Items from the bazaar should be expensive, but not exclusive

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
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I agree that having a large amount of visual items in the game, such as weapons, armor, building materials, and decoration items, is great! However, technically this concerns me a bit, because the more items that are added, the more the game’s performance drops and the hardware needed to process everything increases.

However, what’s really keeping me up at night is the possibility of bazaar items being truly exclusive to those who took advantage of the current age. The problem with exclusive items, in my opinion, is that items that only a few players have must be processed by everyone who plays, not just those who own them. The more different items there are, the more likely the servers will become overwhelmed with items that will become increasingly exclusive to a few players.

Unlike DLCs, which are used by practically all players and therefore have a good balance of resources, as everyone uses items with the same texture, mesh, etc., and processing resources are shared, exclusive items could cause a very heavy load, especially when new items are added, since only 5% (an imaginary value just to illustrate) of players will have the exclusive items released so far and other players won’t be able to buy them anymore.

I’m not sure if I’m making myself clear, but I’m posting this to discuss whether bazaar items should really be exclusive to an age, or be timeless, like DLCs. This way, Funcom can continue with the necessary monetization to keep the game alive, without having to inflate the game with items that will require a lot of hardware resources and will only be enjoyed by a few players.

In short: it doesn’t make sense for a company that needs to monetize items to stop selling those items to those who want to buy them just to ensure exclusivity to anothers. Especially in the specific case of Conan Exiles, where the number of different items directly affects game performance. I believe that expensive items are a smart move by Funcom, as this makes it difficult to complete collections and monetization becomes constant. However, keeping items exclusive to an age could be reconsidered.

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I dont believe the bazaar will be Age exclusive. Battlepass items on the other hand may or may not be, but when it comes to the bazaar, I am 99% you will be able to continue to get older bazaar items.

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Great. I must have mistaken some information then. I really believed that the items would be exclusive per age. I thought that criticisms related to FOMO were related to this. Exclusive items from drops, pre-purchase, etc., I believe are healthy, as they are few and do not make much difference when mixed in the pool.

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Well take for instance the turanian stuff. It showed up at the last chapter and build sets are popular, so it would only have a three month window while some people may be holding off buying it because of some of the bugged pieces, Whereas the T1 sorcery stuff has been available from the start and rotated in. Stuff from old ages may cycle in less frequently based on popularity, but I would expect the stuff people really liked will continue to cycle thru. Now a floor paint or something… that may not show up but sparingly if not part of a larger bundle.

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The stuff in the bazaar isn’t exclusive. But at the current rate it will be harder to get specific items if they keep the rotational method going forward.

What I hope they do is reconfigure the rotation to be for sales and bundles, but have the individual items always available. This way players who want something specific can buy it whenever. Those who want to wait for a bundle or sale can do that instead.

Battelpass items should probably be available at some point too IMO.

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the bazaar items have a certain focus on the current age, but are in no way limited to the age. unlike the battle pass which is not only limited to the age, but even to the particular chapter in that age.

to get to the technical aspect of your worries… they are completely unfounded. the only thing that increases is the installation size of the game, since with almost every item (color variants excluded) also more textures and meshes end up in the game.
but 1 single char can only wear 1 helmet, it doesn’t matter how many different helmets there are in the game. a crafted helmet that is stored in a chest doesn’t put any load on the server. yes it consumes 1 slot in a chest and thus increases the game.db by exactly 1 integer value. but the effects should be within the range of measurement inaccuracy, even with 40 players who have crafted and stored every existing helmet.

same with building parts. it’s not relevant what type of foundation the player is using. you can only place 1 foundation at a single spot. same load no matter what type of foundation. so it doesn’t matter if I have the choice between 5 or 50 foundations.

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I may not be a tech genius, but what I said is not unfounded. Two characters wearing the same armor consume less game resources than each character using a different armor. A building that uses only one type of foundation consumes fewer resources than a building that uses multiple types of foundation. Whenever an item is duplicated, its texture is loaded only once. So the more identical items that are rendered, the less resource is consumed. It may be that my mistake is believing that this has more of an impact on performance than it really does. But it is not unfounded.

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that’s not really true, at least not from a server point of view. all the armor pieces are simple integer values. no visual representation of the armor exists on the server side. only the 2 clients (2 player) have more textures to render… but should we really start counting client resources against content? and to be honest even with 10 players on the same spot and 10 different armor sets it is more or less within the range of measurement inaccuracy. networking is far more resource intensive than what the character wears.

same as above. it’s not relevant for the server what itemid is stored. integer value 10001 or 50001 is resource wise the same for the server.

correct and the server loads 0 textures because it’s the server without any graphical interface and therefore no need to load textures. rendering is client side and not server side.

i would disagree. while it may have some relevance for the client, the server doesn’t care. it doesn’t care if it stores 10 identical integer values or 10 different ones. it’s just 10 integer values.

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I agree, I’m actually referring to visual rendering on the client side rather than the server.

I’m not sure about both of us, but I do believe that a company that needs a large player base to monetize items profitably should consider this. Players stop playing a game when it doesn’t perform well on their hardware. And I think many of the problems reported by players are not just related to server performance but also to their own hardware performance. For example, I don’t have a high-performance PC, but I still buy items from the bazaar. If the game reaches a point where its performance becomes unfeasible on my hardware, I will have to stop playing.

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Without getting at what a “right” answer to this is, I will just point out that players who have hardware that exceeds the game’s needs may also be put off if the game is held back for old hardware too much, regardless of merit to the specific circumstance. This is why there are marketing departments, to (hopefully) see where the market really is and make those kinds of decisions.

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what is the alternative? no new content? less new content? I doubt that this will attract new players in the long run, and fear that existing players will get bored even faster.

players stop playing because of no content. players don’t start a game because it looks dead if there is only 1-2 new armor sets every x months. that’s my experience

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I agree! My point of view is a bit personal. I’m a player who often struggles with the game’s performance (on my hardware), and the game consuming more resources than it currently does can make it unfeasible for me. But you are absolutely right in your point of view that improving the game’s graphics and resources is also a strategy to increase the player base.

The title of this discussion points it: expensive bazaar items. This strategy encourages players to purchase items slowly, always having new things to consume. If the items were cheap, it would be easy to buy them all at once, making the game boring, as you pointed out. Personally, even though I’ve been playing since the game’s release, I haven’t used all of the base game’s weapons, armor, or decoration items. It all depends on the player’s profile. However, as @darthphysicist wisely pointed out, our point of view is somewhat irrelevant compared to Funcom’s strategies, as they have real data about the players and which actions work or not. But we agree that new items should always be released. Perhaps we disagree on the speed at which this happens and the exclusivity of these items.

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even more expensive? that’s a joke… you can’t really mean that. this is even worse than not bringing any content into the game. not only does it get boring faster, you also feel more ripped off than you already do at the current prices. is this supposed to bring new players? I very much doubt that.

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No, I believe the items are already expensive enough. I haven’t been able to buy even half of the items I would like to have. As long as the items in the bazaar are not exclusive to the current age, as you and other people have already clarified for me, then it’s okay for me to continue as it is.

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And I think everyone here needs to understand that consoles are here to stay and therefore this should be taken into consideration when advancing the game. You can’t just swap out a graphics card and there are 5-10 year cycles between additions so pointing to higher hardware requirements just aren’t in the 5 year plan.

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I can only speak for myself, but my playing time is currently limited to the 2-3 weeks (every 3 month) that you need for the battle pass. I own all the DLCs and not a single item from the shop. there are reasons for that and they are reflected directly by my playtime and i know others who have the same problem with the current pricing.

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I’m curious now. Are you currently playing just to complete the Battle Pass? I’d like to hear your perspective on the game’s current situation and your criticism regarding the bazaar (aside from the price) and how Funcom is monetizing it.

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I doubt the last gen console problems are caused by the 200th armor set. This is completely irrelevant for the server and for the client at most in a few very special edge cases relevant (x different players are displayed on the client at the same time and everyone has different armor and you are all in the middle of a mega base with a few thousand placeables).

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I got the first battle pass as a gift and got the 1200 crom points for the next one “for free” and I play it and I’m done for the next 3 months. sorcery wasn’t really my thing. I also find the encounters rather mediocre. but more importantly: I feel the complete monetization concept as pure player milking and an impertinence towards everyone who has supported this game since early access. I was happy and willing to support the development of the game. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll pay 6 euros for a banner and then think it’s a fair price… that’s rude. I’m still here because hope dies last. I don’t want to lose the game completely yet… but I have no idea if that will last for a long time or if I don’t care about the 1200 crom coins :man_shrugging:
right now, maintaining the conan exiles wiki is definitely more satisfying than playing the game

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20

While I understand the goal of your post and where you’re coming from regarding FOMO practices. I’m sure a lot of people agree with that.

However when it comes to the technical reasoning behind it, Testerle is absolutely correct. As long as the items are well-made and individually don’t have issues (looking at you illusionist mirror), it won’t affect performance at all other than the size bloating of the game.

Not even client side rendering as much as you seem to think, since those pixels still have to be drawn on the screen and displaying the same armor twice will not magically consume only a single armor’s worth of performance just because they look the same to us :slight_smile:

In that sense, displaying 2 identical basegame armors side-by-side that have a higher detail and vertex count will always consume more resources than displaying two completely different battle-pass armor sets side by side that have less detail. Sure, there are some “cheating” algorithms built into our videocards that could help mitigate certain aspects of this, but they only go so far, especially when you’re playing a high fps game and all of that detail is moving with your character…

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