I feel dumb for supporting Bazaar

I've played this game ever since I learned of its existence 5 months ago. I've played it every day and I watched Kripps and Rarrans every video on it. I absolutely loved the gameplay loop. I played a bit of Backpack Battles, but overall, Bazaar felt like such an upgrade, especially with the exciting new heroes that were supposed to come. I'm looking at you, Jules, I looked forward to playing her a lot.

I've also been quite active in the Discord server, I loved giving feedback on the extensive updates and I was hoping that I could help make this game even better than it already was. Especially the community around the game felt extremely tight and it genuienly was one of the most loving and passionate communities in gaming.

I cannot believe this is the direction that Reynaad chose to take the game. I couldn't get behind the ranked system before either. I always thought that ranked should be free to enter, while chests should only be earnable in some "ranked+" mode, that required the entry fee.

The "battle-pass-ization" of the game feels so bad, there's way too many battle passes in gaming nowadays and it completly ruins the fun. I don't want to do 3 different daily missions, each dictating how I should play the game. I don't want to think about what weekly mission I am missing before I queue up for a game. The product felt like a breath of fresh air where I could truly play what I wanted to and felt no fomo or obligation to complete some silly tasks that had nothing to do with me having fun.

The elephant in the room, the p2w items. This concept in general is just so bad. People tend to compare it to Marvel Snap, pointing out that it works for that game. First of all, this isn't marvel snap. You can still build a fun deck in snap without the battlepass card of the month. Second of all, I believe people forget how quickly Marvel Snap lost the goodwill of players and how the game plummeted quickly after a few months in popularity, due to being so f2p-unfriendly. Despite having a huge backing by the community as it was released at the time where demand for a "better hearthstone" grew rapidly.

The items in the battle pass are subject to change... They can be nerfed and buffed however the dev team pleases. What this means is that after the new pass is released and the items become purchasable with crystals, they could very easily just nerf the stronger ones and move onto a new meta, with the new FotM items from the new pass. To the people that say "There is no way they would do this", well... There was no way they would lock items behind a paywall.. at least according to their statements when they tried to fund the game.

I personally don't believe that the game could thrive only on cosmetic purchases. I do think that some "subscription" service wouldn't be bad, as I want the devs to actually make money off of their product. I would happily pay 5e monthly for a pass that allows me to get double the ranked chests along with a card back. I would also think a lot more people would be down to pay a "smaller" amount each month, rather than up to 20e monthly for their favorite card game.

I would love to give the feedback on how I think this system could be made better. How I think this game could be financially viable while also not introducing pay to win elements. But I'm afraid it's too late, not because of what Reynad said specifically, but because he has already taken the money of people that bought the passes for this exact reason. Despite what he said in the patch notes video where this system was flagged as "Experimental" and "Subject to change based on feedback", I believe he not only made it clear that the feedback wouldn't be taken into the account, but also, how do you walk back on a feature that people already spent money on ? If he truly believed this was experimental, he should've made the first pass free and see how people engage with the system.

To the people upset with Reynad's response. I get it. As someone that followed the game religiously, I can't say I was surprised by it. And to be honest, I much prefer that the person is upfront and shows his true colors right away, rather than some corporate speak and silence. Also I can imagine that he is under immense stress. It cannot be easy to read all of the blame that unleashed all at once. However I do sympathize with people that are genuienly upset that the developer they supported, not only with money, but also with ideas and engaging with the community turns his back on them.

Lastly, I want to thank you, the amazing community that I was a part of, for creating fun builds, memes and a lot of you are genuienly nice people that just wanted a game that is fun. I unfortunatly believe that Tempo has dug themselves into a hole, either they revert the changes and upset the paying players, a thing that is 99% most likely to not happen, or they keep the changes and alienate most of their community, a real shame as it has been so long since I've seen a game with so much good will from their players. I hope a game fills the hole left after the grand betrayal of bazaar will come soon. I already miss the closed beta.