WTH is this paywall discussion?

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JakkerONAIR#4902 wrote:

What I mean is, if a new player can choose between our normal "for free" guides where you just have "the items you need", the "skill list" and a "tree to follow" OR a "paid guide" where you have everything above AND in-depth explanations for literally everything important via notes or "manual" or whatever which actually teaches them the stuff they need to know, so they can understand it when they follow the guide and what not... I think it could have a place.

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Direfell#7544 wrote:

I feel like you're creating a false dichotomy. It's not a free sub-standard guide vs a premium guide made by John P. Exile. It's a free viewable guide vs an unknown guide behind a price tag.

There's no way to ensure the payed guide is better then a free one. that's just an assumption that bigger cost = more value. If anything, free guides will have more eyes critiquing them and likely be revised/improved more often.

Im certain there are terrible free guides out there, but in general the free to use resources made by fans of poe are incredible (pob, craftofexile, filterblade, poeninja, etc).

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KaosuRyoko#1633 wrote:

Imo I think it's conceptually find to charge for your work.

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I think the visceral reaction a lot of people are having is more about a sense of community. PoE has traditionally been built around an entire arsenal of this party tools and guides that have almost always been free. The idea of someone coming in and starting to charge for the same thing, can feel like an outsider trying to exploit your community. If it's successful and enough people begin doing it to become the norm, it can feel like you're community has disappeared.

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I think there also another angle which is the P2W aspect. General sentiment in this game hates P2W and RMT. If the best guides or crafting secrets are gated by money, that's just another form of P2W. Of course you can't really control the information like that, so this one feels like a less realistic concern - but I can understand the feeling.

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There's also the take that people will be putting out lower quality guides than free options and effectively scamming people.

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I'm not really concerned. The free market will sort itself out, and until then I get some faux drama to go with my stalling popcorn.

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JakkerONAIR#4902 wrote:

Why is anyone complaining about the possibility to "paywall" a guide?
Firstly, 99.9% of guides will still be free and probably 99.9% of ppl wont buy them anyway.
Secondly, if someone puts work into a guide and wants to sell it - it's up to them, as it is up to us if we buy it or not. Free will (market), you know!?

More importantly, the line of thought "why would you pay for a guide when you can get them for free?" doesn't even make sense. Why pay for anything you could get for free too? Like music, films, art, corn, whatever.
It's up to the creator of anything... create and share it for free OR charge for it, that simple.

And on top, it's not like the free guides are of a quality you could charge money for anyway imo, like bruh, often just the bare minimum you would expect from a guide to not call it trolling.
The "NOTES" feature exists for ages now in PoB and is barely used to an useful extend, for example.

Streamers complaining about it is like street musicians being mad about ppl in the music industry getting paid for their work, while performing on the streets for money in the first place too...