Bazaar Prices are FINE! Im gonna gladly buy few skins to support game dev - You don't have to buy all at once!

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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Maybe they miscalculated who their audience is for this game? It seems to attract a lot of older players who remember the Arnold movies and the cartoons and comics fondly. Those same older players also remember when the internet was almost completely free content and games were sold like physical board games - you buy the game or expansions, and you now own them in their entirety and that’s the end of it. So there’s a lot of rage from the older crowd. I’m one of them by the way - but tbh it doesn’t bother me that much. I have all the DLC but I’m not a collector type, and I’d prefer to be able to just get the odd thing I actually like. Rather than have to buy everything they release and get a bunch of stuff I don’t like that much into the bargain.

Or maybe this is a deliberate thing to get more younger players in and they’re betting on losing less older ones than gaining new younger ones?

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This one can tell you that you are having wrong bad fun and there is only one way to enjoy the game correctly. But this one hates lying, so it will be expensive.

Obvious jest.

As far as incidentally completing the pass, glad for you.
For those who play mostly on Siptah, it may be a bit more difficult as many high value options are Exiled Lands exclusives.
Mind you, if they added Siptah exclusive challenges to the pool, this one could only imagine the howling and gnashing of teeth.

But back on topic to the Bazaar itself.
Has anyone noted if the Sandstone Set 2 contents error has been corrected? Was it a display error or an actual contents error?

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Deceptive: If you want a single item, you nearly always have to buy more coins than the item costs, which then requires further purchases to use the remaining coins for another item. If you want to skip/boost your Battle Pass, you’re forced into spending more money than necessary to get coins to do so.

Injury to a Consumer: It has upset many players (mental anguish/FOMO) and stress them over not being able to continue enjoying their game in the same way. They can’t use portions of the “free” sorcery update, due to it being gated behind the Bazaar.

You might not think mental anguish/stress is a thing, but it very much is.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325479259_Predatory_monetization_features_in_video_games_eg_'loot_boxes'_and_Internet_gaming_disorder

The Battle Pass/Bazaar itself use predatory psychological tactics such as the flashing stuff that happens when you unlock new ranks/items. It’s designed to trigger your mind and make you feel good for doing so in order to coax you into continuing to do so.

The report digs into the “freemium” model employed by many games which force the player into increasingly lengthy busywork grinds that players are encouraged to pay real money to skip.

Oh, wow. Just like the Battle Pass is long and grindy and encourages offers players a real money option to skip ahead for their rewards. (The 1, 5, and 15 level skips available for $10 or $35 due to how the currency works.)

Limited-time promotions offering big deals for a short time or a limited number of packs worldwide create an artificial limitation, say the NCC, encouraging players to make impulse purchases before the chance is lost.

Hmmm…did the Bazaar not open with sales over the high prices to snatch up players and get impulse purchases before the sale was gone?

F*** the digital age and licensing/EULA bullshit. You never own anything anymore. Buy ebooks on Amazon? Good luck if they decide to kill your account. You won’t be able to access it.

Sony or Steam kill your account? You might have what you’ve got downloaded on your hard drive. Good luck accessing the store with no account to download your other content.

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You’re very much reaching my dude. There is nothing deceptive about any of it. Deceptive would be saying you buy the battle pass and get this stuff… and then you buy the battlepass and do not get the stuff.

Mental anguish and stress. Jesus.

I’ll concede your point when you find me a court case that makes this a predatory practice and illegal. Until then you’re posting opinion pieces. Yes reports cite this, and people write papers about predatory that, but the bottom line is the legality.

A predatory business practice is illegal. As such it will be shut down.

If you feel you’re crusading against actual predatory practices then put your money where your mouth is and go out there and bring them down. I’ve been a game dev in the industry since the 90s. There have been hundreds of thousands of crusaders trying to bring this type of model down for a decade and haven’t, because they can’t actually show anything illegal or legit predatory - its just opinions.

What they can do is organize and get the cancel-culture train going - which is whats happened to certain big name RPGs having to make changes in their game because racism and bigotry are hot button I-win weaponized tactics and they know they will lose some money and decided based on the free market that thats not a risk they want.

Then there is the harry potter fiasco where people are legit saying that the goblins are obviously anti Semitic jewish representations because some people said so and they are having to fight over that in the game dev world.

You don’t like grinds? You feel its predatory because companies give you the option to opt out of grinds by paying money and you feel thats bad wrong because you don’t want to grind and don’t want to have to pay for it?

Again - thats capitalism. Good luck proving to a court of law the mental anguish of having to grind for that imaginary sword skin proving your point my dude.

When they actually define FOMO as a legit predatory practice and not just something that angers people because they want something but don’t want to pay the asking price for it - I’ll re evaluate my stance. Until then I’ve been playing in plenty of FOMO games over the last decade NOT paying for their content and enjoying things just the same and paying for what I feel is worth it.

Which is working as intended. You want to change the world? Go out and do something about it. File litigation. Whip up the cancel culture train - thats an easy one you just have to exploit peoples’ emotions and get them angry - or pick up the keyboard and start writing your own game and put up your own game studio that does things how you feel it should be done and change the world.

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3. Stimulating Lights and Sounds

When you enter a casino, your senses are overwhelmed with exciting bright lights and the loud sounds of winning. This highly stimulating environment completely draws players in, enabling them to ignore the outside world and act before thinking about their losses.

Noises for Battle Pass unlocks, may be in the Bazaar as well.

6. Familiar Concepts

This one is emphasized in the backgrounds of the Battle Pass.
It’s also in the concepts of the challenges themselves. Kill this, go gather that, go explore here. Things that are comfortable to the mind for long term players. It makes you think “wow these are easy” and lull you into the system.

7. Cashless Games

When you play a slot machine, you’ll first feed cash into it. Your money is then converted into digital credits. When it’s time to cash out, the machine will not give you your change. Instead, it’ll print a voucher. These convenient vouchers make it easier for guests to forget they’re spending real money.

Sound familiar? Premium Currency.

8. A Sense of Control

Some games give players a false sense of control. When you play craps, you get to roll the dice. Likewise, when you play video poker, you get to choose which cards to keep.

You get to pick your challenges to take on.

Casinos have been cleverly designed in a way that plays on the weaknesses of human psychology to make sure you spend as much time there as possible.
Sure, we love the free drinks)

Oh…kinda like the free rewards on the Battle Pass…

Online platforms are working to boost the addictive factor. Fancy avatars and complex rewards systems are in place.

Okay, so instead of avatars, we get fancy building materials. Addictive to show off to people we play with. Look at the pretty designs I can make with these. Not like the bland base game stuff. Shiny new baubles to pull in those addicted.

Casinos actively control their sound environment. Most use upbeat music to create excitement, but they also use ringing bells or sirens to signify that people are winning. When people see and hear that others are winning, it creates a sense of possibility and even an expectation of winning.

Again back to sights and sounds to trigger stuff in our brains.

They use chips rather than cash, making it emotionally easier for people to part with money. Studies show that people tend to spend much more when paying by credit card than when paying with cash. Similarly, people tend to gamble more when they are not continually laying out money.

Literally all Premium Currency is this, and exactly why it exists in the first place.

Once a person is enticed to sit and try a slot machine, the likelihood that he will continue playing is primarily determined by the machine’s “reinforcement schedule.”
In simple terms, a reinforcer is anything that increases the probability that a particular behavior will reoccur. To the casino operator, the most desired behavior is continued play. Since the odds are stacked against the player, the more a person plays, the more he can lose money.

This one is why Crom coins are sold in packs and not like Crysta in Final Fantasy XIV. You are almost always spending more than you need to, in order to get what you want and feed the addiction. That’s the reinforcer in all of this.

Just look at the Bazaar pricing. It adds up to $45. But…you get so many more Crom coins if you buy the $50 pack…it’s not that much more…right?

That’s reinforcing in your mind that it’s okay to spend just a little bit more than you need to, because it’s a better deal The price of all the stuff reinforces that as well. Spend just a little more than necessary to get what you want…but then you have leftover coins. So spend just a little bit more…there’s no harm right?

None of this is new or revolutionary. Casinos have been doing this to people for decades. It crossed over into Mobile gaming. Now it’s in mainstream games. And if you think stuff like this isn’t taken into account when they design this stuff…then you are super naive.

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I don’t think you understand what FOMO actually is. Maybe you should read this. Instead of just trying to downplay it as meaningless and just people upset over high prices.

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Look, in principle I agree with you. Information wants to be free, etc. But realistically, how could businesses go on selling digital products to consumers that could be copied and given away freely? Anti-piracy has just gotten a lot better since the days you could bankrupt a small record company by downloading Kazaa. It might have gone a bit too far in the other direction - I’d prefer it if once I bought something there was a legal guarantee that the seller couldn’t just take it back on a whim. On the bright side, EULA’s are often unenforcable in courts.

So in principle, right on brother/sister/whoever :fist_right:t2:

In reality, this is the world now, and your choices are don’t participate, find technical ways around it (which is getting harder but I like a challenge), or like @auticus said become an activist or something. Complaining to the business for adopting standard current business practices instead of pre-digital-age practices that would cost them a lot of money is probs not going to do much.

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I’m not talking about that, so much as the fact the license says they can revoke it. There should legit be ZERO reason that can be a thing. You paid for the product.

In MMOs, yes, you should still get to be banned if you act like an asshat or the like. But any digital item that’s not falling under that? Should be illegal for companies to put stuff like that into it.

Like EULAs that say you can’t bad mouth or criticize their property.

The problem is these practices should be illegal to begin with. Not just accepted. Acceptance just allows them to get away with this BS.

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I understand all too well what FOMO is.

It is to me people who are over stressed over a video game because they can’t get all the things they want because they cannot or do not wish to afford it.

You’re making an emotional appeal. I am not moved by people that want something but cannot afford it or who can afford it but will not because they feel the price is too high (that is their right) but then get angry and all stressed out over it.

There are a lot of things in life that I want that I cannot afford or choose to not obtain because I feel the price is too high as well. The key difference is I’m not going after those people complaining about them being predatory because they have something I want but are asking too much for it.

You posting articles about how stressed people are and need to manage their stress over a video game does not do anything to further your argument. People are stressed because they are afraid they are missing out on cosmetic items in a VIDEO GAME. Those people I would stress should go evaluate their lives and seek help to manage that. If its causing them legit stress and mental anguish over cosmetic items in a video game, that is to me a serious problem and they should seek help immediately for their own sake.

That doesn’t make it predatory or evil. Thats capitalism and how capitalism works. Again - if you want to crusade against this then whip up the litigation paperwork and bring a civil suit to try and make FOMO an actual crime, not an internet crime to drive emotional arguments, or set up your own game dev shop and make games that don’t use FOMO as a business model.

“The problem is these practices should be illegal to begin with. Not just accepted. Acceptance just allows them to get away with this BS.”

Thats your opinion and youre free to have it, but… its your opinion. And not shared by everyone. If you want these practices to be illegal, strap your crusader boots on and go do the work to make it illegal.

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No, you’re just making excuses and downplaying people who legit suffer from it, and can’t help themselves. You’re trying to say that it’s all a choice or decision and it’s not a real thing.

And yes, you are very much saying it’s not a big deal when you sit and say stuff like this:

It shows you don’t understand mental illnesses at all. Or you simply don’t care and think it’s something people can manage on their own.

You’re also ignoring all the little psychological tricks that are being employed to use against people.

But I guess you think casinos are perfectly harmless and not predatory in any way. Because if it’s predatory, it’s illegal right. So much for all that stuff they use to influence your mind…guess it’s legal so it’s not predatory, despite being designed for just that purpose.

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I’m not making any excuses. I don’t share your opinion. At all.

Businesses don’t exist to cater to peoples’ mental illnesses.

All you are doing is screaming at a wall and resorting to assumptions and allegations.

"It shows you don’t understand mental illnesses at all. " - actually one of my degrees is in psychology. I know how mental illnesses work.

Its called having to take responsibility for your own actions. I know thats a new alien concept today, we need to be victims and blame other people and corporations for our inability to control ourselves - but really. Its about taking responsibility for your own action. If you cannot take responsibility for your own actions, you shouldn’t be allowed to be on the internet without supervision.

I know how casinos work. Thats why when I go to one I have a hard limit on what I spend. I take responsibility for my own actions. If I don’t want cosmetic video game items, I don’t buy them. I dn’t sit around wailing that the world is unfair and preying on me.

All you are doing is waving your banner proudly on what you feel is wrong and evil. Thats great for you - I will back you having your own opinion all day long - but no. You aren’t changing anything. You’re just complaining without doing anything about it. So go make casinos and fomo and all illegal.

Do the work. Emotional appeals don’t do anything to people like me, because you aren’t actually showing me anything other than you don’t like how things are but you won’t do anything to change it.

And I’m really really tired of people playing victims over something as silly as a cosmetic item in a video game - that they are actually saying they are being preyed upon because they can’t have what they want.

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I agree. People need to legally challenge that (not complain on forums or reddit) and force companies to prove they have a legal right to do that. Class action suits are good.

That’s an example of what I was saying about EULAs, they aren’t always laws. Good luck enforcing that in a court. Just because a company puts something in a EULA doesn’t make it legally binding. They do it in the hopes that people will think it’s legally binding. Of course you can freely criticize any product!

Maybe. Casinos and gambling are illegal in many places.

But these practices used by game companies (and social media corps btw) aren’t illegal because the law always lags behind new technology. The only way to get them to be illegal is by court cases and activism. If people are accepting it, it means lots of people aren’t bothered by it enough to go to court or engage in activism. They’d rather just shrug and accept it, or not play because it’s just a game after all.

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Then you should know how mobile games and casinos operate to get people to spend more and more money. And admit that it’s an exploitation more than a business practice.

So it isn’t the fault of a casino, mobile game developer, or anyone else that uses stuff like this. It’s all the fault of the user.

Funny how someone can have a degree in psychology, yet blithely ignore how things they employ trigger people’s minds to encourage them. Like the thing where scents in a casino caused an upshift in slot machine usage by as much as 46%.

And not everyone is capable of making this hard limit. You gonna sit and blame them if they have an addiction that hasn’t been diagnosed?

This stuff is designed to exploit people like that. And here you are making excuses that it’s just their fault, not the businesses employing tactics like this. It’s all the fault of the player that Funcom incorporated stuff that makes them feel good, and adds to the escapism from real life.

Using premium currency to disconnect them from real money, and feeding those pleasurable feelings. It’s exploitation pure and simple. It doesn’t even need an emotional element to it, as you keep trying to bring up, when emotion has nothing to do with it.

You know how casinos work.
You set a hard limit for yourself to combat this.
You wouldn’t need a hard limit if you didn’t think that stuff was designed to trigger your mind or prey on you to keep you shelling out money for them. You’d be able to go in, play a bit, and then leave without any problems at all.

Yet you admit it yourself. You put a strict limit because of how they are designed, because if you didn’t do that, where would you be?

So it’s totally different when a video game does it, is what you’re saying? There are plenty of people that get ruined in casinos because the design encourages their gambling addiction for the casino to milk them dry.

Now when a game company puts that stuff into a MTX shop, somehow it’s totally different?

Seems to me it’s exactly the same. It’s designed to milk the customer until they can’t give any more. Yet you wanna say no no, it’s all fine. I don’t have any sort of addiction or problem, therefore nobody else should either.

You’re not thinking outside of yourself. There are probably thousands, if not tens of thousands, who play Conan and other games that employ stuff like this. They use it as escapism, for a feeling of pleasure and accomplishment.

When we use the term predatory, it’s THESE gamers who are being targeted. The ones that will keep shelling out their money to Funcom for the Bazaar stuff, because they might suffer from addiction and can’t help themselves.

Whether it’s addiction to the escapism, addiction to collecting, FOMO triggering them to get it before it’s gone. Whatever the case may be. It is a thing for people.

And then we have people like you who try to blame them for it, no matter if they can help themselves or not, or even know that they have a problem to begin with.

And you target anyone trying to question this system or call them out on it. As if there is no reason to do so, when there very much is.

Seems to me like the majority are the ones against this type of business practice. Not the ones that accept it.

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Pretty much this. They likely don’t even realize this stuff is a thing, so they never question it. And you get other gamers telling them it’s all perfectly reasonable, nothing to fear about it. And so they never really learn any different.

Or else you get the ones like you said, can’t be bothered, or are unable to do so.
It’s how we’ve ended up where we are now in a lot of games.

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Thats how capitalism works yes. You come up with a business strategy and then push it to the max. In many ways any capitalistic business strategy is exploitation.

“Seems to me like the majority are the ones against this type of business practice. Not the ones that accept it.”

A) You have no reliable global data to go off of sir to even begin to make that call. Maybe in your little bubble where everyone agrees with you it may seem that way.

B) thats a most commonly used logical fallacy - appeal to the masses or majority - is a fallacious argument which is based on claiming a truth or affirming something is good because the majority thinks so . If you are going to be going to a court of law to assert your case, you just lost right there.

The entire cornerstone of your argument is emotional wailing. Its bad because some people can’t control themselves. Its bad because some people need video games as an escape so the video game cosmetic skin that costs money is bad.

And then you’re comparing casinos which sucker people out of thousands of dollars a night to include their mortgage, with $100 or so of DLC of imaginary skins that they can’t control themselves with. Sir we call that hyperbole. Also does nothing for your argument, and if you are trying to litigate a case in court, you lost once you begin employing it.

In short… you are screaming at the wind against capitalism.

I’m not BLAMING anyone for anything. I’m calling you out for sitting on your rear screaming at a computer monitor about capitalism but not going out and doing anything about it. I’m calling you out for using a logical fallacy-riddled argument that wouldn’t hold air in a paper bag because its entirely based on a moral crusade.

I call people out who like to be professional victims. Because its everywhere. And its ruining everything fun in the world.

But cheers. Continue screaming at your monitor. I can promise you that it will make zero impact on how things work or run.

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I don’t mind the prices. It’s all optional, nothing pay-to-win. Any idea how often the items available will be changed? I’m really hoping for the food and potion placeables I’ve seen from TestLive videos.

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Before I indulge my masochistic impulse to wade into this discussion, I just want to make it clear that I agree that BP and BLB aren’t “predatory monetization”, because that’s a term with relatively narrow definition that doesn’t apply to BP and BLB.

That said…

Which is why, throughout the history of capitalism, the working classes have fought the unchecked exploitation and have paid with literal blood for their rights. For example, most people would agree that it’s good that the employers can no longer force their workers to work more than a certain number of hours. I say “most”, because I’m pretty sure there are those on these forums who would find reasons to disagree, but let’s try to limit this discussion to people who still have a shred of humanity in them :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

No, the cornerstone of their argument is that legality does not automatically confer morality. The cornerstone of their argument is that the society has been slowly progressing over the course of history towards protecting, sheltering, and nurturing those who are weak and vulnerable and in the minority, rather than oppressing them or discarding them for the benefit of others.

In short, the cornerstone of their argument is that “everyone does it” and “that’s just business” is bullshіt we’ve been told to believe, because otherwise the Bad People Will Get Everyone’s Stuff :wink:

Yes, precisely. I don’t know if @Yshtola is aware of that and if they will allow themselves to admit it, but yes. The things we see in certain corners of online gaming are yet another symptom of unchecked and unregulated capitalism. Eventually, those get regulated, after a long, hard fight. This discussion here? That ain’t it. It’s not going to change either Funcom’s monetization strategy, or the industry practices in general. But that’s what it really is about.

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Oh I fully know it’s nothing more than p*ssing into the wind.

Thing is, if everyone kept their mouth shut because “it’s futile” then of course nothing can/will ever change.

But for those who do stand up and make the argument, it encourages others to stand up as well. If one can come out against it, they can as well. It loses some of the sense of futility.

Will it do anything? Probably not. Doesn’t mean there is no reason not to do it, though. ^^ All you’re losing is the time it takes to respond or reply. And if it brings other people into the discussion to make their voices heard, and that helps others, then even the time isn’t really lost either.

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Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t criticizing you. I’m sure you’re aware that I’ve also been complaining about most of the things you’re also complaining about. I’m just saying that I don’t think we’ll achieve anything, but that doesn’t mean I’m suggesting you should stop, or even that I intend to stop doing it myself :slight_smile:

I just wanted to point out that “you’re complaining about capitalism” is not wrong. But it also doesn’t automagically mean that our complaints are wrong. :wink:

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Oh I didn’t think that. ^^