I remember the days I looked forward to DLC drops. I purchased them all and have appreciated them greatly; even Siptah.
The Bazaar has always been problematic, at best, and ridiculous, most of the time.
The 2023 12 28 offerings illustrate this point.
The Yamatai Tavern set cost between $15.72 and $20.39, depending on the level at which Crom Coins are purchased. While it is a cool set, I will never buy it.
Additionally, this DLC is, exactly $0.27 less expensive than the current price of the game, if you bulk purchased Crom Coins. Thatâs insulting.
Sometime back, the Aquilonian Lifestyle hit and ranged between $27.25 and $35.34.
I guess folks are buying these items, but for me, itâs just another ill considered tactic pushing me away from the game.
For folks who want to review Bazaar prices, I am maintaining a Google Sheets file.
Itâs overpriced because as usual, Tencent target the rich people willing to spend hundreds of money to compensate for the lower number of sales.
The bazaar is not for the common people like us who are unwilling to spend that much.
As usual, i take only the building set albeit that the forlorn crypt is missing an interior wall, but thereâs no way that i will buy the Yamatai tavern set, the Aquilonian kingâs quarters set or the nemedian guard dog set.
Itâs too much for what they offer.
I will probably make an exception with the nemedian guard tower set⊠if itâs not at the price of the Yamatai tavern set.
At the end, only the Battle pass is worth buying for the value it offers.
My pain threshold is 1600 Corm Coins. I wonât buy anything thatâs more expensive. I almost choked on my tea when I saw what Funcom wanted for this all-deco Yamatai item set!
It looks like Iâm not a whale after all, just a pretty fat dolphin.
The existence of the previous ways of releasing DLC packs, like for example Debauchery of Derketo for $9.99 sitting right there one tab over is what mostly keeps my common sense from dissipating. ($8.99 for me cause of gamepass discount, which makes it even worse) But cost for content sitting side by side shows a drastic gap. On the other side of it as a battle pass recycler, meaning i bought the Age of Sorcery Season 1 for $10(1200 crom coins) , completed it there by giving me back the 1200 crom coins, used it to buy the Sorcery season 2 battlepass and repeated that all the way till now at Age of War Season 3, the amount of content from the 6 seasons that i only spent $10 on almost 2 years ago is by far the best $10 iâve ever spent on this game.
The prices compared to content and quality of the build sets are ridiculous. The old DLCâs were complete sets with everything you needed and they worked fine. Now you get a half set without all of the pieces you need for proper building and they do not even work properly. Then you get an extension pack to the set so now itâs double the price of the old DLCâs and you STILL donât have all of the pieces. And the old ones included tons of other stuff as wellâŠ
Blame the âwhalesâ, they feed into this kind of business practice, pushing greedy publishers to continue it.
And even if you push back, they will still try (just look at how Bethesda is trying to monetize mods again, after failing miserably the first time).
Itâs chinese PR, straight from these scammy p2w strategy games where you have to pay to gather more, pay to speed up the timers, pay for everything
Itâs the players who allow this to happen.
Donât buy it. Thats really all you can do. People have been complaining about bazaars and what not since they first came out before Conan Exiles. Raged on this very forum when the bazaar was announced. Will continue to rage throughout the rest of known history.
I work in the industry and the simple fact is - and I know you all already know this - that this stuff works and that it increases profitability. It always incites a ton of rage, and it also always never ceases to pay off. Having been a part of many studies, we found that a giant chunk of the player base raging were also putting coins in the til for the bazaar stuff.
Not gonna lie, I was waiting for this Yamatai set to release. I bought it without even looking at the price. Wasnât until I seen my Crom Coin balance afterwards, had me thinking WTF!
I apologise to those with a lesser disposal of âplay moneyâ, but yes, this set is ridiculously expensive.
This one is most offended that the seating cushions cannot be placed close to the tables, not as close as the picture indicates.
Worse still, the cushions are not a form of seat. No sitting on them and guests cannot sit on them.
What type of tavern set doesnât have landing spots for guests?
Well at least all the money theyâre getting from this stuff means they can get patches out frequently and are around to fix bugs and not make us wait upwards of a month for critical fixes to the game that affect their entire game loops and new features.
I built with it yesterday. The grating piece is the only one I didnt use. I suspect the difficulty people have is that the pieces are all foundation sized despite not necessarily being foundations so if you try to place the walls or ceiling as foundations it doesnt behave as you might think. They are still walls and ceilings despite being blocks and building with them as normal walls and ceiling works just fine when you realize that.
While I agree itâs too much, itâs still a price point that Iâm sure some will buy. And good for them that they can get something special. Itâs definitely not my fancy but I know plenty of Asian deco fans out there that will just eat it up
This smacks of class warfare/envy. You donât like the price and how dare someone else have the disposable income to feel itâs fine as is.
Truth of the matter is these whales feed the game and itâs the game I enjoy playing with or without customized stuff. Sure I will splurge here and there to get something nice and provide a signature design element but those who see no issue shelling out $20 for 5 pieces of building with very limited use (or noble clothes or whatever), they are ensuring the game continues even if I donât provide that month.
I just recently got Diablo 4 and these are chump change to what that game is charging for stuff. The game needs revenue to continue. What does it matter if the 1% has more options to decorate their bar if you can still enjoy the game?
Yeah, optional paid cosmetics are fine. Optional house pieces, houses, etc. Other games have them as well. Take ESO (Elder Scrolls Online), they have enormous vanity player homes that cost literal 100 real life dollars, or more. (and they look amazing, btw)
ButâŠyou know what else they have? Actual expansions every year, a few smaller ones and a big one (Siptah sized) yearly. This year even a new class was released, with great customer support, and a new gauntlet arena with challenges, etc.
Other actively supported quality games with optional paid cosmetics also regularly produce actual content. Including Diablo IV you mentioned, that has DLC in production.
What actual expansion did CE get since Siptah (yes, I love Siptah), other than half-baked quasi-mechanics and needless re-balances?
Well done to the Art and 3D team who make the cosmetics, I just wish there were expansions and engaging gameplay and context that came with them.
One game I like to compare shops with is Everquest 2. They have very similar items. Armor and weapon skins, building blocks, and placeables. Their shop is also quite old in video game terms, having been available since around 2007.
The prices of items in EQ2 vary pretty wildly, which is interesting because it does give players of different price points something to enjoy. For example some armor sets are only a few dollars in their currency, while others can be as high as $17.
But over all the average for an armor and weapon skin, or a placeable is about the same as Conan Exiles. With some cheaper, and some more expensive. But what about building pieces?
These are incredibly cheaper. Being at around 10-20 cents ($0.10-0.20) each. Or are they?
The issue with the EQ2 shop is items purchased are delivered to your character and not crafted. Meaning you only get one per character. If you wanted to build a 5x5 floor with those building pieces. Youâre looking at $2.50-5.00 spent for that. With a 10x10 being four times as much ($10-20) and so forth.
Whereas in Conan Exiles, we get the knowledge on our entire âaccountâ and can make as many armors, weapons, building pieces, and placeables as we wish with the one purchase.
And there is the rub, CE lets us get some decent value out of what we purchase. While contemporaries do not allow the same level of flexibility.
The Everquest games do this as well. Between the two of them there is over 30 expansions (>$1,000) worth. They also require (as ESO does) a subscription for the full experience. I can only speak for myself, but I am glad the just under $40 I spent (for both Conan and Siptah⊠I never pay full price due to Steam, and some of its âexploitsâ) was all I had to pay in order to play the full content of Conan Exiles and its continued development.
I really do find it ironic that people in this thread are wishing for CE to be like other games because they think it would result in a better value. But they arenât playing those games, yet have probably spent quite more of an investment in said games than in CE.
Iâve spent less on Conan Exiles than I have for a year sub on any of the aforementioned game. If I were to play one of those games for the six years that I played CE, I would have spent 8 times more than I have on CE. And that is without buying expansions or any shop items. Just with expansions alone⊠saying about 1 per year (the Everquests used to do more than that), that would have jumped that up to 9 times more easily.
Economically speaking⊠CE is the better value. The math supports it, and the fact that everyone here is here and not in those other games despite their âvastâ new content added every few months. I mean I did do a short stint recently on EQ2 with a friend, but that cost me 35% of the amount I spent on Conan Exiles for just that. With NOWHERE near 35% of the time being played, maybe closer to 3-5%.
This is really what it comes down to. I mean if weâre going to blame whales, then I am going to define a whale as anyone who has spent more money since Age of Sorcery on the game than I have. That means everyone who has purchased a single crom coin, for any reason, even for a looping battlepass, is a whale, a white knight, a shill, a foolish spender, and ever other nasty term people have come up with to displace responsibility.
Obviously that is wrong, but as @erjoh pointed out, its just jealousy that would drive that. No one is at fault for buying anything they wish to have. Its their decision, only they can determine the value to themselves, NO ONE else.
And letâs all be honest here. Letâs look at the game today. Lets take the storefront out and pretend it never existed. Leaving only the bits added since it was put in. This is the same game for those of us who have never purchased anything. Thereâs nothing new added in this example. The shop has changed nothing about the game in this example. Iâm not even going to entertain the idea that the game would be less developed by now without it, Iâm not going to make that argument (even though it is a valid one).
The point is, if you do not like the shop, donât participate in it. Your game will not change. Your game does not get worse because someone else has something that you think looks cool and you do not. It really doesnât. If youâre in a mental state where it actually DOES cause significant issues, you need to speak to a professional medical provider. That is a medical condition (and a potentially serious one at that). Seriously guys, if you see another player walking around with stuff you donât have and it sucks the enjoyment you have with the game, you need to tell this to your doctor, that is not normal.
But I donât believe most are actually suffering from some form of delusional disorder. Its more likely most are just misunderstanding or misattributing value or changes.
I have a delusional disorder. I prefer to be weak in a game and die with class, than be strong and bling-less. I love the shine and sparkles so much, that I am delusioned that I look cool in every playersâ eyes even as I am crushed like a crisp by the enemy. I feel the most happy in Conan when I spend time trying illusions over illusions.
