That’s easy, you don’t quantify ethics.
Whether the players are right or wrong is irrelevant. We’re not talking about the players’ ethics, we’re talking about Funcom’s.
Like I already said, I don’t care whether you make those purchases or not. I’m not here to judge you for your purchases, or even to satisfy my curiosity about your views on Funcom’s ethics. I’m interested in Funcom’s anti-consumer behavior.
Let’s compare what you said here with what you said when I replied to you:
“X stopped playing because of the shop” is not the same as “X stopped playing because their past experiences have been destroyed by the shop”. Those are two profoundly different statements.
The former means “I don’t enjoy the game anymore for reasons that have to do with the shop.” The latter means “My past enjoyment of the game has been devalued by the existence of the shop.”
If you somehow can’t see the fundamental difference between those two, then I don’t know how to communicate with you, because anything I say might end up being unrecognizable in your interpretation.
Is that really at the core of your misunderstanding? Because that’s easily solved with a simple explanation: the word “shop” is a synecdoche in this context.
The development of Conan Exiles has changed – for better or for worse, depending on who you ask – due to the “new” monetization strategy. The shop is an integral part of that strategy, i.e. without it, we would be talking about a different strategy which would have different effects on the development. So when people say “the shop has ruined the game”, they’re saying that the monetization strategy has “ruined” the game.
I can’t say I agree with the first part of your interpretation. The second we’ve already discussed and actually agree on, but the first part is not evident in the paragraph you quoted.
My reading is that @LonePlayer believes that the collective power of the playerbase is undermined by the players who decide to spend money on the game despite being unsatisfied with the results of those purchases.
I don’t share that view. And I don’t share the judgmental tone in their words, either. I don’t think that people who buy stuff in Bazaar “have no self control” or that they’re “stubborn and impatient and hooked on instant gratification”. This, put bluntly, is the mirror image @KorgFoehammer’s disdainful assertion that people who criticize anti-consumer practices are those who “can’t have the self control to save themselves money to do what they want to do”. Both of these attitudes are self-righteous bullshіt.
This whole thread has been sidetracked and then thoroughly derailed by the completely irrelevant discussion of the value or worth of the elevator. This is not about its worth, it’s about a very specific aspect of its pricing, and its synergy with the soft currency.
It boils down to this: if your soft currency can only be purchased in bundles, and the price of a specific item is extremely close but just over the amount of soft currency you get in one of the bundles, and there’s a significant gap between that bundle and the next, it’s very much on purpose. It’s deliberately designed to drive conversion through manipulation.
Consider the player who has not yet spent any money on the monetization. They have 0 CC. They’re playing the game, but there’s nothing that convinced them to spend money, until they see this item. This item is what pushes them over the fence and convinces them to spend money. So far so good, nothing wrong with that at all.
They look at the price: 1270 CC. “Okay, great,” they think, “let’s go get 1270 CC.” They click on “buy Crom Coins” button, and are presented with the following options: buy 1200 CC for $10, buy 2640 CC for $20, buy 5040 CC for $35, or buy $7800 CC for $50. They’ll notice that 1200 CC is almost, but not quite enough for what they want to buy. The next tier is double the price and more than double the coins.
This is not a coincidence, of course. If they spend $20 because they want this item, they’ll be left with 1370 CC in their “wallet”. They can’t get any real money back from those 1370 CC. They can’t spend it on anything outside of this store. So naturally, this will induce them to be more favorable to the idea of buying more stuff from the store, either now or in the future, because otherwise that’s just money they gave away to the company.
Again, this is very much on purpose. If the item was priced at 1200 CC, the player who hasn’t spent anything in the Bazaar might get that item and never even look at the Bazaar again, but that’s not what Funcom wants. If the item was priced at 1150 CC, that wouldn’t be enough leftover CC to encourage the player to buy more stuff. If the item was priced at 1500 CC, that wouldn’t feel as cheap when the player decided to purchase CC; the player who sees that 1200 CC is “worth” $10 will feel that the item is “worth” approximately $10.
The “slightly over the bundle” pricing is a well-documented dark pattern. You can go look it up if you want.
Hell, the bundles themselves are a well-documented dark pattern, designed to obfuscate the actual price of items. (No, not their “worth” or “value”, but their price.)
I hope that explains the opening post for those who might have missed the point and reminds the rest what we’re supposed to be discussing 