I’d still argue that the difference in the armor penetration between the bazaar spears (which are “P2W” in your opinion) and the Lemurian pike (which is F2P) is too low to mandate those claims of “OMG, P2W broken, can’t compete, Funcom lies (…as if there wasn’t a list long enough already of “broken promises” in the first place)” - though that comes from a STO-player’s point of view, where you’ve the “bought for $ zen”, then “bought from ig currency or gambled via $ purchased zen” promo & lockbox ships, then the “obtained by opening the aforementioned infinity boxes (or R&D packs/Duty Officer packs) lobi crystals, for the lobi store” - so tbh, that whole arguing about such minimal difference seems…somewhat pointless? But ok, you win - that 7% additional armor penetration makes the item totally broken, no one on your server is going to defeat you and you’ll be the OP god-of-PvP with it, akin to the main hero of “Solo Leveling”.
From my perspective, the bigger problem is the “bang for the buck” - or the lack of there of. And no - I’m not saying about making the gear useful for PvP (so, I’d assume - weapons & armor) OP. I’m speaking about how miniscule the value - in terms of items / deco value / uniquness, per $, are we receiving.
The goal of microtransactions, as I’d understand it, would be to spend it in low amounts (1-2$) - but on items you wish for whatever reason to have. In other games it could be because those items would be giving you an advantage (which, besides some rather miniscule examples, doesn’t seem to be the case). In that case, what remains is the deco value - and from that perspective, I don’t really feel it is worth it.
It’s understandable that Funcom - as a company - wants to earn profit. That’s logical. They do that by providing us with something that we would like to spend our money on. They obviously - looking at the prices in the bazaar - opt to go for that “fewer whale-like folks” rather than “higher % of the playerbase, for less”.
Ok, it’s their right.
But what really makes me annoyed beyond anything else is that they start something (example from the current - 09.07 - bazaar setup) - i.e. the Flamboyant Feast set, and they charge 12,42 USD for it (circa - was calculating it from my own currency), at a discount. The full price would allegedly be 19,11 USD.
For comparison - Subnautica + Below Zero (a game I bought just the other day) costed 15,40 USD. Satisfactory - another full game - costs currently 18,35 USD discounted.
Correct me if I’m wrong, dear developers, graphic artists & other company PM people - but I’d argue that producing a whole new game takes a “tiny little bit” more cost, than developing a table, chair, few meal & a candelabra models…
So no, my problem is not that Funcom has - intentionally or not - “messed up the stats” on some items, which after all those years should be considered a typical “Funcom feature” ™. My real problem, which I don’t feel we, as the community, are pushing back enough against, is their laziness (or the incompetence - or wrong model* - implemented by their “monetization manager”).
Funcom - you want to grab that hard earned money out of our pockets?
Fine - but make it worth it. Pamper us, as your customers, to actually want to spend that money, and feel thrilled with the perspective of doing that. On the perspective of that aformentioned feast set - why didn’t they make it contain…I don’t know, some smaller, or corner/L-shaped tables? Or some “royal” seats, for the lord / VIPs? Maybe a hanging candelabra, or some “meals-in-preparation”, for the nearby kitchen, as well?
Those are just examples of course, but what I want to say - it does feel like a lazy moneygrab, a “minimal effort put to just throw the customers” - half assed, not really “fleshed out” to what it should be - when compared to how many single individual items, giving the needed deco/design variety, we were getting for the old DLCs. Yeah, I know - inflation. Last time I checked however, unless you were in a country like Turkye or Russia - it wasn’t 100%+ over 2-3 years, or…?
*wrong model - to be fair, the implemented model might be true, if the company wants to “squish their product dry” and maximize any profit over the short run, i.e. with having plans of abandoning active support once the next product, Dune, comes out & reaches “Stable release/BAU” stage - though so far, the official narrative seems to be different, with statings that they don’t intend on stopping the support & (semi-)active development of Conan:Exiles, so…