Just out of curiosity, is “whale” really perceived as an insult? I’ve been using it myself, but that’s because – unlike “cheap” – it has a technical meaning and it’s actually being used, non-offensively, by salespeople (and game devs, too).
If people aren’t aware of that meaning, maybe I should stop using it to avoid misunderstandings.
It’s not the crux, but it certainly is one of the common complaints about monetization. However, you’re right that it’s not the only one, by far.
Here’s an idea: when people say “Funcom does or doesn’t X”, maybe you could understand that they’re talking about the company as a whole and not about the individual people you got to know and care about?
I’ve worked at workplaces with lots of good people who genuinely wanted to do “the best thing”, however they defined that, but that didn’t mean much because of the way the company was structured and/or managed.
It’s perfectly possible to be talented, passionate, and professional, and be surrounded with other people who are like that, and not be able to employ that talent, passion, and professionalism in a way that you and your colleagues consider correct. Worse, it’s possible that what you consider to be correct is actually correct and your users or clients or customers (or whoever it is you’re ultimately supposed to be doing your job for) would have been better off if only you had been allowed to do “the right thing”.
So when I, personally, say that Funcom doesn’t seem to care about anything but profit they can extract from Conan Exiles, at any cost, I am not saying that the people you care about are shіtty humans. I am saying that the company as a whole isn’t the sum of its parts, and whoever is driving the whole does not care. Maybe a lot of the people that form the company do care and are trying to make “the company” as a whole care.
Or maybe they aren’t. I don’t know, and to be blunt, I don’t care. As a player who is on the receiving end of the attitude the company-as-a-whole, the battles the employees choose to fight within the company are not my concern.
That’s the theory. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
I’m too tired to engage in the discussion of all the ways the ideal you paint can fail or be subverted. And to be blunt again, I don’t really care about discussing it with you, especially when it will allow you to derail yet another thread.
We’re not comparing value, we’re comparing prices. If you bought stuff you didn’t want because it was the only way to get the stuff you wanted, you still paid for the stuff you didn’t want.
I do understand what you’re trying to say. If I use only 5 out of 100 items in a $10 DLC, you claim that I paid $10 for 10 items worth of value, and therefore that should be equivalent to a $10 BLB bundle of 10 items where I only like 5.
There are two things wrong with that idea.
One is that value we place on different bits of digital content is entirely subjective. Trying to make people discuss value instead of price is effectively an attempt to shut down the discussion. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s intentional, but the end result is that this line of reasoning precludes discussion.
The other problem with this is more subtle and, I believe, more important: just because you’re not using now something from a bundle you bought (be it DLC or BP or BLB content), it doesn’t mean you won’t use it ever. It might have no value for you now, but it’s still there, and it will still be there in the future, and you might have value for it then.
For example, there were many armor pieces that I wouldn’t even consider because they didn’t give me the bonuses I wanted. And then Funcom implemented sorcery, and with sorcery came the illusion system, and now I have use for those armor pieces.
In conclusion, the only real way to have a reasonable discussion about the prices is to discuss prices, because value is subjective and subject to change 