First I am not at all offended! So no worries there. I don’t mind people who question my motives, just as I question the motives of people who jump into this thread to bash me and cheerlead for FC while absolutely ignoring the legit concerns I raise, concerns that very well could have a negative effect on their own experience of this game. People who are obviously acting against their own self interest make me worry about them! LOL
So I’ll take a moment to speak to where I’m personally coming from. I love this game. Bugs and all. I wouldn’t play it without mods and I wouldn’t play it on anything but private servers. But the basic platform itself is fantastic. Since I’m old I didn’t grow up playing computer games but rather I read books and rode horses and did martial arts. I fenced, did archery and yes, even studied a little swordplay. And the influence of Conan (specifically Valeria and Belit) had no little to do with that. Because I grew up with Conan, both the stories by Robert E Howard and some comics. I grew up loving the art of Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo. So REH had a huge influence on my childhood and young adult life.
So OF COURSE I played Age of Conan when it came out and was active in its roleplaying forums for over a year before it did actually launch. I made great and long lasting friends (and no few enemies! LOL) in that game. I met my husband there while we both lived on opposite coasts. Yes, I married my guildie! LOL Our wedding rings are snakes to commemorate the Stygian characters we played and our first meeting in Khemi. And the development of Conan Exiles is what brought me back to Funcom after I vowed I’d never give them another penny after what they did to the roleplayng community in that game and how they ran the game down in general while they chased their next project, Secret World. I fear they’ll do the same thing to Conan Exiles while they chase Dune. So I would argue that few people can claim the same level of emotional attachment and investment in this game that I have. And that, to be blunt, is why I am such a harsh critic and why I take the time out of my day to address my concerns with this survey when I’ve largely departed from the forums outside of my own couple of pet roleplay projects I typically post about here.
So, to reiterate, I love this game. I want to see it succeed. And no, not by microtransactions. But by quality CONTENT. By ever evolving to be a better, smoother, higher functioning product. Yes, by bug fixing and by improving performance generally. By giving us quality expansions and fun cosmetic DLCs. By adding quality of life updates. More animations, more interactions, more things we can do with thralls, better control of thralls and their settings, etc. NOT by introducing calculated “frustrations” into the game that will lead players to buy “time saving” gimmicks or items that will confer any other advantage, otherwise known as the dreaded “pay to win.” And that survey definitely has made me deeply concerned that this might well be the route they choose to take to “maximize their profits.” I don’t WANT to think that about Funcom and I honestly DID NOT until I took this survey.
So if you’re genuinely curious or concerned about my motivations, well, there they are. You can take me at my word or not.
Now, you say, “And Halk is right about the microtransaction thing. If people want them, we might see them. If people don’t. Then we won’t.”
But that’s actually not true. When ESO announced that they were going to introduce loot boxes at a live event (I don’t remember which one it was) the person speaking was LITERALLY BOOED by the audience! The same reaction was given to the introduction of their cash shop. Their forums came alive with protest. Players did indeed leave. But none of that mattered. Not only did they introduce a cash shop and loot boxes but have broken every promise they made about the “limited” items that would be IN those loot boxes. They’ve gone on to introduce mechanics that keep people mindlessly logged in doing repetitive tasks and at the mercy of horrible RNG rather than introduce more and better content. The game is slowly becoming a Skinner box. And no amount of player protest or appeals to ethics has so much as slowed down this trend.
Why? Because the studies are there to show that while a small percentage of players will abandon a game that does these things a larger percentage of players will, however reluctantly, accept them and over time they will become completely normalized and the protests will stop and the wallets will open. And companies like the one that crafted this survey are behind those studies. And they are very transparent about that if you bother to dig into their website. It’s completely predatory and we consumers keep letting it happen. I really don’t want it to happen here.
Do I want to silence players who might actually WANT microtransactions, “time saving” devices and “pay to win” items? Actually, no. What I’d love is for them to come forward and logically explain why they think these things are a good idea, are not predatory, and why we should stop resisting them. I would like for them to have the courage of their convictions and be willing to expose them to debate.
Lastly, you say, “But finally… I think Funcom may have used something a bit too hardcore for the survey if I’m to be honest. It could have been shortened up a bit. Or they could have given an incentive to completing it like we got with pre-ordering with the Atlantean Sword or Royal Armor. Not quite a full DLC, but a little thank you. Then they may have gotten a larger sample size. Though some people may have clicked through it (though if Immersyve is world class… they should have a means of timing a survey to see if it was taken too quickly and dump those results or flag them). “
I didn’t need an incentive to take the survey. And I answered it all honestly myself despite being entirely put off by the personal questions and the lack of any sort of transparency about what they’ll be doing (or not doing) with our IP addresses. But both are valid concerns which is why I brought them forth. Ditto to my concerns about the many questions that were obviously testing for acceptance of microtransactions and other nefarious monezitation schemes. But one of the biggest things for me was how BADLY the survey was constructed. Spelling errors, questions that demanded a write in answer but didn’t provide the means TO write anything in, etc. all speak to anything but a “world class” company that makes their profits on this kind of thing. It was a hack job and I feel bad for FC for being taken in by it. I hope they ask for, and get, their money back. Because the survey itself is so poorly executed that it’s embarrassing.