The Bazaar - Bizarrely not dead yet.

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Retink Retunk

Retink Retunk

the retard says "Happy Hanukah"
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Sep 28, 2022
For those unfamiliar The Bazaar was original a crowd funded card game by a former MTG pro that became Hearthstone streamer known as Reynad. The game took over six years to make after being crowdfunded and morphed into an asynchronous auto battler that Reynad claims had its ideas stolen by Super Auto Pets. At some point Forsen, another Hearthstone streamer was involved with the project before killing himself.

Recently I started hearing about it after think it was vapor wear because apparently it finally went into open beta and now had plenty of monetization and pay to win options despite them promising not to offer pay to win options at every point. Reynad being a mature and well adjusted individual had a meltdown as one does:

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Has anyone tried this game?

I remember hearing a lot of streamers and Youtubers hyping it up, but after trying it, I'm pretty sure it just sucks. The game is a slow RNG riddled mess that doesn't even feel good to have running in the background, and I'm someone who actually enjoyed Raid Shadow Legends for a little while.
 
I had a friend telling me about it a few days ago and basically related the same things; the developers said they weren't going to go p2w, they released new content you had to buy into that was naturally better than what existed prior (I mean, what else do you do with a card game to drive sales other than boost the power level). He says he begrudgingly plays it, so that tracks.
 
DickMain said:
I had a friend telling me about it a few days ago and basically related the same things; the developers said they weren't going to go p2w, they released new content you had to buy into that was naturally better than what existed prior (I mean, what else do you do with a card game to drive sales other than boost the power level). He says he begrudgingly plays it, so that tracks.
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It's not even a card game, it's more of a Rogue game where you go on a run and find items and skills, with the expansions you pay for adding new items to the pool. It's like buying cards you aren't even assured to use and you can disable them if you own them, but you can't opt to not play against people with them if you don't have them. They've already had to hotfix one of the pay to own items because it was extra busted.
 
I was looking forward to it since I've got a long history with card games but shitty monetisation is an absolute skip for me. It's funny how hearthstone used to be expensive as shit to keep up with meta decks and now reynad's, an ex hearthstone pro's, game has the same issue if not even worse. Absolute fucking waste of potential. Just make this shit subscription based, I'm too old for f2p bullshit
 
A guy I know gave me an invite while it was still in closed beta and it was pretty fun for what it is, and has some nice ideas (I like that you could just stop at any point and then resume), but the moment they slapped on more monetization I haven't played since, and don't expect ever to again. The existing monetization was already pretty rough - ranked is the only way to get free premium currency, and you only get one free ranked game a day, unless you fully win a unranked game which nets you another ticket. I understand needing to keep the lights on but don't make the experience worse.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
HOW? I know that even in 2108 crowd funding was entirely faggots making grandiose promises and never delivering. But a card game is one of the easiest things to make.

It is an interesting topic though. Wonder how bad the p2w is
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It was redesigned a ton. It started as a shitty Hearthstone clone and ended in an item auto battler. They ended up raising money from multiple investors and finally pushed it out
 
"I'm gonna make hearthstone with crack and hookers"
>...
"So how about auto chess?"

It was doomed from the start and Reynad has gone down the deep end. He could've been up there with Grubby and all those other Blizzard/card game/RTS streamers, collabing and what not. Instead, he's doing this tragic passion project?
 
⋖ cørdion ⋗ said:
"I'm gonna make hearthstone with crack and hookers"
>...
"So how about auto chess?"

It was doomed from the start and Reynad has gone down the deep end. He could've been up there with Grubby and all those other Blizzard/card game/RTS streamers, collabing and what not. Instead, he's doing this tragic passion project?
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At some point he claimed Super Auto Pets stole his super secret innovation of asynchronous battles where you fight a snapshot of a person instead of a person directly. Raid Shadow Legends had a system like that long before him though.
 
The Bazaar has quite a lot of good ideas and interesting mechanics but is implemented like shit. Basically the game is a mess with interesting and fun aspects that don't quite work right because the devs don't really know what they are doing. When things go right then it can be really fun, but when things go wrong it is unpleasant.

The most important thing in a strategic sense is knowing the meta of the game where you know what is good and then you construct a winning deck from what you are offered.

I wouldn't say the monetization is necessarily pay to win, but it could make it easier to win if you knew what you were doing. Expansions also increase the pool of cards you can get which can make things worse if you are going for specific builds. I have some expansions for free but if I had a choice I would disable certain ones because I never play those builds. Expansions dilute the card pool making it hard to find what you need.

I also think the devs have absolutely no idea how to balance their game correctly. There is a certain character named Pygmalion or Pyg who is very strong in this patch but only if the player playing them gets lucky enough to get the good builds. This after Pyg having to be nerfed because he was so strong he could actually break the mechanics of the game to be several orders of magnitude stronger than any other character.

Also tons and tons of technical issues. I can only imagine the spaghetti code that is behind this game. The game very much has a ton of technical debt. There are issues with the UI breaking, issues with netcode, issues with the launcher.

All in all it has some fun things I really enjoy but it is such a mess I can't recommend it. Basically I just log in to play my free ranked game everyday because that is fun enough to be worth it but I don't play much more than that.
 
Some interesting news/drama - The Bazaar is now coming to Steam. Of course, there's a few caveats.

The major one is the price. The Bazaar is changing from F2P to P2P, gaining a price of $45, which has people flabbergasted to say the least.

The other is Heroes are now paid only, $20 a hero. Accounts already made will get all current heroes, new accounts get 3/4 current heroes from the $45 purchase. Everything else will be free*, since you can play ranked as much as you want. The attempts to do a marketplace are kaput. Duplicates are just crystals now, and mint numbers will be gone. Pseudo NFTs aren't happening.

Needless to say, people are quite mixed. On one hand, the game is coming to steam. However, you will need to buy the game again to get off the solo launcher if you currently have an account. That's also not counting that the solo launcher will likely be less maintained with Steam becoming the new main platform. Current players are also not too happy that characters were buyable with currency and possibly saved up for the new one coming out, yet they announce less than a week from the character coming out that they are only buyable with money. So another bunch of poor press, alongside any people voicing their concern as far as I've seen.
 
Billy the Adult said:
The major one is the price. The Bazaar is changing from F2P to P2P, gaining a price of $45, which has people flabbergasted to say the least.
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This sounds absolutely retarded and I can't imagine it being positive for their revenue.

I had actually completely forgotten about this game until I saw this thread again and while a lot of people were talking about it early on, I haven't heard anyone talking about it lately. Is it just that I'm not hearing about it or has it pretty much died down?
 
Retink Retunk said:
This sounds absolutely retarded and I can't imagine it being positive for their revenue.

I had actually completely forgotten about this game until I saw this thread again and while a lot of people were talking about it early on, I haven't heard anyone talking about it lately. Is it just that I'm not hearing about it or has it pretty much died down?
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I'd be very interested if going from F2P to P2P ever goes well. I know going F2P at least boosts the playerbase, but considering F2P does have microtransactions its not like they are going from 0 revenue. The only other games I remember is Faeria and Awesomenauts (which funnily enough went P2P->F2P->P2P), but I don't think either did that well after the shift. I'm curious if it will work, especially since this change was "to keep the lights on" if I'm remembering a dev quote right. Could be Reynad having a schizo moment I guess.

I don't think its dead but its certainly not big. At least Viewer wise on Twitch, it normally has around 200-1,000 viewers especially because nl_Kripp, a decently popular ex-hearthstone streamer plays it almost daily to about 500. I don't really know player numbers otherwise, I guess it will be apparent with Steam at least.

To elaborate some with the game, I do think its very fun, but it has some big problems. For example, the balance is normally pretty dominant in certain directions, so patches really help to keep the game fresh. It felt decent as a F2P since unlocking the new expansions for the season didn't take that much time, unlocking heroes increased but wasn't too bad, and otherwise was completely cosmetic. One issue was that ranked mode was the mode where you'd actually get chests but you only got one free play a day, so it was pretty easy to get into the groove of playing the one ranked match and then not bothering until the next day. That is one change that is coming that will be nice (infinite ranked), and I suppose anyone who's currently F2P doesn't need to buy the game again, at least not yet. As a player, it leads to my major concern. Will the game be able to get enough revenue from the initial price tag and maybe a hero every 2 months be enough to keep up continuous development? Because so far the game would get stale decently quick without patches. Currently, I really doubt it, especially with bad press and charging twice as much as some competitors like Backpack Battles, so I'll probably just try and enjoy the game until it likely dies in probably about a year if that.
 
Billy the Adult said:
I'd be very interested if going from F2P to P2P ever goes well. I know going F2P at least boosts the playerbase, but considering F2P does have microtransactions its not like they are going from 0 revenue. The only other games I remember is Faeria and Awesomenauts (which funnily enough went P2P->F2P->P2P), but I don't think either did that well after the shift. I'm curious if it will work, especially since this change was "to keep the lights on" if I'm remembering a dev quote right. Could be Reynad having a schizo moment I guess.
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I just don't see it working out. The F2P model is great for games introducing new concepts like The Bazaar does because it gives people the chance to try it and develop an appreciation for that concept that they can't quickly find elsewhere and hopefully by the time others come along there's enough sunk cost and nostalgia to keep people playing. The other thing is that a game like The Bazaar is very minimalistic in what it actually offers so justifying the purchase doesn't seem great and if the servers ever go offline you're going to lose your game as there really isn't a single player version of the game.

It all comes off as Reynad being too busy talking sit online to really develop a proper business plan and now he's desperate.

Billy the Adult said:
I don't think its dead but its certainly not big. At least Viewer wise on Twitch, it normally has around 200-1,000 viewers especially because nl_Kripp, a decently popular ex-hearthstone streamer plays it almost daily to about 500. I don't really know player numbers otherwise, I guess it will be apparent with Steam at least.
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I remember Kripp from back in the day of Diablo and Hearthstone, it's crazy to hear he's only getting 500 viewers now considering how big he was back in the day.

Enward Cullen said:
Do you mean Reckful? Forsen is alive and well, whereas Reckful jumped from his balcony in 2020.
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Probably, they're all weird shut ins to me.
 
Retink Retunk said:
It all comes off as Reynad being too busy talking sit online to really develop a proper business plan and now he's desperate.

I remember Kripp from back in the day of Diablo and Hearthstone, it's crazy to hear he's only getting 500 viewers now considering how big he was back in the day.
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I wouldn't be surprised. They seemed very opposed to Steam, so this reeks of desperation. I guess they really tried to be self sufficient, but that probably cost a lot to ruin their reputation with buggy servers and such. It is extremely funny that Super Auto Pets will cause them more problems since people will bring up that its free compared to Bazaar's $45.

Kripp probably hovers around 500-2,000 maybe. He's doing a lot better than many because he still play pretty similar to Hearthstone and is pretty consistent.
Other ex-hearthstone streamers also vary a bit. Amaz does pretty well with about 1,000 doing StS into another game (most commonly MtG, which might be worse than Hearthstone at this point). Streams normally no more than 4 hours a day through the week.
TrumpSC is pretty random, I know he wanted to be a Civ 7 streamer but that obviously didn't turn out with the game being ass. He sometimes gets a couple hundred to a thousand depending on the game, but he sometimes streams for less than 100 due to poor schedule and weird games.
Lifecoach normally does a treak of streams once a year, though that's because he got most of his money from poker. I think he accidently streamed himself banging his wife once though.

I guess Ben Brode made Marvel Snap so there was 2 games from ex-Hearthstone people, that game was pretty fun but the monetization was extremely bad, the game required a ton of your time, and normally the shiniest new card was the broken one. Though at least Brode just works on the game compared to Reynad doing his thing.
 
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