They may simply delete Bazaar from the game like right now and it won’t change anything. You already paid for coins pack.
Funcom “working for you” is nothing but your own self made illusion.
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A business that thinks that way dies quickly. All businesses are working for their customers to gain and keep. Owners’ egos that get in the way of this will kill the business faster than any product design failures.
Not saying that this doesn’t happen but when it does, other means are used to maintain advantages (like ensuring regulatory pressures are against competition or selling the concepts of “too big to fail”…in other words cheat by using governance to enforce consumer participation).
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You do understand my initial purchase is chump change of what I am willing to put into this relationship with FC and removal of the value means a loss of the continued revenue, right?
A hustle is a one time purchase, a business relationship is multiple purchases across a fiscal year. I don’t believe FC is hustling me so they are in it for my continued participation. Which means they have to show me value. They are an entertainment vendor and if they do not meet my needs, I move on. It’s really that simple.
Steam sale now lads… Argos DLC (one of the best) 94 items - 4 usd (3 in my country)…
3 usd - 94 items
just saying 
Thats why i own every DLC available, even not interesting ones for me like Yamatai 
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I not sure which is funnier/sadder: the ones who think Funcom works for them, or the ones who think Funcom is a cute little Indie dev who needs saving by the big, strong customer and their 12$.
It’s a product. They sell. You buy, or do not buy. End of relationship.
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Again, that’s not working for their customers, they’re working to gain and keep their customers. The distinction is huge, and it’s important to make.
It’s especially notable in an industry like this, where you have one company with multiple games. Each game has its own playerbase, and while there might be some overlap, there’s enough isolation between them to act as a buffer between the company and any particular playerbase.
It’s a little bit like shopping at Fred Meyer vs shopping at QFC. Both are owned by Kroger, and there are certainly people who are aware of that fact and care about it, but they’re still different enough. Kroger could decide to sell, rebrand, or even close down QFC, without most of the Fred Meyer customers batting an eye about it.
Conan Exiles dev team isn’t “working for you”, because they’re working for Funcom. And Funcom isn’t “working for you”, because they have more than Conan Exiles. Sure, Conan Exiles might be their flagship product right now, but it won’t stay that way forever, and anyone who fools themselves into believing Funcom is “working for them” will have to go through a rather rude awakening sooner or later.
And I’m not just quibbling about the specific choice of words here. It doesn’t matter how you phrase it, I’m talking about how much “power” is actually “in your hands”, and the answer is “very little”.
Not even being a shareholder is guaranteed to give you power. I’m a shareholder of Amazon, because I used to work for them and I haven’t sold off all of the stock they awarded me. Despite that, I don’t harbor any illusions that Amazon works for me as their shareholder, any more than I believe they work for me as their customer.
Like @Mikey said:
End of relationship, and pretty much end of influence too. If they screw things up for you, personally, who cares? They might fix it, or they might not.
If they screw things up for a whole bunch of people, they might feel it in their bottom line, but even then they might fix it or they might not. What happens if they don’t? Go extreme and say Conan Exiles “dies”, i.e. the official servers get shut down and all further development is halted. What are their responsibilities towards you? What are you left with? Some memories. How does that equate “working for you” in any way?
Hell, if Conan Exiles dies because of Funcom’s handling, it might not even have a significant impact Funcom’s future. How many of us have bought Conan Exiles without getting thoroughly informed (or at all) about Funcom’s past? How many of us have been told “this is par for the course for Funcom”? Even better, how many of those who knew this was “par for the course for Funcom” bought Conan Exiles anyway?
This is why I’m not a faithful parishioner of the Church of the Invisible Hand. The masses only have power when they’re organized. Everything else is the sociological equivalent of thermodynamics: an individual atom is not empowered by the equation of state that describes its aggregate behavior.
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Not really. Not on a personal level at least and that is exactly what we each have. They are working for me at this moment of time…just like vendors are working for my company…up until they aren’t and we part ways. See my point is that my relationship with FC is one where they are an entertainment vendor of mine. If they stop providing content that i like, I walk. TBH, I would still wish them well because of the relationship we have held the past 3-4 years. There is no ‘betrayal’ or any of that nonsense because I never put them on a pedestal. That doesn’t mean they haven’t surprised me in both positive and negative ways but in the end of it all,…are they producing things of value for me? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. When it becomes always no, I move on as clearly we have drifted our business relationship apart and therefore they are no longer working for my benefit. No more worries from me over this any greater than when I finished Legacy of Kain so many years ago. I got years of entertainment at a valued rate when you think how much we all spent on TV and streaming services vs the hours of actual use.
You mention organized masses and discount the “thermodynamic society” aspects and while you have a good argument, the organization of the masses is also able to be corrupted into a very unhealthy relationship with the very entities they are organized to prevent. The thermodynamic aspect cannot be controlled (regardless of what marketing professionals believe) because the atoms are acting individually but yet in a statistical unified purpose…there is no way to control it unless the corruption that I mentioned earlier prevents freedom of choice of consumption. It simply is (like thermodynamic law) and you evolve your business to it or you go out of business. However I think this is more of a conversation about our socio-economic flavors that I would love to have in person at a pub/bar while partaking in a fine scotch.
As a wholely owned subsidiary, they are working for Tencent.
Who does Tencent work for?
And more importantly, who does Tencent work for?
The difference in tone using text is basically outside of this one’s talent in using italics and the like.
Always. Maybe it’s my midlife crisis speaking, but I’m pretty sure that there’s nothing humans can do that other humans can’t corrupt.
Depends on what you want to achieve with that control. People who discount marketing – and other such endeavors to manipulate human behavior – do so at their own risk. It’s a Keyser Soze trick that has been played on people, convincing them that they live in a more enlightened age, in which they’re not under influence of any propaganda because they can recognize it easily.
The reality is that we can’t, because the humanity has spent much more time and effort perfecting the art of manipulating humans than it has spent teaching humans to detect and resist manipulation. Some of us grew up in countries where certain (or even all) forms of critical thinking are discouraged. I’m one of those, and I’ve come to a conclusion that it’s an even greater disservice to young people to raise them to believe they’ve been taught critical thinking while indoctrinating them just as much as the place I grew up in.
But, as you say:
So I’ll stop here. But I confess, I would love to sit down with a glass of fine scotch and see if a dirty commie like me can find any middle ground with someone like you 
Dirty commie? 
. My best friend of over 20 years is a socialist so no i don’t believe you are a commie any more than you think I’m a robber Baron. We both want what’s right for the masses and wish to squash unfair leveraging that people in power have. We both believe the status quo is unacceptable and so we have far more in common than not.
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Pros & Cons of the Bazaar
Cons
- Items bought at the Bazaar cannot be used by other players. This currently affects gameplay therefore the items cannot be considered purely cosmetic.
- How can items be on sale when they were never previously sold.
- Items (my opinion) are over priced. Lowering the prices could generate more sales.
Pros
- The items are only intended to be cosmetic so they are not forced on us through a pay to win system.
- The bazaar helps to motivate the creativity of designers to keep producing new content for the game.
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Game as service is total scam for games like this. What was wrong with old model? They had to work to make money. Now they only make money. Fewer stuff, more money. And people just accepted that. As much as I loved CE, after i bought battlepass i realized what a scam this is.
Cause there enough people who will pay it. Theres enough people who don’t understand what Model is.
This type of model is not meant to sell to smart people who see issues with it. They are the “few”
Thou… Old Model has its issues. New Model has its issues.
For me personally… the prices are x2 - x3. Of what i was expecting.
So I’m sadly gonna Opt out. Funcom is never getting anymore money from me Ever.
Theres been some really GREAT STUFF in there… but I’m not dropping. (I forgot what my total was) About 120$ in. For what would have likely been 2 DLCs at 12-15$ each. And assorted extras…
Pricing is just… mind numbing crazy.
But sadly, it looks like alot of you are paying those prices… Looks like Funcom doesn’t have to worry about me in any form from as Person who owns 3 copies of games + DLC’s for each version.
So me not supporting them at this point has zero effect on them.
Inless I win Lottery… and lose all value of what a Dollar is worth.
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I think the origional dlc’s worked better as everything was available in one pack. Now we have things like sandstone set 1, set 2… etc. These could be missed and although it is nice to see new building materials the full set could potentially cost more than the entire game as there is no way of knowing how many times they broke up the full set.
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A couple of extra cons to add.
- Items (Arcane Bookcase) can be nerfed. Yes this was an error but still players may have bought it for the 200 slots. I dont think this could have been considered selling power as it had low hp therefore negating any advantage.
- The cosmetics part of the description goes a little too far. Suchas the ‘Magic starter set’. Could this not function like items in the game? instead of do nothing magical. There was nothing magical included!
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You not being able to afford or justify the cost of something does not make it a scam.
Well they copy paste Fallout style of money machining
a) The skill tree is spell S.A.V.A.G.E. (in fallout is S.P.E.C.I.A.L)
b) the cash shop is made identical with Fallout 76 evrey 3 or 4 months we change the reward
Now i do not understand why some one will buy this , what is the point to have a nice base or a nice set if the game is full of bugs, The AI is stupid is a nice word to describe it , u cannot jump server s full of lag if u build huge u have 15 to max 30 fps with a RTX 3080 and so on… I think they shod focus on fixing the game for the people who buy the game first then ask for a subscription
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Lol thank you for that early morning laugh. You’re on here throwing a literal tantrum and attempting to call me a child. Classic.
Well, dewiced managed to fit at least four fallacies in such a short post. That’s at last somewhat impressive.
Although I’m slightly critical towards the Battlepass, so far I haven’t seen any evidence for it being a scam. Although it fails to provide precise information on its specific contents (such as weapon/armor stats), it’s not marketed in an intentionally misleading. You can see each item on the Pass before committing to buying. You can even play to complete the Pass before committing to buying it.
There have been some bugs affecting claiming the rewards and such, but that’s not a sign of a scam either. Otherwise there would be billions of people, companies and governmental organizations accusing Microsoft of scamming. (This comparison could, of course, be considered a false equivalence fallacy, for the nitpickers.)
Of course, the Crom Coin rewards from the Pass may be intended to be spent on the Bazaar before the next season launches, so that people would need to pay for the new Pass as well - but even in this, Funcom’s policy has been reasonably open. By telling us that the rewards will equal to the price of the next Pass they’re already guiding us towards saving, rather than spending, those coins. Anything spent on the Bazaar isn’t Funcom’s fault. The numbers were presented to us.
There’s a lot more misinformation (or at least lack of information) about the items in the Bazaar. Even that an hardly be called a scam, but rather failure to properly communicate between the marketing, lore-writing and programming departments, so that we’re presented with “fluff text” rather than game-relevant data on some of the items, potentially leading into buying based on false information. In these cases, refunds are in order.
We may disagree about the prices Funcom has set to their items. Heck, most of us probably think the prices are too high. But setting prices beyond what most people are willing to pay is still a long way from actual criminal activity.
And as in the Western world, we have this principle known as “presumption of innocence”, ie. a person or entity is considered innocent of a crime unless proven guilty, I’m afraid the burden of proof lies in the hands of @dewiced here. So if you accuse someone of being a scammer, please present your evidence, be prepared to take your case to a court of law, or retract your statement. Otherwise you may be found guilty of slander.
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Then. Don’t. Buy. It.
I own both the seekers of the dawn and the Vandal armor set. I’ve had the seekers of the dawn pack for, I dunno, over a year. I’ve had the vandal armor for less than a month.
But guess what? That Vandal set has seen more use in a month than the entire seekers of the dawn pack has seen in over a year. Well worth it for me, because one of my biggest gripes in this game is how terrible most of the armor sets look.
Well worth it. And that’s how all of this works.