Think the issue is the definition of cosmetic. I know you are using it as nongame play additions. But I see it as superficial. The DLCs are not superficial, they are fully modeled, textured new content.
Modeling a new set of armor takes about the same time now as it did 7 years ago. If anyone’s wages have remained stagnant for 7 years you have my sympathies. Even I get cost of living increases.
Apologies for interference between the lovely chat you have with fellow @nimbleshadow, but i believe that you are far from the real case with dlcs. The art design team on dlcs were preparing at least 3 options of each piece they made. From building to gear! I don’t know and i cannot tell how they decide what will come out in the market, but i do remember the Livestream for nemedian dlc, a dev from the art design team making this statement.
Now i don’t believe they do the same, their job seems less refined when presented on sale and most pieces need a couple of fixes or patches to be “completely” operational.
So i believe that the time art design needs now for an armor piece is way less than it use to be
Yet for this reason the sweet “bosses” are pushing art team to produce more content for sale in way less time lines they had to prepare a dlc.
So i don’t believe that Conan exiles devs now are having good time with the game if you’re getting me.
Bear in mind the link I posted above from ages ago… the art and the bugs come from two different places. The skeletal meshes with materials and textures are pretty slim when it gets handed over to the dev team to integrate into the game. There aren’t any “bugs” attached to what Vebjorn makes. It picks up bugs when it gets attached to a base game blueprint/c code that has a bug in it. I see no sacrifice in quality when it comes to the modeling done for the bazaar, in fact I see the opposite. The proliferation of capes and detailing on the bazaar pieces is gorgeous, especially when you compare it to something like guardian armor. Compare these two:
While I’ve cherry picked what I could find easily off the interwebs, I find this to be true for all the bazaar armor I’ve purchased. It is just more detailed and prettier in general. The models get function added later so I see no visual quality compromise, in fact, I see the opposite. Same is true with the placeables. The model itself is always fabulous; whether or not it gets a bit janky when attached to the master placeable blueprint correctly or not is outside of the artist.
And there is the issue.
Art no matter the medium will and always has been subjective.
So it makes sense, people will have varying degrees of the value it is set at.
For example, i think a lot of Picasso’s work is lazy and i wouldn’t spend more than a couple bucks on it, others may be willing to pay 1000’s, which is crazy to me, but that’s just how subjectivity and art works.
As artists become more familiar with the tools it’s expected that the work involved gets easier as they mature in their job and learn new tricks of the trade and get better, not to forget the evolution of the software.
So many of us will expect pricing not to go exponentially higher over the years, because it should have gotten easier and in some cases less time consuming as time goes on, of course it depends on the game in some cases.
It hasn’t gotten more difficult imo, so in turn raising prices looks more like the company either has money management issues or is just being greedy.
I am referring to crazy spikes in pricing, not gradual increases due to economic issues of the time.
There has been nothing gradual about price increases in the last few years for anything.
$10 in 2021 (people of the dragon) is $11.57 in 2024
$10 in 2017 (Conan Exiles official release) is $12.79 in 2024.
Mind you, inflation looking at currency value often dovetails from purchasing power, especially as related to real estate, food, ect…
But the actual inflation point is significantly smaller than most people think because the majority of us live in the places seeing the worst crunch as a result of rising cost of living.
While this one will cheerfully go into a greedflation textwall, that is a bit divergent from the core principle of the thread… maybe…
Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder. That doesn’t devalue the cost, especially production artistry. It’s not really based on customer taste but measurable labour cost.
I had to study Picasso and his pieces are a lot more complex than most realize. The same for Monet or any studied artists of the past. I don’t like Picasso though, visually they are unappealing to me but I realize the work that went into it.
Would you say the same to a plumber? You pay an experienced plumber more.
If the employees are getting cost of living and performance increases, ya damn right Funcom is going to increase the cost of any content they release. That says more about the company though, not the artists.
Oh, this one would like to put in another note!
Wages (in most jobs) in this one’s nation were extremely stagnant for decades.
Only in the past few years has there been much catch up. In response to that catch up, the government gang decided that increasing wages were the biggest enemy of a stable economy and did what they could to encourage private enterprises to curtail payroll.
Meanwhile, eggs more than doubled in price.
This is another reason this one notes that looking at raw inflation may not be a great way to look at value/cost.
Of course, this is based on the USD, which, while a common reserve currency world wide, is far from the only player in the game.
But there is a peak, once you under stand the software, are familiar with using it, you hit a point where you can’t get any faster or make it any easier.
And the cost of the evolution. Not sure what software they use, but most of it has been monopolized to one company and you rent to use.
When I was doing it the base program was $550 + $ updates. And that was an artist license. Commercial was much more.
Of the time I did CG art after the first year it didn’t get easier or faster. But my bills kept going up.
But what if the economics issues of this time are crazy cost increases?
I’m not saying the Bazaar prices are reasonable, but please lets not under value the people’s job it is to make the content.
none of us actually know how much of the profits are going to paying the artists vs the profit going to the owners at the top. i have my suspicions, but regardless, i think the art in the bazaar items i have seen is good. not good enough for my money, but they look nice.
THIS.
Absolutely agree, the content creators deserve their dues for sure, and i am not trying to devalue the artist’s work in anyway of course either.
Just trying to help with making sense of what some of us are saying.
Edited my essay down to something more manageable lol.
The lack of transparency when it comes to the price increases doesn’t help when you see soo many contradictions from game companies these days.
Is my money going to the employees or just to the ceo and the shareholder?
Is it paying to keep the lights on or what?
Who is benefiting from the increases and in what way?
I don’t mind paying for a good quality product, never have, but i do have problems with paying more for less and with no justification.
Quality isn’t getting any better that’s for sure, are the employees at least making better wages?
What is the justification?
They owe us absolutely nothing of course.
Well at any rate, since this is really going off topic i imagine, maybe someone within the company can make use of what goes on in this discussion and something beneficial makes it’s way through.
Long story short, its going to overall profitability.
A nice comparison would be gurnaki vs savage frontier, not debauchery of Derketo.
I don’t believe that the art team do something less now don’t get me wrong, i just believe they have more pressure and less time. So when something is delayed, which is absolutely logical, we are all human beings, this will lead to a chain of little issues and delays of course.
I know that you are making your living in this area and i am far away from this area in this part. But i believe that when it comes to people, the problems are always similar 
.
“Errare humanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum.”
Well, there is a difference between failure and sloppiness, especially if the latter can be avoided with a simple visual test. Practically every design failure I have pointed out here could be recognized in the blink of an eye. So, what is the excuse for sloppiness on a regular basis? Seriously, if the people in charge would pay a bit more attention, the amount of chaos would also diminish 
Not in the least! 
i’m a complete amateur hack when it comes to video games (I also refuse all donations people offer for my mods). I’m in a very specific technology business; unreal engine and video games are pure past time for me.
This proves you don’t understand this
I’ve worked the industry, spoke directly with developers and CEOs. Speaking to a dev I asked why they put updates out that seem unfinished or missing bug fixes. He said there was never going to be a time everything was fixed and ready. You have to set a finish date and put the update out then as is, or it will never come out. There is always some bug, tweak, UV zone that needs work.
And that is developmental internal dates, not the hard release dates funcom has to deal with now. There are already posts asking when the next Age drops, 3-4 weeks in advance. You know those people aren’t going to be happy to hear the Age has been delayed another month. They’re going to go apoplectic.
What gets me are these are the same people that will be right on here complaining about the quality of a product they just had to have now.
I have told more then one employer there is no “right now”. You can have it right, or you can have it now? I can’t do both.
From DLC to ideology – just another post, which went this way.
Where? I’m genuinely curious what made you say that, because this thread has had its share of what is normally called “ideology” right from the start. Yet you only mentioned it now, after @DeaconElie disagreed with you.
Is it really “ideology” to talk about the realities of software development in general and game development specifically?
Anyone whose job is to develop software knows that there is a certain complexity threshold where time-boxing is the only way to continue releasing software. You set a target date for your release and you manage your backlog carefully. The release date can be delayed, but there needs to be a good reason why.
Every company and every product has its own definition of that “good reason”: which bugs are critical enough to delay the release, and when a feature is considered “good enough” to release.
Very few products will have a zero-defect policy when the push comes to shove. If you’re working on airbag microcontrollers, then there better be zero defects. If you’re working on a video game, zero defects is a nice-to-have, not a must-have. 
