Battle pass feedback

Sort of- the base game comes with all the content in it already.

You dont need the DLC to play the game. Nor do you need anything in the battle pass to do it either.

Ive already tested it without any dlc. You need good armor and weapons all of which is craftable in the base game. Armor earned in game is better than anything in DLC.

So im failing to see what the problem is. Because its getting into the “want” territory of what an experienced player has already.

…yeah, sure? I mean of course. Everything related to gaming comes in the “nice to have” section of life, more or less as far removed from “necessary” as it’s possible to get.

The problem - if indeed there is one - is that the model where you get one window of opportunity to acquire something, and after that it’s gone forever, turns some people off from the whole thing. That’s bad for the game.

If Funcom believes that, on balance, it’s still better for their pocketbook, and therefore ultimately for the future of the game, to do it anyway - well, that’s probably what’ll happen. Bottom lines, reality, etc.

But it really is a bit of a “speak up now or forever hold your peace” kinda deal. And I know from experience that Funcom does listen. Doesn’t mean they always do “what we want” (especially since there’s rarely a clear consensus on what that is), but I know that they DO want our feedback, and they’ll consider it, and then they’ll make the call on what they think is best, including all the factors we know nothing about.

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Sorry, I should clarify. I wasn’t meant to say “Mikey was calling it a rip-off”. It was in context to how I was explaining it and seeing people’s outrage over it. Like I said, FOMO discussions and the such, I totally get, I totally understand.

But the misinformation campaign and people acting like this is the worse thing of all time, that I don’t get. Worse part is they don’t even need to reach into the misinformation bag to make their argument. Their are perfectly legitimate concerns versus things like, “they are going to turn it into a Battle Royal!” (Which that one made me facepalm, if Funcom wanted to make a Battlye Royal, they would just make a new game. Not turn a survival sandbox based game into one, that would actually be more expensive, time consuming, and less well received.)

Speaking of facepalming. You are saying that you would rather pay for Sorcery on its own (pay for power and content), then you would to have a DLC structure that is extremely similar to the one Funcom has been doing for 4 years with cosmetic rewards…

I don’t even know where to start with that. Either you are trolling, which I don’t think you are, or its at the point where you just don’t like change. Not going to bother countering the rest of your points. You completely ignored everything I explained. I know when to quit bothering to engage in actual discussion.

Its an understandable concern and worth discussion. Therryy wrote up a great explanation though that players with open minds should consider. This is probably the part of the anti-monetization I understand the most (FOMO). But Therryy’s thing is worth reading.

So as I wrote about in my recap, there are 60 levels in the Battle Pass. (Which if you have concerns about how much grind is involved, you should look over the recap. Everything suggests its going to be very easy (as I attempted to explain to Tenzo).

Every x amount of levels earned, players will get Crom Coins as the reward. Dennis said it was about level 57/60 (though subject to change as it was at the time of the stream) where the player would earn back enough Crom Coins that they can have enough of them to pay off the NEXT Battle Pass. So, I’ll try to break it down as easily as I can.

  • Player buys Battle Pass 1 for $15.00 (or whatever is, I don’t know the dollar costs)

  • Player levels it to 60

  • 90 days later, Battle Pass 2 starts.

  • Player uses Crom Coins earned in Battle Pass 1 to pay for Battle Pass 2

  • Rinse and repeat

This is the part that confuses me most of all about the hysteria across the internet. TONS of players, including people in this very thread, have said they would be perfectly fine with paying for DLC’s as they were in 2018/2019 (season passes. Now if they think that Conan Exiles can survive on 1 $10.00 DLC per year as we saw in 2021, they might as well pack their bags now). In 2018 and 2019, 4 DLC’s were released each year. That averages out to about every 3 months.

Every 3 months, is that sounding familiar yet? Lets say they bought the DLC’s individually in 2018 and 2019. $10.00 each, $40.00 total. If the Battle Pass cost even half that total ($20.00) at the end of the year, they would still pay less money. Why? Because they could buy it 1 time, and then use the Crom Coins gained from the Battle Pass every time following. Now those same players could use the Crom Coins on the Bazaar instead, but that’s their choice (that word choice, keep that in your mind for a sec).

Players say they want cosmetic DLC’s every 3 months. Funcom says, here’s cosmetic rewards that come out every 3 months, and cheaper if that’s what the player wishes. Players then riot in the streets. That’s the part I’m not getting.

Remember that word choice I mentioned? The same players rioting in the streets have more often then not said they are being “forced” to pay for things. Some players have reached into that misinformation bag to say you will be locked out of content that’s already been paid for unless you pay " a monthly fee." None of that is true. Don’t want to buy the Battle Pass? Don’t want to buy stuff in the Bazaar? It’s the same concept as not wanting to buy DLC’s in the Steam store, Playstation Store, or Xbox store.

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I can only agree with Multi here, this rioting is really bad.

I’m one of those freaks who bought every DLC from the start.
I even bought the Collector’s Box to my digital version just to have Conan’s armor and sword.

Honestly, I would continue to do it the same way as before, no matter how others think about it.

Because this game is just worth it to me, through the community and the devs you really get a feeling of being a part of the game.

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Ditto on all counts - and as the epic Modders, inclusive of the great Multigun, are (based on Discord comments) fully in favour of the new stuff, is enough of a selling point to most fence-sitters.
Like others, am nearing the 8k in game hours and (still) not looking back!

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Still not seeing the issue people are wailing about other than you might have a time sensitive piece that locks and you aren’t paying attention.

There is NOTHING you need from the DLC to play effectively its all cosmetic.

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Not exactly. When I buy stuff from the shop, it is ready to use on any char. With BattlePass some items will be available as one time rewards only and the biggest difference is that you have to pay for the BattlePass and then you have to grind the BattlePass to get what you paid for. If for whatever reason you have no time to finish it, you paid and you were not able to get what you paid for unless you pay more. Plus many of us are tired of doing boring dailies. This is when the game starts feeling like a second job. Oh crap, I am super tired but I need to log in to do my dailies. Sounds familiar to anyone?

Den said you don’t have to do dailies everyday, you can collect the xp boosts and do dailies all day on the weekend. Great so much better …

The BattlePasses are usually designed to be boring and repetitive so that people can be more inclined to spend more money to buy levels.

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And that gap between paying and not paying has gotten pretty wide in some cases. Either buy the battle pass or spend the next ten IRL years playing 24 hours a day grinding out the equivalent. Yeah, that’s fair. :roll_eyes:

Hopefully CE won’t be anywhere near that bad.

While Halo has consumer friendly battle pass systems in terms of accessing past seasons, its a little ironic to bring it up as the gold standard versus a Ubisoft product. It launched with horrible results, with insanely niche challenge requirements and high grind that basically supremely encouraged the purchase of levels.

Now from what I’ve read about Halo is that 343 has tried to make some changes, though their player counts have tanked compared to its launch (not unexpected, I’m sure a large portion of players played for the Single Player only). So if the Battle Pass has had any redeeming qualities in terms of player counts, from what data is accessible, it doesn’t look great with significant losses every month in player counts.

Meanwhile, a game that is more closely aligned with Conan is Rainbow Six (like Conan, Rainbow Six released its Battle Pass 4 years after release). And while it isn’t near the peak that it was, the game has had its Battle Pass systems for 3 years now and it still maintains a healthy population. When comparing Rainbow Six and Halo, one is buy to play with a Battle Pass, and one is Free to Play with a Battle Pass (multiplayer mode). Take a guess which of the two games had a 24 hour peak of less then 6,000 players, and the other had a 24 hour peak of 67,000 players. Despite being a significantly older title (released in 2015), Rainbow Six was the one with 67,000 players.

With that said, its nearly impossible for me to look at something like Steam Charts and say, “Halo player counts are going down, it must be because of the Battle Pass” because that’s ignoring SOOOO many other variables that could be the cause. What is arguable, however, is that the Battle Pass for Halo being consumer friendly in terms of accessing past seasons hasn’t helped it’s cause. While Rainbow Six and its exclusivity methods seem to be doing just fine.

Take that for what you will.

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By no means did I suggest it’s the gold standard, just an example way of doing it.
Sea of Thieves is also an example of buy to play game that introduced battle passes later on. It’s also very comparable in that way.
Does it make as much money as R6? Probably not. Is it an unsustainable business model? Also probably not.
What I can say for sure is I’ve spent no money on R6 while I spent plenty on SoT.
I would not want conan to be more like R6 while I wouldn’t mind it being more like SoT.

Sea of Thieves rewards are almost all exclusively locked to their Battle Pass season, with only a few exceptions here and there. And there is no current way to play past seasons. Which is very similar to how Ubisoft does its stuff, along with how Conan Exiles is to be set up (assuming nothing changes between now and 3.0s release).

So this is a genuine question as Im trying to understand. If Conan Exiles offers a system very similar to Sea of Thieves, why is it okay for Sea of Thieves to do it, but not Conan? Sea of Thieves added its Batte Pass system 3 years after official launch, just 1 year sooner then Conans. Like Conan, it doesnt offer a current way to pay previous seasons. While Conan has said it wont offer any rewards from past seasons, they did say they will likely offer variants as offerings (you can see an example of what i mean in my dev stream recap). Finally, both Conan and Sea of Thieves have or will have a Microtransaction Store (Sea of Thieves added theirs in 2019). And as you said, both games are Buy 2 Play.

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They do add their paid battle pass rewards to their cash shop for direct purchase later on. This is not the exception but the norm.

I would have no issue with Conan doing this also.

For reference:
Paid tier rewards for S1: Dark Warsmith weapons, currently in the cash shop.
Paid tier rewards for S2: Black Phoenix pieces and other idividual items, currently in the cash shop.
Paid tier rewards for S3: Shining Pegasus set and Thunderous Fury pieces, currently in the cash shop.
Paid tier rewards for S4: Jack o’ Looter set, currently in the cash shop.
S4 rewards were moved to the emporium as S5 ended, I expect S5 rewards will be moved as the current season S6 ends.

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While you are correct that some past season content later comes in a shop bundle, based on the wiki, “the norm” might be a bit off in that estimate.

Of all the rewards offered in season 1, only the dark warsmith weapoms are offered (as you pointed out). None of the Frostbite set, or any others of the miscellaneous items found throughout season 1. Now that doesnt mean that cant change some day, and it very well may. But as of today, less then half of Season 1 has been offered via secondary means (i didnt count every single miscellaneous item, but out of 100 rewards there was something like 20 or so non currency or single use type items. So probably a good guess to say between 1/4 or 1/3 is offered via secondary methods).

I got the original idea that only some of the items are offered from past seasons via Firespark who discussed it in one of his recent videos. I dont see a reason to go season by season, but his description seems to hold.

But really we are arguing over semantics in that case. The point is that Sea of Thieves offers “some” past rewards in updated bundles after some time (the darksmith weapon bundle comes with an outfit that wasnt part of the original battle pass at all, as an example. I assume they reduce the cost of the set purchase if you have already acquired the weapons from the Battle Pass in Season 1).

So for Conan to be considered passable in your eyes, it would need to offer some rewards in updated bundles as well? I can get behind that argument, so long as it was done in a way not be harmful to the overal health and longrvity of the game (as seems to possibly be the case with Halo. Its interesting that despite Halo having a system in which all rewards can be gained from past seasons, Sea of Thieves has chosen a more hybrid approach despite both being Microsoft products).

Though with that said, i dont see a lot of difference between offering identical items later in the store, versus the potential Conan approach of offering similar but not the same items. Such as with the fancy bookcase type thing shown in my recap. Both examples, in my opinion, serve to help combat fomo (not get rid of it entirely, as even Sea of Thieves store items rotate and change).

So i once again question why Conans approach to its monetization is considered so bad, when it closely mirrors that of a game where its considered to do it right (Sea of Thieves). Further, i go back to my R6 example and its example A where exclusive rewards for a Battle Pass system is clearly not something that causes the death of a game as R6 continues to thrive to this day.

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Unless the promise was made not to do it ever of course :slight_smile:

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These are free tier rewards, available at the time to anyone playing the game without any money spent.
Why is it ok to do this for free stuff but not for paid stuff?
Well I’d prefer it wasn’t done for free stuff either, but I won’t complain about something they offer for free, same way I don’t complain about free limited time twitch drop rewards in Conan.

Also, the items in SoT cash shop, while available in bundles, are also available to be purchased individually, though the bundles are the better deal. This is great IMO, consumer choice and all, but that’s another topic of discussion regarding lotus bazaar and not the battle pass.

Nah, just having the past season’s paid items to be bought in a bundle later on is enough for me, even better if they can be bought individually. This is the standard in SoT too.

I found this reponse very noncommittal in the stream and it’s easier to make the arguement for a bookcase, less so for an armour set.

Due to differences mentioned above.

welcome to funcom forums

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The stages of cash shop monetization:

  1. Cosmetic Items for sale
  2. Cosmetic Items for sale limited time only
  3. “Boost”/Convenience Items debated to be P2W Items for sale (level faster, harvest faster, etc).
  4. Items only available in gambling boxes.
  5. Items only available in limited time only gambling boxes.
  6. P2W items for sale

Funcom has jumped from 0 to 2 in one motion. Will they stop here? Perhaps. But they’d be the first company I’ve experienced doing so. If they don’t make it at least stage 4 within the next 12 months I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

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They will never sale P2W items in battle passes.

Hold your horses or do some research no offence… there is no need to discus things they promised will never happen, cause we can always bring the promise up. I don’t think Funcom will damage their name.

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Okay, so you’re saying they won’t go all the way to stage 6? Okay neat. Glad that satisfies you. Shrug.

No what I’m trying to say is a promise made is a promise to keep.

They clearly stated they won’t add P2W in any form in the future.
If they break their promise they break out trust, which is very unwise of course.

You’re creating a problem which isn’t there.

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