'We are so back': After a month spent strangling itself with monetisation, promising new auto-battler The Bazaar finally makes things right for its players

A month ago, The Bazaar launched in open beta. It was a disaster, alienating a faithful community that had been building up steam throughout the game's closed beta period. It wasn't just that players saw the new autobattler's free-to-play monetisation as extreme, drawing pay-to-win accusations, but that the game's creator—former professional Hearthstone player and streamer Reynad—went scorched Earth at the community subreddit.

"Seeing Reddit lose it today lets me breathe a huge sigh of relief," Reynad wrote at the time. "I'm pretty confident we're on the right track now."

It was disappointing to watch, because The Bazaar had an abundance of promise—a game that our own Robin Valentine said "could be the future of autobattlers" if only it stopped strangling itself with its monetisation.

Luckily it seems that Reynad—or perhaps cooler heads at studio Tempo—realised that they were not, in fact, on the right track. Last week, a new season of The Bazaar released, and with it a major shakeup of the monetisation systems that, surprisingly, fixed every issue players had with the game.

The flashpoint of much of the controversy was that character expansion packs—themed sets of cards that you could add to your build—were locked behind the paid-for tier of the season pass. As of this season, though, there's no longer a paid season pass option at all. That means character expansion packs are now free to earn from levelling. And if you don't earn enough XP during the season—which itself is easier to do as the levelling curve has been flattened—you'll be given the packs for free when the season ends. That also applies to last season's expansion packs, which were originally planned to be available for gems but have now simply been handed out to all players.

The monetisation, then, is now limited to a monthly subscription that offers extra XP and reward chests, and a skip that lets you instantly complete a number of levels on the battle pass. Everything else—new characters, cosmetics and ranked tickets—is bought with gems, which you can either buy with real money or earn in-game.

Perhaps the most positive change in terms of the feel of this season, though, is the reintroduction of a free daily ranked ticket—guaranteeing you one chance per day to earn some chests and the precious, precious gems contained within. Combined with the ranked tickets and chests earned through the battle pass, it makes a big difference to the sense of progression throughout the season—it always feels like you're able to work towards a big new unlock.

Certainly the changes have pacified the game's community. Even the subreddit—the target of Reynad's derision—is happy, declaring "WE ARE SO BACK" in a heavily upvoted post.

But getting existing and former players back in your good books is one thing, the question remains whether The Bazaar will be able to recover from its rather disastrous first impression to players at large. As someone who's been playing it a bunch over the last few weeks, I think it's at least worth a try. It's an incredibly slick and satisfying auto-battler that, at its best, has a broad space for refining and improving your kit.

The downside—as Robin noted last month—is that the thing that works in its favour, the ability to high-roll and theorycraft into incredibly strong builds, is the thing that massively works against new players. With no matchmaking at all for the ghosts it pits you against, you'll likely be facing builds from players with vastly more knowledge and experience—all working towards the strongest metas of any particular moment. At its worst, The Bazaar is an exercise in being kicked when you're down.

That's often exacerbated by the game's balance, which swings wildly patch-to-patch. This season's new character, Mak, currently feels incredibly powerful even after a hasty hotfix. Crucially, though, the changes to the monetisation means that new and free-to-play players aren't being crowded out of the ability to actually participate.

Even after a few weeks of free play, I've earned enough gems to unlock a couple of extra characters, and managed to theorycraft my way to a couple of off-meta wins that I'm particularly proud of. At its best, The Bazaar feels incredibly satisfying and rewarding. It remains an open question how well Tempo can retain that feeling in the long term, but right now the game is in a place where I at least recommend people give it a try. And I definitely wasn't saying that this time last month.