r/TheBazaar

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I recently decided to give The Bazaar another chance after trying the open beta back in March last year. Back then, the game felt extremely overwhelming to me. My very first run took around two hours. I did read everything carefully, but the overall length and complexity still scared me away from the game, and I ended up uninstalling it.

Recently, I bought the game again together with some friends and gave it another proper try. Since then, I have played around 10 matches, and I wanted to share some feedback. In my opinion, the game has a lot of potential, but a few major changes could take it from being an okay game to an amazing one.

Run length and pacing

The biggest issue for me is still the run length. Runs take far too long. Sometimes I am honestly relieved when I lose, simply because the run is finally over and I can start a new one.

At the moment, my runs take around 1 hour and 15 minutes, which still feels way too long. I have spoken to veteran players who told me their runs usually take around 45 minutes, but that is with much more experience, item knowledge, and strategy knowledge. A new player obviously does not have any of that yet.

In my opinion, a run should take 30 minutes at most. That would make the game much more fun, enjoyable, and replayable. I do not want to surrender just to shorten a run; I want the overall game pace to be faster. I am not sure what the perfect solution is, but the structure of a run may need to be shortened significantly, maybe by reducing the number of hours from six to three? (I know this would be a huge undertaking but it's just an idea)

There are also many small interruptions that make the pacing feel slower than it needs to be. For example, on hour six, you first see the enemy icon, then you click it, then the standoff screen appears, then the carpets roll out, and only after that does the fight begin. After the fight finishes, you click continue, the win dial increases, and then the new day animation plays.

There are simply too many clicks, screens, and repeated animations interrupting the flow. After only around 10 games, I already feel tired of these sequences. I think the game would benefit a lot from drastically reducing this friction.

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Monetization and hero pricing

My second major point is monetization. I do not understand why a hero costs roughly the same amount as the base game, while many cosmetics are handed out for free. To me, this feels backwards.

Heroes are not just cosmetic; they are a core gameplay mechanic. Locking them behind such a high price makes the game feel unnecessarily restrictive. At the same time, because cosmetics are given out so frequently, they end up feeling less special.

Personally, I think it would make more sense to make heroes much easier to access and let cosmetics feel more premium instead. A free hero rotation, a hero bundle, or simply reducing the price of individual heroes to something like 5 EUR would already make a big difference.

I would love to try new heroes, but right now the cost feels too high for something that is such an important part of the actual game experience.

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Art, animations, and UI

That said, I want to clearly mention that the art and animations are absolutely amazing. I especially love how enchantments visually affect the cards and make them shine or glow in a way that matches the effect.

This is extremely well done, and I do not think I have seen it executed this cleanly in another game. The UI also feels very polished, clean, and visually appealing.

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Playing with friends

Finally, I think playing with friends would make the game much more attractive long-term. Games like this are often much more enjoyable when you can experience them together, either by queueing together, playing a duo mode, or having some kind of side-by-side cooperative experience.

I understand that The Bazaar is asynchronous, so this may not be easy to solve. Still, being able to properly play with a friend would make me much more likely to keep playing and recommend the game to others.

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Overall, I think The Bazaar has a great foundation, especially in terms of presentation, art direction, and core ideas. However, the run length, pacing interruptions, hero pricing, and lack of friend-based gameplay currently make it harder for me to fully enjoy the game long-term.

As the title says I think this iteration of the event is really fun. Its cool to get an early enchanted item an maybe build around some not meta items. That being said, there a decently ways to exploit the way Farai works right now. People are starting to keep the first item and try to find a luxe delivery to get early dia items very. So the devs should definitely look into that. But I think farai could be a good way to change the left note meta.

I realized after waiting for the game to go on sale on steam that I would essentially just be paying to play the same game on steam that's correct right?

So I was wondering if there is any long term reason I should get it or not get it on steam.

For example if there was some inkling that in the future the base game would be bundled with some heros id wait for that and not buy any heros to then justify a future purchase because I do like to play games from steam rather than their own launchers.

But of course if I did this

1. I could be waiting for eternity

2. While waiting I am gating myself from any future hero purchases (regardless of how everyone feels about them here exclude thoughts of p2w and other things I probably agree with I am just simply looking at this from a cost analysis)

So do heroes go on sale in game? Or are heroes only on sale from the steam store. (I am posting his while away from my computer I may have checked when you read this so pardon my ignorance)

I ask because if heroes only go on sale on the steam store my cost savings could technically come now if I buy the game on steam and buy heroes on sale that's assuming there is no future bundle but that's a risk I'll have to take if I do go through with this thought process.

If heroes also go on sale in game I would of course just buy them in game not from steam but this might gate me from future cost savings on a bundle so maybe I wouldn't buy them in game. (Idk there is some strange mental math going on here, work with me)

Excuse that these are blown out for some reason on some games my screenshots will be saturated because of HDR. But ya no cooldown reduction?

https://preview.redd.it/2pojqicrcv9h1.png?width=2557&format=png&auto=webp&s=aa90a29079ae02cd74deba084bc5904e3074eaeb

https://preview.redd.it/7uxy0j6vcv9h1.png?width=2559&format=png&auto=webp&s=de0fcfcf331e18990587c47b8cf3c0b7b053733c

Everyone is complaining about burst being the meta and how fast the game is over. To me this is a rock paper scissors game. If you know everyone is coming with rock, build paper? I only play Jules and if I get a good day one enchant I’ll play the burst and go for the forge but mostly running scaling shields and regen and only losing to shark ray which feels like scissors. 7000 legend don’t play much but I don’t understand the complaints.

So, freeze boards are just OP as fuck as always, I was thinking, OH, I wont radiant my charge weapon, as that will charge through the freeze when my other weapons charges it, at least I will have one weapon charging it... FFS, just perma frozen board, charge does shit all... This shit sucks, it was not like this before I think.