level, kill a boss, and head to the end, over and over and over, every three minutes, all day. What's the point?

How about Dota 2? There's nothing you can buy that can affect gameplay. Steam Workshop is used by community artists to submit their cosmetics, which gets voted into the game by the players. Steam Marketplace where players can buy, sell and trade their cosmetics. 25% of all Battle Pass[0] spending goes directly towards the prize pool of the yearly The International[1] esports tournament, with this year's tournament boasting a $34,330,068 USD prize pool, the largest to date[2].

[0]: https://www.dota2.com/international2019/battlepass/

[1]: https://www.dota2.com/international/overview

[2]: https://www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments

if anything its basicallay pay to lose as some of the purchaseable interactive items are distracting to the user like those balloons and treasures

I'd counter that some cosmetics that modify skill graphics effects to precisely show their AoE are a little pay to win.

They show their AoE area to the enemies, so more like pay to lose. But you use them anyway because the effects are shiny.

Are you talking about the cosmetic for the Lina second spell ? Doesn't the cursor show the Stun range when you're about to cast it ? (the only broken cosmetic is the one that make Nyx Assassin look like Sand King)

That Mirana arrow is definitely pay to lose xD

Also Wind Ranger, Spectre, Disruptor, Pugna, Elder Titan, Medusa, Nature's Prophet, IO...

I have ~80 hours in PoE and started because it looked fun and the microtransaction system seemed reasonable. I stopped because it's pretty clear that what their system lacks in straight gambling mechanics, it more than makes up for in sly psychological tricks.

PoE's "micro"transaction system is much closer to a paid mod or DLC model. Yes, they're mostly cosmetic and QoL items for sale, but they certainly don't feel optional if you've ever played any other RPG or loot-heavy game. Like you mentioned, prices are stupid high and there's nothing "micro" when decent cosmetics run $40+ and a single full effects set is $150+.

The main story takes 20-40 hours, and pretty early on you'll almost HAVE to buy additional loot storage. It's a loot heavy game with no easy way to sell loot that doesn't require storing it (no gold or credits), so they're banking on people getting annoyed by their stash system (which really sucks) and purchasing the added storage. Rolling a new character uses that same storage, so you feel the pinch at each playthrough.

And even if you complete the story, store bought armor at level 2 looks infinitely better than anything you can actually earn through skill or play time. I mean, they already sell "supporter packs" with effects/pets/etc you can't buy a la carte or earn, so the whole facade of these cosmetics "paying to support the game" is already cracked.

They also play that game where you have to buy a custom currency (points) in $5 increments and the vast majority of the items are priced at odd increments, so you're almost always leaving money on the table.

They could offer multiple monetization schemes, like an unlock with each expansion to allow earning some variation of the nice skins and additional storage, while still keeping the game F2P (though I'd love to see them lock applying purchased cosmetics behind a level requirement). I'd be happy to pay $60 for the game and $30-40 per expansion, but I'm not going to just start dumping money into a game to get past the artificial stash constraints or rent worthless digital paint jobs.

There are too many sneaky little quirks that just happen to favor spending money for me to feel good about the game.

> store bought armor at level 2 looks infinitely better than anything you can actually earn through skill or play time

You touch on the two things that make me hate free to play games. It seeps into the design philosophy in a way that makes the experience worse for everybody because they need to incentivize buying stuff. A lot of people like playing dress-up, but there's no way to do that in PoE without paying crazy amounts of money.

Like the halo 3 days where the "cool" looking armor was because you completed difficult challenges, or you could dress up however you want, without spending $150

Firstly, if you run out of 4 stash tabs during the story you're picking up way too much. Easy mistake to make, but POE drops way too much loot and most of it is useless. If you're attempting to sell what you've found in the story you're also just wasting space.

Supporter packs aren't there for value, they are there as a "supporter pack". You buy it to give money to the dev, and you get some cosmetics, as well as most of the price of the pack as premium currency, which you can spend on more cosmetics, or stash tabs. I'd argue that character MTX isn't even worth spending money on given the amount of flashy skills and effects there are, that obscure your character, but that's a different argument.

If you're happy to pay $60 up-front for the game, why not just buy the stash tabs and be happy? $60 buys you more than you'll ever fill up.

As someone who played for ~3 years before dropping a dime on the game, I have to say I don't see the "quirks" other than stash space. The only other incentive is the regular "spend points to get a free box" where everyone just spends the equivalent of $0.50 on a bug to get theirs, using up the leftover points they had.

There is no good way to do F2P. Developers need to be paid, and it makes sense for someone to buy a game. F2P is trying to get people hooked, and then extract money from them somehow. Because the developers need to be paid.

What can be fair is a shop where you can buy cosmetic items. For me, Guild Wars 2 seems like a fair way to do it. The latest content costs money. Cosmetic items do nothing, but cost money. A few convenience items here and there, but no P2W.

GW2 became F2P? They weren't F2P when I got it at release IIRC. Since GW1 the approach was to sell extra expansions which seems to have worked for them.

I should run GW1 again, wonder if someone is still on there :P

GW2 base is F2P. At release, it was paid. So they changed model. However, the latest expansion and the additional content (living story content; sortof like a DLC) costs money. If you look at it from that PoV then it remained the same as GW1 (as during release, the complete game was the latest content).

Which, I believe, is fair enough. I'd prefer they not have convenience items up for sale, but compared to a WoW sub (which also makes you feel guilty when you don't use it) it feels fair and less stressful.

Yeah I always disliked the WoW model. It's quite amazing that they still make money this way. I played WoW during a time of really casual playing, at some point I would only play during weekends. As you mentioned, you just start feeling guilty for paying something you hardly use. So I quit entirely and played a lot more GW1.