I’ve personally been waiting months and through since the release of Conan Exiles on UE5 for the Pictish Perch Treehouse Set to rotate back into the Black Lotus Bazaar. It hasn’t been seen since December 2025.
If Funcom is going to insist with the FOMO rotation system, they could at least increase our limited options.
Or better yet, they could do away with the rotation and just give us the option to pay for the things we wanna buy now instead of waiting a long and unnecessary process for the same purchase we could have made sooner.
I have been waiting to see the Khitan Mountain Viper again at a good price 2065 crom coins for the New year bundle when it was released just felt too expensive for me at that time for a Pet skin, Cosmetic outfit and a few placeables. That was almost a year ago now.
Console is seriously getting screwed
Anything that weakens or reduces FOMO, like increasing the size so your stuff rotates faster, will likely be discarded by any marketing team. FOMO works for a good reason.
No, it actually doesn’t work.
We have DLCs like “The Savage Frontier” and “Jewel of the West” packs that we can purchase at any time we want, And it’s cool that we can purchase them at any time we feel like.
The Black Lotus Bazaar is a predatory business model that only leaves people wanting to buy a specific thing that hasn’t shown up for months feeling relatively alienated.
On top of that, it keeps tencent/funcom out of some money they could be making if only they would let people buy whatever they want, whenever they want.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (because maybe someday the message will be read and understood by someone tha matters) - I bought every DLC when they came out, even when I was taking a break from the game. I buy nothing from the bazaar, and I will not buy anything from the bazaar - because it is predatory, over-priced and FOMO-dependent. I don’t fear missing out - and even if I won the lottery (so money was absolutely no obstacle) I still would not buy anything from the bazaar.
I’ve actually worked in the industry and have seen the numbers. DLC packs are user friendly, I prefer them as well, but a $20 DLC with 100 items in it vs FOMO of those items each costing $1.99 - $10 each makes exponentially more.
If DLC made more, believe me - they’d go back to that model. They have earnings reports and analysis reports that are shared with the stock holders that own the company. The share holders wouldn’t let FOMO exist if it didn’t work.
Except that this is not ‘real’ data - it exists to convince stockholders that the company is doing it right. They do not have the ability to compare like to like, because that would require running the universe over again. In the case of Funcom, they are comparing DLC sales from 6 years ago with Bazaar sales today and extrapolating on the basis of those figures. But they are ignoring the simple facts that those are different player bases, at different times, in different global financial situations and with the game in a different state. No one has the ability to state for certain how much money DLCs would be making right now (increased in price to allow for inflation, naturally) - they can only ever estimate. Which makes a mockery of all claims that ‘method A’ definitely makes more money than ‘method B’.
Remember also - electronic items are not like physical items - there is a one time production cost, and then every sale after that cost has been recouped is pure profit. CE has a fairly small player base (ie small potential field of customers) - reducing that field significantly further by pricing out the majority, in favour of ‘whale-hunting’ may work or it may not. The problem is that the discarding of the DLC model is usually justified on the basis they ‘weren’t selling many DLC copies over the last couple of years of using that model’ - but that is because they stopped producing them and a large percentage of their potential customer base already had the ones that existed. When they were released 4 to a year, they sold 4 to a year. When they were released one every couple of years they sold one every couple of years…
It is also worth bearing in mind that the value of customer goodwill is not small, and discarding that in favour of an unpopular approach (one that even many of the whales admit to disliking) is a very risky choice, because it can have long-term ramifications - negatively affecting future sales.
Comparing making a few high-priced bazaar sales (whale-hunting) versus making exponentially more lower-priced sales (DLC model) is practically impossible to actually do accurately, because the true costs and benefits may not be entirely clear until years into the future. It is possible that whale-hunting might make more money in the short-term (though even that is impossible to truly prove), but if it drives away future sales of bazaar items, and drives lower game reviews because of loss of goodwill, how much does it cost in the long term?
To put it in another way - I would have happily continued buying four DLCs a year every year. Let us say (with inflation) that would be £80 a year. Now I spend zero. So that is £80 a year in lost revenue. Maybe they make that back in a couple of months from the whales at these higher prices. But there are exponentially more players like me than there are whales. There only needs to be six times more players like me than whales, for this to be a losing proposition, and I’d expect there are a lot more than six times as many of us. And that’s before you even begin to calculate in the goodwill/badwill aspect of the financial equation.
Edit: To be clear - I’m not stating as some sort of fact that DLCs would be more financially successful (though I believe that to be the case) - what I am stating as fact is that any claim to be able to prove either position to be correct is inherently flawed and based on assumptions and extrapolations, not actual facts.
I guess I dont know what else to tell you. Having seen the financial sheets for DLC vs FOMO markets for actual AAA games - at least regarding XBox Studios - I know for a fact that FOMO generates more revenue. Its dirty, but its more effective. Its very much anti-ethical from a player standpoint, but from a shareholder standpoint it generates revenue at a greater rate.
For every one of you that spend $0, there is another you saying they spend $0 and spend some money on the d/l, and then there are two or three others spending a lot of money.
There have been controlled studies where people were asked to participate in surveys with their gamer tags as ids if they’d buy FOMO market items or not, and many that claimed they’d never do it turned out to spend considerably in them.
Until people stop spending in the bazaar and DLC costs become projected to make more money, FOMO will not be going anywhere - at least with publishers that are publicly owned.
Then you didn’t read what I wrote.
a) CE is a much smaller market than a AAA game
b) you don’t know for a ‘fact’ because you do not have the ability to run the universe through the same time period over again. It is not possible for anyone to ever know ‘for a fact’. And anyone claiming that they do is either deluding themselves or trying to fool somebody else.
COVID and the sudden rise in people sitting at home and having time to game has convinced a lot of companies that the new crowd that entered the market are the norm. Now those consumers have left and the gamers are stuck with decisions made based on an extraordinary situation.
Overall I think Tencent has shown some long term vision by moving around assets, using what they have and working towards expansion and content for existing IPs. Inflex moving to CE and for the future being able to bring their knowledge home for Nightingale, best move I’d never expect.
Hopefully this vision starts leaking towards transactions too. Compared with the old bazaar, we’re making progress. I buy things now and then, but there’s nothing I’m gonna buy instantly if the price feels unreasonable. I can mod whatever cosmetics I like, I never play official, so there’s nothing that pushes me towards needing this now. I think hoping to get DLCs back is a lost cause, but there might be some hope for a better system in a somewhat near future. I can’t imagine new players rolling in and be like ”woah this set split in 4 costing 20 euro each is a fair price”. Living has become more expensive and choices will have to be made on where to spend it. And 80 euro for some building expansion is not gonna look like getting bang for bucks.
Wow, what a totally unique and insightful perspective no one has ever mentioned before!
Its here; its not changing. You dont need the pieces. If you dont like the bazaar, then dont use the bazaar; its genuinely that simple. People get too caught up with FOMO and invest so much of their own personalities into a game; that stuff like rotating bazaars and gacha mechanics just flat out work. Complaining about it will quite literally do nothing.
If you don’t like the bazaar because you want to buy more but can’t, your solution of simply not using it is not gonna cut it 
People want to spend their money in this case. The FOMO tactics that are meant to get users to spend are also keeping others from spending. If you aren’t that triggered by the tactics at all, but still want to buy stuff, this whole dance of waiting and watching is just annoying.
Edit to add: and while it is quite possible nothing will change, like I mentioned, Tencent has surprised us quite recently. So if there’s one thing I do give a chance on getting through to them, it’s enough people yelling they want to buy more and the Bazaar is keeping them from it.
Edit to add 2: I think consoleplayers were also a big part of the spenders (I could be wrong here, I am NOT up to date about anything that involves consoles ever), because they couldn’t use mods, so they did depend on the Bazaar to expand their cosmetics. And I think because they are staying in Legacy, they don’t have access to the newer stuff, so that’s gonna have an effect too.
I wholeheartedly support this notion. There are things in bazaar that I desire above all else and they keep avoiding the bazaar. Funcom is adamant in refusing my money..
I also think that if there are items that Funcom/Inflexion really wants to give to players, it should be DLC that is always available through the steam store, instead of constantly clogging up black lotus bazaar. A great example of this are the old battlepasses. They have been a fixed inclusion for at least a year now. Why dont you just make them a DLC??
Enhanced is coming to consoles, it just takes time. Stay strong, friend.