To anyone suggesting that Battle Passes and Proprietary Currencies are “good things” because they help fund Funcom, let me make a very simple and easy suggestion that would also fund Funcom without all the hoops, hurdles and predatory practices that come along with them.
A simple Cash Shop.
Funcom makes item/emote/armor and you give them money. Directly. No buying coins, no daily grind or required “levels”, no timed exclusives. Funcom just sells you their items and add ons directly, in smaller batches then previous DLCs, and everyone is happy. Players get more content directly and Funcom gets more money, directly.
This kind of system worked EXTREMELY well for Monster Hunter World. A game that launched a year after Conan Exiles, had TONS of free updates over the years expanding the game exponentially and only one actual game content paid DLC expansion pack. But the game does have a cash shop, full of cosmetic emotes, chat stickers, room decorations and other silly add ons that don’t affect actual gameplay. You just pay actual money for the item and then you get the item. No hoops, no tricks, no predatory time limits. Just buy items and support the game.
I know I happily bought many of these entirely unneeded cosmetics (and not even actual character cosmetics, these were cosmetics to change your NPC helper) simply because the rest of the game experience was so fun and enjoyable that I wanted to give them additional support. If Funcom came out and said their “Bazaar” was just a shop to buy new items, weapons, decorations, mounts or even quests, using direct cash purchases I wouldn’t have had any complaints about that.
I have no issue giving Funcom my money. I do have issue with them adding known predatory marketing systems to artificially limit what I can buy and when.
This is exactly why games use proprietary currency. The only thing I have to correct is that while they’d (for example) only allow you to buy in minimum of 200cc, the cheapest item wouldn’t be 180cc, it’d be 220 cc. They do this to force you to buy a slightly larger priced pack, which will also not be enough to afford that thing that’s suspiciously priced just above what that more expensive pack gives you. It’s a very common, very known and very disliked marketing system among player bases…but investors just love it.
This is a game, not a job. I shouldn’t have to do busy work to get “free” rewards from a Battle Pass. If they want me to play their game more, they should be putting actual content into the game with actual rewards. “Daily Quests” is not content, it’s padding. I already have enough work to do in this game to keep my resources stocked up, I do not need artificial hurdles added from OUTSIDE of the game world to give me even more grinding to do just to get a damn window piece.
And yes, I know the whole “But it’s just cosmetic!” argument. And to that I respond…everything in the game is Cosmetic. This isn’t some elite PVP MMO or hardcore competitive Battle Royale. It’s an open world, sand box survival game, which can be run entirely on private servers or played solo. Outside of some very specific perks, none of the stats actually matter, and every single T3 building piece is exactly the same except for their looks.
This game isn’t just about conquering, surviving and thriving, it’s about conquering, surviving and thriving while looking good doing it. Cosmetics in this game isn’t just some throw away extra feature, Cosmetics IS the game.