Store Pricing WTH

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
104

I cannot compare the bazaar in Conan Exiles with other similar games, so take what I say with a pinch of salt.

My only point of comparison, since I do not play any other game like Conan, is with an application I’ve been on for years, which enables the community to create the cosmetics sold in the shop (clothes or furniture). And I can say for certain that Conan Exiles is way more expensive than what you’d get on the market owned and manned by the users of said game.

On that application, I have to pay real money to the hosting platform + real money to the developer who created the 3D product so I could legally derive from it. Then each time I sell my derived product, more than half of the income is given to the hosting platform and 3D developer, again.

And yet, with all the taxes I have to pay, it would never occur to me to sell what Conan Exiles sells for such prices. If I did, it would just not sell at all. The trend on that market (though there are exceptions), is that for about $10 you can get a full bundle of items, less than what the DLCs offered, but still more than what the bazaar offers quantity wise.

Even though the items of the bazaar are splendid, the Flamboyant Feast would never sell for $10 on the market of that application. The clients would expect the whole kitchen for that price lol.

As I am a compulsive buyer, I had to buy a few things in the bazaar. And yet, I am fully aware that the prices do not align at all with the difficulty and time of work spent to make the items I bought. Some part in my brain knows it’s a rip off.

105

I guess that will always remain an unresolved mystery.

It is now. It started as a discussion of the prices, a questioning of whether they’re high, a comparison with an older monetization model, and what’s the best way to cope with the new model. Some of the participants brought up concepts like “greed” and “predator/prey relationship”, some others focused on that, and now it seems to be one of the central topics.

That said, I agree with you that if we’re examining the pricing alone, without any other aspect of the monetization, we won’t find it unethical.

The problem is that the pricing itself isn’t entirely orthogonal to the rest of the monetization. To put it bluntly, the pricing would not work nearly as well without several tactics that pressure and manipulate customers into accepting it.

Those tactics are not coercive, so it’s not a clear case of unethical behavior, but many of us find it ethically questionable.

A couple of common responses to that come to mind. One is that those monetization practices are also “industry standard”. That’s pretty much saying “everyone else does it”, and I would hope that we all understand that doesn’t really hold up in establishing a behavior as ethical.

Another common response is along the lines of “if these practices don’t affect me in any way, why should I care”. For all that I get to discuss ethics on these forums, I’m not really an expert, but I would expect a certain degree of correlation, if not causation, between empathy for others and ethical behavior. At any rate, “this doesn’t affect me” does not really look like a solid defense of ethics.

That being said, my foremost complaint about the new monetization isn’t about questionable ethics anymore. At first, that bothered me, and then I ended up shrugging and saying “screw it, that’s how the world works now, this is not where the Revolution will start” :stuck_out_tongue:

No, my own pet peeve with the new monetization is that it’s really the minimum-effort result. I’m not going to go into details, because I already covered most of them in the “Lack of Transparency” and “Quality Issues with Monetized Content” sections of my overly verbose analysis of new monetization. Suffice it to say that when someone is trying to sell you stuff and they keep screwіng up consistently and then take their sweet time fixing it, the very least you can say about that is that it’s annoying and doesn’t inspire confidence. If you’re trying to convince me to buy overpriced, FOMO-based, overly restricted content, then at least maintain a certain level of quality, both in terms of the product and the service.

And before anyone comes back with “if they’re so bad, why do you keep buying their stuff”, the answer is I don’t. The things I bought happened to work well enough for my needs. If they hadn’t, I would’ve requested a refund faster than a forum troll can write an inflammatory reply :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

106

What you don’t seem to understand is that short-term profit maximization has led to the long-term demise of more than one company.

And the rest of your post once again only considers extreme conclusions.

“Ive always said they would drop. That point always gets lost in these discussions. There’s early adopter pricing and then the price will come down later to maximize the gain for a given item.”

If that is the case, why do you think it is? Perhaps because criticism has been voiced? Criticism that you vehemently attack here as inaccurate and constantly try to relativize by hook or by crook?

Or do you think that would change if everyone is happy and satisfied with the status quo, huh?

Find the contradiction with your attitude.

And it may be that some like you are willing to pay moon prices for minimal content. But the majority won’t do that in the long run, as I’ve already explained, quite a few players and influencers are already jumping ship. That may not mean anything to you and you may dismiss it as incidental. But it has broken the neck of every company in this area when they have lost the broad Playerbase and something like that can happen very quickly. The damage that has already been done to the floor is either very difficult to repair or, in many cases, impossible to repair at all. And I like this game (otherwise I would hardly write here) and it would be great if it still exists for a long time. And that’s why a critique at this point is right and important.

In the communities I know (and there are a few) there really is NO ONE who thinks “oh, what I got for $10 2 years ago now costs $300…okay, shiny.” No, the basic tone is the same everywhere, people feel ripped off. And that kind of thing NEVER goes well for long.

And the companies that ignored something like this because they relied on their unique selling proposition don’t exist anymore. All it takes is for a developer to come out with a similar game that maybe does a few things better in other areas and doesn’t follow such an extreme monetization concept, and players will run away in droves. This has happened often enough. Maybe you’ll think about it for a while.

Addition: And more importantly, maybe Funcom will give it some thought.

107

I’ve been in Egypt for the past week and I can say, this whole post hits close to home…

“Ok, my friend. I like you, I give you good deal!”

End up haggling to something lower, but probably still getting ripped off. :roll_eyes:

108

Because it’s called early adopter pricing. I paid I think $100 for CE back at release (the one with the T shirts and stuff). Now it’s $15. The Bazaar items are already made, so you can price them for the early adopters, and then when the sales wane, you can drop the price a bit to spark more sales, and so on, because the assets are already made. It’s called a “sales strategy” and is intended make continued revenue over time by getting people who were put off by the price the first time around, another crack at it with a price they might bite on. This is not a new sales strategy. It is also completely forseeable. Literally every entertainment product does this. Does a blu-ray for a new movie cost the same as one that is ten years old? Does the fact that the price drops over time mean it did or did not make money?

But hey, what do I know. No one does these things. It’s all totally new for CE and yeah the prices all dropped from ravings in the forum…

109

Oh and by the way: The common practice in the Bazaar to indicate items as “reduced” in this way with a higher, crossed out price although they never had this price, violates at least here in Germany §5 UWG and is therefore illegal. Funcom should change this as soon as possible, otherwise it can become very expensive for them. Just as a friendly hint, I could imagine that this is similar in other European countries.

110

Shopping is not an even experience across the world.

Sometimes, this one enjoys the stability of knowing what will be paid and having it all in order at the self check out…

Other times, this one enjoys the back and forth of direct commerce.

The difference is quite stark.
An enjoyable trip, the haggling, even if not entirely advantageous, was at least fun?

111

As expected, you have once again not understood even half…oh what am I saying, a third of my posting.

112

I’m pretty sure their legal department knows what they’re doing and have vetted this. I would expect them to know the ins and outs of the actual laws better than random internet strangers like you and me.

Unless you happen to be a lawyer who specializes in this sort of thing, in which case I would unironically encourage you to start the legal proceedings. The fake discount is a minor irritant, but I wouldn’t mind seeing it gone.

113

There have been whole waves of warnings in this country because of this, which have cost the affected companies a lot of money. And I guess they also had a legal department and still didn’t know about it. It can be all the same to me, is not my money if there times one on it becomes attentive and jumps on it. Was just a friendly hint.

115

So Germany cant have an introduction sale for a brand new product? I find that hard to believe.

116

While I hate to go off topic, yeah, it was definitely fun. It’s also nice to see how other people live. Though I gotta admit, I’m a bit glad to be out of there. The sites and experiences were amazing and something I’ve wanted to see all my life… the nickel and diming of tips (baksheesh) for even so little as taking a picture for you and your travel partners is a bit exhausting and annoying.

Anyway, I’m in Johannesburg now, getting ready to go out to a gaming reserve. South Africa is a much nicer vibe since the people seem to be super friendly and hospitable. There’s very little “baksheesh” here lol…

All-in-all, I’m hoping to come back home in a couple weeks with some awesome new build ideas for Conan lol…

117

In 2022 there was an update to Preisangabenverordnung (rough translation: Price Indication Ordinance PAngV )

Basically, when selling products at a discounted price the previous total price to be indicated must be the lowest total price that the retailer asked for that specific product in the last 30 days.

If that specific product hasn’t been offered before, a hypothetical future asking price is not valid for use as a base in the advertising.

Edit: The only exemption are items that meet the standard of perishable goods in Germany.

Here is a link in English with a rough explanation.

118

But since it new and the previous 30 days has no data that this is the lowest price or not, then I fail to see where showing a previous price before discount is illegal. They just can’t discount the same package for less saving and call it a discount within 30 days of this sale. Or is there something more to this that I’m not catching?

119

The findings so far in German courts have been that listing a price that the product has never been offered for is violation of this ordinance.

The operative part of the law is that when showing a “regular price” that regular price must both be a price the product has been offered at before in the past 30 days, and it must be the lowest regular (as in not a special temporary) price during those 30 days.

One can absolutely offer an “introductory rate”.
What the courts have forbidden is claiming that the introductory rate is a discount of a regular price that the item has never been offered at before.

Until an item has been offered at a specific price, that price may not be listed as the regular/base price.

TLDR: A company cannot just claim a random number is the “regular price”. The regular price must be a price the item has been offered at. If the item has never been offered before it does not yet have a “regular price” as defined by this ordinance. In short, the meat of the ordinance is defining “regular price”.

Edit: This ordinance has been contentious. This one does not have a horse in the race of legislation in that nation. This one has more than passing familiarity with the language, however, a native speaker could probably offer much better clarification on this. This one has basically been sifting thru the public legal findings since this ordinance came into force that are available with a Nordrhein-Westfalen library card.

120

Let’s see what happens his week if any updates land and whether recent staffing adjustments and comments that FC have ‘taken on board’ the (severe) criticism the bazaar pricing structures come under.

They also said that the current pricing is not fair when applied to different currencies around the world (using the various pricing breackdowns above, and applying real-world currency conversions, Insane pricing).

I use the DLC cost as my guide. For each chapter I am prepared to only spend up to the cost of a DLC. If the Chapter releases are not appealing, I carry it over to the next chapter - as with the DLCs. No-one forces me to ‘get everything’ and none of the Bazaar items affects the core game engine.

Though Dennis’s announcement pre-3.0 stated that new development always needs some extra financing, and that income via the old DLC is not as economically viable (esp. since Funcom got new owners with new finance requirements a while back), the inordinate current pricing makes little sense other than price gouging in my mind. Either make the prices equally applied or make it very clear why some similar items are higher than the others, or start making obvious bundles for set amounts.
e.g. A collection of a common grouping for a single amount (comparable to DLC) and then smaller modules of a common grouping for smaller amounts. DLC=11.99 and the smaller (say four) breakdowns at 4.99 each. If you buy individually you pay more, but not so much more that it’s insulting.
ps: might be hard to police regional currency pricing as, for some, it might not be hard to fake their geographic location and therefore get something cheaper, etc.

121

I’m bad at reading German so I haven’t familiarized myself with how that law is written, although I understand similar legislation is in the works for the rest of the EU as well (something for which I’m happy).

But as far as I’ve understood, the Bazaar prices are not discounts per se, they’re bundle prices. The higher total price is the sum each individual item would cost separately - even though they’re not being sold separately at the time. How does German law apply to this kind of stuff?

I mean, I’m a big fan of miniature games, and it’s a pretty common practice there to sell a “starter bundle” of new stuff, with the intent to sell its contents separately at a later date, for a higher price. Would mentioning this price be against German law?

122

That only works if say the bundle is the price set and saying its cheaper then buying each individual item .

In this case its clearly saying this bundle use to cost this much … is now cost this much its cheaper. So its unclear if it a per item total and then bundlednfor cheaper … or that its being value at something amd then slashed … when the original value was never set before hand

124

I’ve said this in other threads, but the prices offered in the Bazaar are pretty similar to Everquest 2(circa 2010) prices for similar things. Around $10-15 for an armor set and $2-9 for furniture items with similar prices for bundles and what not.

The biggest issue people have is the DLCs were stopped and replaced by something entirely different and well… far more expensive. There’s two major things at play here. First one obviously is inflation. We’re all feeling it, world disasters happened over the years and screwed everything up. This doesn’t account for the full price increases however. What does is the cost of operating Conan Exiles. DLCs were originally intended to ‘keep the lights on’ and keep the Funcom provided servers paid for. With Isle of Siptah and their plans with the Age system. That cost got higher.

3.0 was a much bigger patch than many give it credit for. There’s a few threads on this already so I recommend taking discussion about the particulars to those. We can infer from dialogue with the devs that each Age is going to be introducing even more themes to change the game further. This is an actively developed game, not something on ‘maintenance mode’.

The DLCs of old at their rates wouldn’t be able to pay for this. And I would recommend that if you do not like the prices, then to no purchase them. I’m not being facetious with that. I am recommending an action I am currently taking myself. I like to call this voting with my wallet if you all don’t mind the cliche. I do believe in the prospect of ‘there is a customer at every price point.’ Meaning they’ve made these items, sold them, and then sell no more, to make more money they will need to drop the price.

If they instead wish to engage in FOMO practices, well make that fail by not buying anything. Continue to play the game to keep the numbers up. But when numbers do not equal revenue, they will have to cave. Eventually they will have to pay bills.

Understand that the economic culture of Egypt and some other countries in the area are quite different than Europe or the United States. Haggling is expected and for many it is part of the social interaction. Of course like in any country there will be people who might try to scam just as there will be very honest merchants so definitely try to not paint everyone with the same brush.

If you’re still in Egypt I would recommend that when using cash, to try and use US Dollars or Euros if you have it. Especially around the tourist areas since they can buy and sell things without going through exchanges. And when making a deal, handle every portion of it and assume nothing. If someone offers to take a picture, make sure the cost includes getting the camera back. If you’re going on a camel ride, make sure the cost includes getting on, walking around, and getting off. When I deployed there in 2007, these were all things explained to us and keeping those things in mind ensured that I spent very little (like $40 total to visit sites, ride camels, get some trinkets, etc), and had a great experience. I definitely enjoyed my stay there.

Sorry for the off tangent thing here.

134

LostBrythunian explained it very good in Detail 2 Postings above yours.