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I'm hoping I can buy the 'coins' on STEAM, and then use those coins in the game menu to trade for items in the Bazaar. If there is no way to do that, where I'm forced to give my credit card info to some third party site to buy coins, I'm afraid this game will be pretty much done for me. But every other game like this lets you buy the game credits in STEAM, so I am hoping CE follows suit.
To me it depends on the enjoyment/cost ratio. I can spend $30 on a grilled steak and enjoy it for about thirty minutes. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich would have filled me up just as well, but the steak was more enjoyable. I can spend $7 on a item in the bazaar, which if it adds to my role-play, I can get many hours of enjoyment out of. I am very 'picky' about what I buy. Even if I have the money I have more sense than to just throw it away, but I am going to use my money to better enjoy the things I do if I can, else why even have it. But it has to pass the enjoyment/cost ratio I determine that it has first.
"Creepy people"?
Video games are non-tangible. Especially digital-only copies purchased on Steam.
If someone wants to spend $10 on a Conan Exiles chair to play Sitting Simulator, so be it.
People pay thousands of dollars for paintings of things that don't provide any more practical use than that.
Frankly, the world would be better off if everyone's luxury goods were non-tangible. All that ripping of resources out of the ground and factory processing and fuel spent trucking the goods everywhere could stop. Only your food and shelter need to be real. It's a little bit like Conan Exiles. You could just build a sandstone hut by the river where some deer and berries spawn and be done forever. Survival would never be a challenge again. Only ego and boredom make you do all that extra work and risk your life for stuff you never needed. If you end up regretting your decisions, that's your fault, not the world's fault for giving you the opportunity to make those choices.
It's called taking advantage of people..
A study shows that microtransactions works the same way alcohol does for alcoholics, or the same way taking drugs affects drug addicts. It gives them a 'high' every time they purchase something. These players are also referred to as 'impulsive buyers', because microtransactions are available and right up in their faces 24/7.
This system is designed to take advantage of these players by using psychology against them.
So by implementing such a system where you have to pay $10 for one piece of cosmetic or a building tier or decoration item, they are taking advantage of those players. It has absolutely nothing to do with choice, because for those players, it's not about choice but all about an addiction. This system is a predatory system. A battle-pass where you can't unlock 100% of a cosmetic set, one which is also time restricted, where if you can't unlock the full battle-pass, you'll end up missing out on loads of stuff, thus said players feel forced to pay to unlock the entire battle-pass in one go, then proceed to spend more money on buying those $10 cosmetic pieces they need to complete their sets.
For the majority of players, aka those who play on private PVE/RP servers, cosmetics and building is everything.
So by adding this to a 5+ year old game where people already spent loads of money buying all the DLC packs (me included), it's like dropping a giant turd on our heads, snickering to themselves behind our backs.
Mark my words. They'll end up alienating 80-90% of the player base with this move.
Trying to convince those who support this system that it's a predatory system designed to take advantage of said players, is like talking to a demented person. Nothing gets through, and all you get in return is either hysterical laughter, moot arguments that leads nowhere or insults.
Yep, i'm the same.
This is definitely not the same Funcom, who developed amazing games like The Longest Journey and Anarchy Online..
But in the end of the game some people have a hard time not buying everything they think is pretty... back in the day it was physical dust collectors (aka the little statues and figurines grandma collected). And even today people spend millions on luxury items in games that can poof instantly (entropia universe has the biggest virtual purchase record with a club, and there are still 20+ dollar items for sale in many virtual marketplaces including IMVU and VR for avatars)
It is not a company's fault someone lacks self control. You can't sue coke because of you can't control your self and drink too many sodas after all... or a fast food chain because you can't stop stuffing your face with burgers.
For me the more important part is the time.
If you are playing game and not studying for an exam then get poor scores you have lost time and held yourself back.
If you are playing games and not going out for an exercise to improve your health, you may have lost time and cause some deterioration to your health.
If you want a promotion and not working harder to get ahead and get recognised but spend it playing game, you may have lost time and held yourself back.
Am sure as adults many of these things may seem easy decisions to make but a lot of people still do not get it right and drive themselves to unstable lives. It is either you lose time
or you are well of in society and become decadent and unrestrained.
The idea that someone will spend $100 000 on Diablo Immortal game is beyond me. This occurs in many other gaming communities. But if we turn the mirror one can realise that sometimes we do not want to waste time in tedium tasks and would likely result in using a cheat or money to speed things along. Oh we desire personalised beauty, artificial or not in what we are doing.
But the question is, is one really enjoying what it is that they are doing in the first place to have to speed it along or make it look better?
The OP has made a simple request to ask for how to pay bazaar items, it is not up to any of us to tell them not to pay money for the activities they seem to enjoy in the game. So lets respect their own time and own money as it is up to them to spend it the way they please. Only they suffer the consequences of their actions if the activities is not a wise one.
[Edit] Forgot to respond to Grumpu Old Gits comment.
Apart from the psychology of things, sometime history does repeat itself. A good example is The Secret World. A game I so loved that died due to an unnecessary revamp, in my opinion. This left a sour taste for me on Online service games. As I looked back, many online games that I started playing from Launch somehow gets morphed somehow. Some good some bad. And left wondering if my time and money was spent well. Or maybe many of us have that deep desire of a games lasting longer.
Our saviour in these changing gaming market are mods. The longevity and customisation they provide is unparalleled.
I would argue that games are making more console capable games so they can monetise cosmetics more since consoles do not have ready access to mods.
Psychology is the key factor here because they design these predatory schemes around psychology to use against compulsive buyers aka addicts who gets the same high from spending money on microtransactions that alcoholics get from consuming alcohol, and the same high drug addicts get from smoking crack.
There's no two ways about it. It is what it is and taking advantage of said players is appalling.
Yes, some people are well off in real life and won't get into any dire financial straits, if they spend $10.000 a week on a game. Those players are in a very tiny minority, though. The majority are people with normal or minimum wages, and in some countries, one year of wages could easily be the same as one month worth of wages where you live.
I love mods, and so does the majority, hence the majority are playing on custom private servers with mods. The main reason though is because the official servers are way too toxic.
The problem with future mods is that they won't be allowed to make re-skins etc from battle-pass/bazaar cosmetics or building pieces or even decorations. Modders will have to go the extra mile and make their own meshes and designs, which will turn a lot of modders off completely. The entire modding scene for this game will change drastically once the update gets released. This is not just a doom and gloom argument but a clear cut fact that Funcom and Tencent are completely ignoring, just for the sake of milking more money out of said players with a compulsive buying disorder. Compulsive buying disorder in games is real and there's no escaping this fact. Developers as well as publishers need to start thinking about the future and the long term, rather than quick cash grabs that'll only sustain a game for a few months, all the while alienating the majority of their community.
By doing this, they put their entire reputation on the line along with their future as a game developer, because with a horrible rep, nobody will buy their games, thus they won't make any money for their greedy parent company, who will eventually devalue their subsidiary and fire the developers or relocate them to other subsidiaries.
The gaming industry is heading off the deep end. It has become toxic, filled with greedy conglomerates and dictated by CEOs that have never touched a single console let alone played any PC games.
The CEOs of these conglomerates live in a bubble, and with the way these big companies treats their subsidiaries, it won't be long till that bubble bursts and when it happens, the gaming industry as we know it will be lost, and all that'll be left is a silent community with solo developers or small development teams making games on demand for scraps..
The gaming industry has always been about greed. From the earliest arcade machine designed to make you put more and more quarters into it.. to the shareware that required you to "donate" to unlock the full game.
The irony is many of the people complaining are living in a pink tinted bubble of nostaligia. With a focus on what they think gaming was. They lack the understanding of other regions, other thoughts, or reality.
It's a western vs eastern difference where they are seeing the norm for the east coming into the west akin to how western culture has seeped into the east. It's not uncommon in the eastern gaming market for single player games to have cash shops.. for cosmetics, or what ever.
As far as I'm concerned, if somebody lacks self control or willpower, that's their problem and honestly I'm sick of having to cater to those people and their special needs.
As for the OP, you're best bet honestly is to just get either a secure credit card that you have to load with cash or a second bank account with no minimum balance and it's own credit/debit card and just put a little cash in there as needed to use for online purchases. It's more flexible than buying gift cards and probably a lot safer in the long run.