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More than 10 times. Like I stated in another thread, the Imperial East DLC(Khitan) came with 93 items for $10. The average price of items in the Bazaar is 350 crom coins, roughly $3.00 and some change. Rounding to $3.33 since many 3 pieces bazaar bundles are $10, that’s $309.69 if they charged The Imperial East DLC with the new prices.

EDIT: For reference, here’s the official announcement for the first DLC Pack:

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Thank you for pointing this out.

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Value added. Six Sigma had a taste about 20 years ago unfortunately our instructor had health issues really ashame for a young man. @erjoh

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Shhhhhh. It’s a secret. Im in orbit around these belt guys so they rub off now and then.

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Gotcha. Just between us. I was a practice dummy from the As welding Supervisor it was interesting.

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Mate, that was long and well written. I’m still not sure what you want to be the main take-away from it though. That people should stop telling other people that it’s not reasonable to be upset? I guess there are a few points you want people to get.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s quite reasonable to be upset. I do think it’s a bit naive to not expect these sorts of practices from a video game company though, so I react with sort of sadness rather than anger or an expectation that it could change any time soon. I mean at one point you mentioned “it’s only a game” being used to shut people down. It’s never good t dismiss and belittle someone’s feelings. But it is in fact only a game, which means FC has a lot of leeway to use predatory business practices. No one is being harmed in any easily quanitifiable way by any of this. Taken as a whole, sales practices across the whole industry are a bit shady these days, much like the gambling industry it is related to. “Suckers gonna be suckered” seems to be the motto.

I guess what I’m saying is, yes. This sucks. I particuarly hate the not being able to share. I logged in last weekend after not playing for six weeks, looted a cat from a ruined base, and then when I tried to place it… oops, that’s right. Can’t. I haven’t played again since, and don’t really feel like it. It deadset ruins my immersion that my character can only deploy some things in the world, and to get the ones I can’t place I have to go into some flashy casino-looking page and spend money like I’m in a mobile game.

Anyway, I’m sorry if anyone ever felt like I shut them down. I’m only ever trying to point out that these practices are commonplace in gaming, explain why they are, and that therefore this is the game now. I think the more people see this clearly, the more chance there is to effectively change it somehow. I very much doubt any amount of public outrage and emotion will do the trick. But if anyone comes up with a petition or some other strategy to influence FC I’m in 100%.

@Barnes honestly how would the customers influence a business you work with for example? How could they change your direction?

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I kinda understand why the pricing is so aggresive, which is the only complaint I have atm.

If one wants to make money, either 1) have a big player base and sell thousands of paid reskins/recolors, or 2) have a small player base and sell p2w items.

Conan is in neither of the situations - it has a relevantly small player base and they are not selling pure cosmetics. This is not a healthy and profitable business model. The optimal solution is to
First - expand player base with better quality / better communication / better content / more exposure,
Then - sell whatever they want.

However, without knowing how improve the game, FC chose to raise price, which is the easiest but least favored way to go.

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I mean, I did dedicate a whole section to the conclusions, but even that was really long-winded, so let me bottom-line it:

  • People aren’t just asking for free stuff. There’s plenty to fix or improve when it comes to monetization in Conan Exiles, not just the pricing.
  • It’s okay to leave your feedback about these things on these forums. That’s what they’re for.
  • There’s a small group of people who are experts at derailing discussions. Be smart and don’t let them do it to you.

Well, there’s another thing that I didn’t write in my long-ass post that deserves to be mentioned and explained. That third conclusion I mentioned, the one about people who are experts at shutting down discussions? They shut down both (or all) sides of the discussion.

You see, you can be reasonable and offer your point of view, but if you have them on “your side”, at some point you’ll find that their tactics ended up poisoning your arguments. That’s why both you and @erjoh are explaining that your intention wasn’t to shut down the discussion. And it’s the same thing that happened to me a while ago, when @biggcane55 talked about the “wolf pack” shutting down discussions about PVP.

Back then, I was the one who had the bad luck to have trolls on “my side”, i.e. seemingly agreeing with what I was trying to say. So not only did the people I disagreed with find themselves unable to discuss things they were trying to bring up, I also found myself unable to express disagreement without them taking it badly. All because there were a few toxic individuals poisoning the whole discussion for everyone.

So fast forward to present day and this post. I didn’t write it to make people like you or @erjoh feel bad just because you don’t completely agree with these complaints. Right now, it’s your bad luck that your disagreements occasionally echo the ideas or the attitudes of those who want to kill the conversation, but that doesn’t mean you’re the culprits.

The whole point is to recognize what’s going on and shut that down. When you recognize attempts to sabotage the discussion, either ignore them, or flag them if they’re flag-worthy. And when you see people taking the bait, let them know. That’s the only way I can see of keeping the toxicity down.

I hope this explanation helps a bit.

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Not only that, Den literally wanted feedback on the monetization. Objections to the monetization are useful to Funcom, white knights dog piling those trying to do so are not.

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The best advertising is a satisfied costumer. A satisfied costumer will speak to several people about you and eventually your name will prevail on top.

When a costumer pays a price he never know exactly what you made from this and honestly he doesn’t care, all a costumer cares it’s how much he paid.
So if you have costumers that paid great budgets, no matter how much you made from it, you cannot ask to be paid for everything and you have to “bribe” him to keep both his interest and his satisfaction.
In our case there are a lot of people that in the years that passed have invested not just some hundreds but thousands.
These costumers never had different treatment.
Second example is the costumers that have thousands hours in this game. These costumers are “old” costumers and again deserve different treatment. The fact that since you watch this you own this, or since you played at this time you owned this is a mistake!
The products this game has should be available for literally everyone but with different pricing. The one who own it or bought it “in time” because he plays nothing else should be cheaper from the one who will bought it later.
What we see right now is the total opposite! I bought the sandstone set in time with 30 Euro and now i can buy it with 11 :person_facepalming:t3:. So, is this the message?
Don’t buy anything in this season because in the next one will be Cheaper ?
Mistakes… Lot’s of them!
The way this thing goes everything funcom builded so hard these years, tencent will bring it to the ground. Maybe i am wrong, from my heart i wish i am, but i don’t think so. Funcom must buckle up, take control of this product and keep her costumers close.

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My company absorbed (my partner and I bought) a dominant (in our segment) textile company with an established IP and customer base, and this happened right about when Siptah landed. A LOT of how we dealt with the transition from established customer base to us was strongly influenced by Funcom. They were open, responsive, imaginative, engaging, caring, transparent → so un-normal. It built such loyalty in me and other players, that I applied those practices with our own direct-market company. It got us through the pandemic, and we’re still sailing strong today.

Our customers changed our direction the way Funcom used to behave: by engagement, you can read where they’ll want to be in 6, 8 or maybe 14 months. This is me being real, no pretense. I heard Neil Patrick Harris on Howard Stern one time, and he encouraged me to take the advice of experts because they’ve already been there. In such an analogous way, I took Funcom’s old model and have grown our business.

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True and false… this is the market and capitalism, most of wares are getting discounted in the end, yes, people asking why did i pay then 100 usd and you only 50 now?
well… lesson is, you wanna try new, you wanna be first? you wanna ride first train? this comes with paycheck…
some folks are patient or not so hyped about product, so later in time, seller cut price to encourage that kind of client base

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I respect that! But how this keeps your funs interested? What’s their reward for being with you all along? This should be only for the new costumers. The “old” and “regular” to your game should pay at once the price with the discount you are going to make in two months.
Why?
Because in the end, they “only” care if you’ll keep the lights on, nobody else!

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This is very much true, never ever underestimate the power of customer satisfaction, if you have a good relation and offer a good product at a fair price + deliver a good service(return policy, product transparency, fixing problems with products etc.), you get satisfied customers who will recommend you and your products because they got a good experience with their purchase, it is the cheapest and in many cases the best advertise you can get… Mouth to mouth recommendation between people will lead to a good reputation, which usually will lead to more customers and sales :slight_smile:
This however may not be the best way to maximize profit right here and now, but it is often a good foundation for future products :wink:

This I am a bit split on because should it matter that I have played the game since beginning of early access, still play and have +7000 hours in the game?

No not really, I don’t care for special treatment, all I want is to see progress and keep having a good time playing the game, especially when new updates and new content is available, which leads me to your second example… :slight_smile:
I do however believe that “veterans” or just simply old/long-time players who play the game game regularly between updates are a huge help for them because they are sort of those who keep the lights on between updates so that the game doesn’t seem dead at these times, they add a lot of value to the game, but still I don’t think they should have extra/better treatment than others, maybe some form of recognition which could be a thank you or a coupon with a discount on their next purchase, but other than that, no I don’t think there should be special treatment for them :slight_smile:

This is how business work in a lot of areas, when a specific product sales stagnate, it is either not “new” and special anymore, so they reduce the price of the product, put them on a sale or sell them in a bundle at a lower price, this I am fine with, I also bought the game and all Dlc’s at full price, simply because I was an early adopter and really wanted to play with it… I got something at a time when it was brand new, so I was happy with my purchase :slight_smile:

I have no idea what the future will bring, but like you I fear that we have only seen the beginning of their new strategies to maximize profits, it is no longer a question of delivering a good product at a fair price and leaving customers happy, but it is to create a need and exploit it to the point where they no longer will accept it.

I don’t think Funcom can ever take control since Tencent now own the majority of the company shares, and therefore in the end has the final say, if a company want to stay in full control, they need to either own at least 51% of their shares or make sure that no other companies have a majority.

I do however share and understand your frustrations and I believe there are many of us, time will tell if they succeed with these new predatory tactics.
The future of Conan Exiles depend on a lot of things like…

  • Can it bring enough profit for them to continue the development of new things for the game?
  • Can they keep or grow the playerbase, so that the potential customers for content expand?
  • Have they released a new cash cow(Dune?) and no longer need to keep CE alive?
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I am so happy to hear that your investment in customer care was fruitful, it brings me hope that customer care actually can be seen as an investment in the future of a business and be extra helpful through hard times, there really should be more focus on this, because both you and your customers are in a good relationship that benefits both :heart_eyes:

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This was covered here my “old friend” :wink:

Not once or twice we’ve seen in here… Hey, i got 11k hours in this game, why i don’t deserve the atlantean sword?

The old policy was different, the new one, gives no excuses, give people what they ask. Especially the ones that they support you all these years, they deserve it!

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Your reply there was probably written while I was busy writing my a bit longer post, spell checking and trying to make sure my translation made sense since I am not a native english speaker, so I didn’t see it until now :grin:

Still my opinion is that, personally I don’t need special treatment even though a small discount on next purchase would be fine, but it is not something I expect :slight_smile:
That said I would really want some transparency in their shop, what you actually are buying and a way to refund within a certain amount of time, especially if the damn thing don’t work(Latrine) :grin:

But still my main problems is the prices(overinflated compared to old dlc), their FOMO tactics, general lack of transparency and refund options.
Had it been a Steam purchase you would at least have a certain amount of time to try before you lost the ability to refund, but in the Bazaar, you are pretty much stuck with the purchase the second you have bought it, no matter if it works as described or not.

What I am trying to say is that, I would take a better experience for everyone over some maybe well deserved discounts for being a loyal customer any day, simply because I love to play this game, and especially with others, so if pricing, selling tactics and quality is fair on new content then there are more to enjoy the game with, that is all I want :star_struck:

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Thank you for the kind words.

I recapped the answer to that question already, but I’ll do it here again, even shorter: it’s a rebuttal to other forum users.

Every time someone brings up a complaint about the new monetization, the most popular reply from certain people is “you’re just cheap and want everything to be given to you for free”, along with several other equally dismissive replies.

I wrote this topic primarily to use as a rebuttal to those replies. I also hoped it would serve as a “safe space” where people might be able to discuss some of these complaints without that discussion being immediately sabotaged. Finally, I also wanted to raise awareness of the rhetorical tactics used to shut down the discussion.

“They”, as in Funcom? No, they won’t make a change based on this topic alone, although I’m hoping that it might contribute a little bit.

I could have written a much more concise post that only laid out and described the common complaints about monetization, without all the bits that talk about the common dismissals of those complaints. Had I done that, I might have had more hope that Funcom would act on it, because the information they need would have been presented in a better, more “concentrated” way.

But that’s not what I want. Even if there’s a chance that Funcom might act based on feedback presented by one person, I don’t want that. It’s better if they act based on feedback pouring in from many people rather than just few. And for that to happen, it’s more important to make a post like this, a post that tries to push back against efforts to shut down feedback.

These forums fail in their purpose every time a discussion gets shut down because someone posted some deliberately inflammatory reply that succeeded in derailing the conversation.

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Does it really matter? Providing feedback about the monetization and explaining what we don’t like about it won’t make improvements less likely. It might not help, but it won’t hurt. If Funcom won’t do anything with our feedback, it’s their choice. Our choice is to provide feedback or not.

I don’t mean this in a harsh or hostile way, but anyone who genuinely believes this topic is completely pointless is encouraged to leave it. Some of us wish to discuss these things and don’t believe such discussion is completely pointless, so either add something to that discussion or kindly let us do it in peace.

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Respectfully, that’s not the discussion this topic is supposed to be about. Like I explained repeatedly, this topic is supposed to be the discussion about the monetization, not about everything that might or might not be wrong with Funcom in general.

The devil is, as always, in the details. It’s easy to perceive and understand that there are many players who view the new monetization in the negative light. But it can be – and probably is – rather difficult to see what it is that people are upset with, and why, and how they would like to change it.

Think about it this way: if you have a bunch of people protesting in front of a building, but there’s a line of cops standing in front of them and yelling into their megaphones, it’s easy to understand that there’s a protest going on, but it might be hard to hear what the protesters are trying to say.

At any rate, this is the last reply I’m willing to post about this line of discussion. I will happily engage you in your topic of choice about whether Funcom is willing to listen or not, but I would like to ask you to respect this topic’s, well, topic :wink: