Of course, I was being unclear in my earlier post. What I referred to as the “monetization system” was not meant to refer to the cosmetics only, but the whole Ages system and the new mechanics brought into the game through them, such as Sorcery (disappointing), the new Purge (promising, but with severe flaws), and the Events (which never worked properly).

Yes, those were all free features, but their release was forced into this quarterly release schedule that so pleases the investors, and thus they all were… less than perfectly executed.

The cosmetic stuff mostly works, and looks pretty. The supposedly functional buyable objects also seem to work as purely cosmetic, and pretty, which is a shame, especially since we won’t know before pourchasing whether an object is functional or cosmetic.But those are little things.

It’s the need to rush the big things, and the lack of time to fix broken things, that causes a lot of the unhappiness we see. It’s not like Funcom was ever very good at releasing big features that weren’t seriously broken upon release, but at least before the Tencent takeover they could postpone releases if they were hopelessly broken. And not, like, ban half of their player base by accident and then go for holidays for a month before getting back to fixing whatever new game features they added that were maybe a little broken too.

Investor interests do not unfortunately often align with making a better product, whether it’s video games, mobile phones or cars.

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Imagine you are UI designer who designed this.

And now imagine you have to play the game and provide extensive report on your game play experience.
What are the chances you will write some thing like “why the :psyduck: cant I read the description of the item? Bro, text clipping in 2024? For real? Who the :psyduck: designed that that piece of :poop: ?”
Now lets change the scenario to be more interesting - you are told to report on something you dont like done by someone else. And to make things even more interesting - you know that a) this person has higher standing then you do and b) this person has an enormous ego.

And if you think you can get away by doing anonymous reports think again, because anonymity can really work when reports are in the thousands - I bet all Funcom dont have that many employees (including janitors and CEOs).

Simply put - your idea, while sound on paper, has little real life value because the goal of you as player and you as someone who develops the game is vastly different. Players want an engaging, bug free, interesting product.
Developers want to get payed - they dont care if product is interesting or engaging. They dont care if game spews German translations in English version of the game or if your thralls fall throw terrain for 5 years straight. They will get away with any bullshit excuses, faked bug fix reports, ignorance and delusional ideas - as long as they get their paycheck.

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Ah, this one better understands.
Gratitude for clarification.

On a conceptual level, this one likes the idea of Ages.
However, from early on it, it was apparent they were a bit too rushed. This one advocated for a season between Ages to do the clean up and prep for the next Age, but an extra chapter on each Age is just as well.

The production treadmill is obviously at an unsustainable pace. To be entirely fair, Funcom wasn’t good at timely or consistent updates even as far back as the old culture pack DLC days and saw several “season packs” of those sit vacant until the near the end of their allotted span and then everything all at once.
Funcom sorta leisurely meandered thru it’s updates.

Then, with the Tencent acquisition, it was off to the races.
This one doesn’t expect any system to work well when it expects the pace to go from idyllic stroll to 7 minute/mile run with little preamble. Down that road lies heart attacks and severe damage to the system.

This one understands your point.

This one still wonders where the decision was made that taverns and inventory UIs are Age of War material (rather than an Age of Civilization, ancient and wicked). The combat reinvention, as much as this one loathes it, is at least in the correctly labeled Age.
Perhaps we can torture the concept a little?
War.
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing at all!
In that case we could fit any bad idea in the Age of War… But that is perhaps not exactly as intended?

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“War. It’s fantastic.”

“War has never been so much fun.”

“War. War never changes.”

“Frankly, I had enjoyed the war.”

At least war is good for memorable quotes about it. Unfortunately none of them seem to come from Conan Exiles.

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To continue with the almost adjacent quotes, and one that is pertinent, and certain to rustle the occasional purist jimmies…

For no one – no one in this world can you trust. Not men, not women, not beasts.

But this one will do penance with a Howard quote to balance.

In the old free days all I wanted was a sharp sword and a straight path to my enemies. Now no paths are straight and my sword is useless.

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Exactly.

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You are mossing the point. I am not saying they can’t add those. But an animation programmer working on new animation vs spending time figuring out why we get stuck in a crab walk (a lot) is a not what i would call prioritizing quality for the customer. If the team is scaled back labor wise, fixing bugs needs to be somewhere above a fun, non-survival/non-combat mechanic.

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You’re missing my point. An issue with an animation getting stuck may not be an animation-related problem at all, so the animator would be the wrong person to try and fix it.

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