Did they treat us like actual people?
I need you to elaborate.
If you’re referring to how the devs and community managers respond to us on the forums then yes. If you’re responding to how tencent is squeezing as much money as possible out of us then obviously not, but they’re not blue-posting on these forums. If you’re referring to the devs not being able to deliver a decent product with the resources available to them, that’s an entirely different issue than treating us like people.
In other words: yelling at and bullying Dennis or Andy when they try to communicate with the community won’t suddenly make Tencent any less ■■■■■■. It’ll just make them less likely to respond.
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Yes. It was totally “penguin.” LOL
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That’s always been the price of the DLCs. And it was too low. Seriously. I expected them to be $20 for what you got. They were an amazing value and I snapped them all up plus many an extra copy for my friends. I gave them away as prizes to my RP community. And I was pretty sure it wouldn’t last. The cash shop is no doubt making them a lot more money. But for what we’re paying now I expect:
Things NOT to be broken and to perform as expected.
That armor, weapons and pets have no better stats than what is available in base game.
That they not only listen to player requests for this kind of content but that they actually SOLICIT our requests. For instance, I’ve mentioned many times that I’d buy ALL the pets they have put out of there was an option to take the ridiculous looking armor OFF of them. Or if they’d just reissue them without it. But apparently they don’t want or need my money all that much.
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Oh they getting real responsive, as in knee jerk.
Seems I’m getting posts pulled on the regular for no reason other then some one is having fun flagging my posts, that get immediate, no options deletion.
Innocuous one liners, while straight up directory posts are going no where.
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Well, we must remember that the new overlords are not exactly fans of free speech. 
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I don’t think it’s a free speech thing so much as I live on a tangent and often make snide remarks. There is a thread that is being very tightly moderated, not a bad thing, but I need to tip toe, not in my nature.
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I‘m not a fan of insults, but completely ignoring your community isn’t exactly “treating someone like an actual human being”.
I don’t want to make excuses for toxic behavior, but FC undeniably made some mistakes. It shouldn’t be surprising that people voice their opinions… some of which are very harsh.
Of course we could ask the question: who went too far first?
But at the end of the day, THEY want to make money. THEY want us to play their game.
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Ah ah, no worries x)
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Im done! GG funcom, i wont buy your conan exiles in the sand game either.
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And YOU want Funcom to respond to the community and make the game better.
It’s not about who came first the chicken or the egg, it’s what steps we can take on our end to meet them in the middle.
Otherwise it’s just:
This reminds me of a customer interaction I had in my first job. I was working at a movie theater and had a customer come out of one of the auditoriums asking for a refund. I suppose he didn’t feel the movie he was watching was something he liked.
There was several problems. I wasn’t authorized to take the money out of the register, the manager was out to lunch, the theater wouldn’t give refunds unless there was a stoppage that couldn’t be fixed quickly (and I was experienced enough as a projectionist to prevent this), and the guy came out with a very irate attitude.
Needless to say the situation wasn’t acceptable to him, and there wasn’t anyway I could personal fix it. So he went a verbal altercation (to which I did not reciprocate). I wasn’t even an adult yet, just a teenager, yet I’m getting verbally abused by someone twice my age because they thought they had a right to. All for the wage of $5.15/hr, which even back then was paltry for a projectionist (it wasn’t digital yet).
Whether he had a right to a refund, and whether or not the manager should have been there (lunch breaks are required by law if you work a certain amount of hours in a day), is all irrelevant. There was no right for this guy to talk to me in the way that he did.
What I have noticed about people is in person, there is usually a politeness even if they aren’t getting their way or even being treated unfairly. They don’t lose their tempers when face to face. I’m not saying that internet anonymity is a problem because even in person you are anonymous in most situations (I never knew the above guy’s name, and wouldn’t recognize his face if I saw him again, only remember the interaction). And I’m not even going to suggest that people are afraid to act up in person. But there is a detachment. When FC sends a rep out to give a message, people don’t see a person, they see text. Even if the rep is on a stream, its a ‘movie’ to most people. They don’t hear the breathing, the air moving when the people move, feel the vibrations when they move around, or the smells of their attire. There’s a lot that goes on when you’re face to face with someone that subconsciously adjusts how you act. And very few tend to get adversarial in said situations (and well the ones that do, make up for it in bad ways).
Before we had internet, the only communications we got from developers and publishers of video games were the advertisements you’d see on TV or in Magazines. I’m not certain when or even why such a standard among us players changed.
And we did have overpriced games and hardware even in the 1980s. Some NES games went for $50 ($120 now adjusted for inflation) and many were not worth that at all. But the reaction from the players then was to simply not purchase said things.
Its like going to a movie. Which is another form of entertainment. Locally the theaters sell you a ticket for $6-8. Very cheap price compared to other locations around the country here and probably globally. Of course they rip you on drinks and popcorn. I can tell you right now that a large bag of popcorn is not worth $10, but that’s what they sell it for. The bag is worth only 2-3 cents. The kernals, butter, and means to make them at MOST makes the whole thing worth about 50 cents. But they do a 20x markup. And sure they have expenses, wages, electricity, water, rent (for building and films), but its still a hefty markup. And I know many still go to the theater and simply watch the movie and don’t buy the concessions. But I will say this, most people do buy because they want the experience of a movie, and drink, and popcorn. Its worth it to them, and good for them that they can afford such.
But telling a projectionist or a game dev that they don’t know how to do their job, or insulting their very character, or attacking any person who has no agency to affect changes in the way desired, is not warranted. And at the end of the day is a waste of effort.
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If only.
Some times I wonder if this is a societal thing or a generational thing.
I grew up playing the dozens. Buddies pick on each other. I’m pretty thick skinned. But some; IMO, look for reason to be offended.
The other thing is terms have changed. Words meanings have changed faster then some of us have learned them. We don’t mean to infer the offense that is taken.
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The community that interact with US are funcom representatives.
They are the ones hired to monitor and to deliver the mensages to and from funcom.
Not making ir personal is the one thing we need to be careful.
Now calling a a company incompetent is not a personal attack agaisnt anyone in particular but to the whole company.
You cant go around saying that we are the ones responsible for their fuccks ups. Or that we are responsible for the lack of comunication when their job is to gather and communicate.
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We also had games that were largely finished and the bugs were less acceptable. Also, the market was smaller, so a blow to the studio’s reputation would sting a lot more.
I’m not saying there weren’t any exceptions. I’m also not saying it was “a better time”. I’m merely commenting on what changed and why.
…and because you can’t bring your own drink and snacks. You don’t get 20x markup without some kind of shenanigans. In this case, the shenanigans involve having a monopoly 
Personal attacks aren’t justified. Period.
On the other hand, neither is reinterpreting every criticism as a personal attack, which is another popular extreme here.
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Sorry man, but you and @Taemien seem to come from the same camp.
I didn’t insult anyone specifically, yes i ranted a bunch of times… won’t deny that.
But let’s take Andy for example, in his so called “Q&A”-thread he didn’t provide a lot of information, neither answered any questions.
Maybe he is not authorized… 
I didn’t insult him, but of course i voiced my thoughts… that this thread is pointless.
I never would insult someone specifically, because i am not a part of FC and have no insight in the company.
But i won‘t shy back to tell my opinions.
I won’t support anyone who is insulting people, but you guys behave like EVERYONE of us is doing it.
And this comparison makes no sense. If an employee is doing a bad job, his boss asks him “why”… and the employee’s response is: “the customer treated me not very respectful”…
Guess what happens…
The employee will be fired because he is damaging the brand, the company FFS!
(Or is FC trying to follow the Disney formula?)
… And regarding your charming anecdote @Taemien , the guy was absolutely wrong.
If you buy the ticket for a movie you don’t know, there will always be a risk that you might won’t like it.
And you where underaged and not in charge.
But i don’t get what you’re trying to tell here.
Regardless, it is an equally nonsensical comparison.
Movies and video games are very different media which work very differently.
Losing 2 hours of your life to a bad movie is NOTHING in comparison to lose hundreds or even THOUSANDS of hours of your life.
Before AoS, CE slowly but surely improved… Now it’s just getting worse with every new installment of “quality of life changes nobody asked for”.
Did i insult anyone with anything i said?
Don’t think there was an insult…
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We don’t. There’s a reason why I said this:
What I called out there happens with depressing regularity. Let’s say someone from Funcom posts something, and there are 10 replies. Out of those 10 replies, say 7 are harsh criticisms without personal attacks and 3 cross the line into attacks and abuse. Instead of reprimanding those 3 directly, we get people posting generalizations about how Funcom is right to ignore the community because we always “bully” them.
On top of that, the same people who post those generalizations always seem to forget that there are people at Funcom in charge of moderating these forums. I’m not saying it’s easy to do so, but I wish we could all just do jobs that are always easy.
If they actually took the time and effort to both properly moderate the forums and use those forums to engage with the community, we would have a better community and a healthier relationship with Funcom.
And this isn’t just wishful thinking, because I’ve been here long enough that I remember when the situation was better.
Precisely what I said in the last paragraph of my reply to @Taemien 
Sorry if I didn’t phrase it well enough. I hope I clarified it now.
I’ll be honest and admit that I wasn’t paying enough attention to this thread to answer that question. In fact, I was pretty sloppy and posted a wrong answer when I got tagged.
I try to stay away from the discussions of Bazaar pricing, because I think it’s pointless. It’s very clear to me that Funcom is targeting people who are called “whales” in the industry jargon (as usual, I reiterate that it’s not an insult). My problems with the Bazaar are multiple, but high prices are not one of them.
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One could say people bullies them because they never listened to community in first place. But … yeah, that’s true.
Just … sorry, not sorry about that !
This isn’t actually true. I will admit, most of what I am going to say was in due part the ignorance of the playerbase during the time. But if you look at the NES library of around 800 games. Less than a quarter of them are what many would call acceptable by today’s standards when it comes to performance and bugs (forgoing graphics quality of course). And I can say this with pretty decent knowledge on it due to it being the console I play the most currently. I’ve actually spent more on upgrading my NES with flashcarts and modifications than I have on Conan Exiles since it released. And they say you can’t mod on console… 
I want to point out that neither of us are trying to say everyone does this. And I don’t believe you have (I don’t remember you doing this, so I will gladly give you the benefit of the doubt here).
In fact I think it was you that said somewhere irrc (and correct me if I am wrong, my memory is bad here) that said something along the lines of “Calling something bad” is ok, “Calling someone bad” is not ok.
So please don’t take my response as a criticism of you. I was just commenting on the fact that just because we get no information, doesn’t mean we’re not being treated badly.
As for Andy not being able to give details. Well there’s a few reasons for that. He’s not a developer. He’s a community manager. Its like if you go to the front register of a retail store. They don’t know at any given moment what the people in the back are doing. They can go back and check, but they aren’t exactly going to be able to tell it in terms that always make sense.
In this case, it doesn’t make sense for Andy to come back and say they are trying to fix something but keep getting unreal error x or some other developer jargon. Some of us may be able to understand it, but some of that information may get reinterpreted by the Community Manager relaying it since that’s likely not his expertise. So instead they dumb it down, and hence why we get the responses from Andy and other Community Managers that they are still looking into it.
Over 99% of the community isn’t going to understand the minute details. And I know that some of you wouldn’t mind a condensed version, but I don’t think Community Managers are equipped to translate it to something inbetween, nor do the developers have time to do it themselves.
As for pricing, well businesses always charge whatever prices they can get, and there isn’t anything unethical or immoral when those things are luxury services.
I don’t like the prices in the bazaar. But when I purchased the game in 2017, there was no bazaar. There was no DLC. Adding the DLCs didn’t take away from my game. Adding the Bazaar didn’t take away from my game. Adding the Battlepasses didn’t take away from my game. Even when they remove the Battlepass isn’t taking anything away because it wasn’t there to begin with.
So when people say they are quitting because of prices (and I’m not suggesting they are wrong for doing so), I have to ask. If they didn’t add those things at all, and the game stayed how it was with only the free content and updates we got alongside these things, would the game be better or worse for them?
I honestly cannot say it would be changed in either way. For me. I haven’t purchased anything from the Bazaar. I haven’t purchased any crom coin. So those things never existing means I would be playing the exact game now. If they tripled the prices in the bazaar and tripled the price of crom coin it wouldn’t change anything for me.
If they halved the prices of both… well maybe I might buy something. But probably not since the prices aren’t exactly a concern for me there, but how the bazaar itself is on a rotating stock and not an always on list. I am actually refraining from purchasing until then because of that’s the stance I’ve taken. Whether it is working or not, I don’t care. I buy when the shop is operating in a way I wish to do business with.
Otherwise, I’m content playing the game I paid for just about 7 years ago. Just like if I do go to a theater, I’m content paying a few bucks for a ticket, and just carrying a water bottle in with me.
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I guess we can chalk that up to a difference between platforms. I started playing on micros like Spectrum and Commodore, and then switched to PC. My first console experience was with PS2, and since then I’ve had a few consoles, but I still prefer PC.
So my opinions are mostly rooted in the history and the state of the PC games industry. I can’t speak for consoles, but I can assure you that PCs had none of this “here’s an unfinished game, pay me for the privilege of beta testing it” stuff until someone came up with the idea of “early access”. As for bugs, I want to reiterate that I didn’t say games were bug-free, just that bugs were less acceptable.
Bugs are a fact of software development and every game has some bugs. But the current state of Conan Exiles is largely deplorable. And the state of the industry in general is far from what I would like it to be: I enjoyed the crap out of CP2077, but that’s because I bought it several months after its horrible launch.
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