Im new to hive so I am hoping that some people that have been around much longer then me can give some useful insight. Here is the issue I dealt with today.
It all started out with me simply wanting to buy a passport on cbm so that I could buy some of the fishing nft's that require owning a passport in cbm. I went to find ash on hive-engine and quickly noticed that the ash on hives network is no longer useable in cryptobrewmaster. Ok, odd imo but whatever, I do a little searching and find that I need to goto cryptex24.io (the devs exchange) to purchase ash.
So after endless issues trying yo create a username/password to login to the exchange because after clicking the verification link in my email it would endlessly say my email/password that i just made is incorrect and if i tried using reset password it would even say that email address is not a registered used. But eventually i tried login with google and got into the exchange.
I send some hive to the exchange and goto sell it for btc and findout that i can sell 5 hive for 0.00001200 when the price is 0.00001270 and then to sell the other 20 i would have to sell 5 for 0.00001100, 5 for 0.00001000, 5 for 0.000000900 and 5 for 0.000000800. So i sell 5 for 0.000001200 and head over to usdt/hive pair
Same story here, with little options I suck it up and sell 18 hive for $0.71usdt each and 2 for $0.70. Each
So at this point I paid 25 hive for 1002 ash. Yeah i just barely got the 1000 I needed when my plan was to get the 1000ash and some cbm.
I just cant see in ANY logical reason anyone would make several games on the hive network and then remove the ability to exchange on hive.engine to remove as much confusion and barriers as possible, especially when you consider that the games in question have zero onboarding. You just get dropped in the game with zero tutorial or even a hello.
Then on top of not having the convenience to exchange on hive you find out that you have to either buy btc and send that to crptex24.io and wait a few hours or send a coin that is instant like xlm, hive, etc and exchange that on his exchange for 70% value because it has zero users besides for ash/cbm because they ate forced too. Then theirs all the territories that aren't allowed to use his exchange, so your excluding large populations of gamers from your game all because you think it makes sense to make an exchange just because you have a few game coins.
The number of lost possible users from a.) users that cant use cyptex.io including All 50 US states and b.) all the users that wont deal with all that b.s. of no liquidity and having to go off chain, etc. is insane and for what? Like a yone is ever gonna start using cryptex.io beyond a small subset that will jump all those hoops to play one of the games.
Goal: I wanted to buy a passport for what should of been $12 on cbm (a game i dont even play just so I could spend more money in his other game). And I was perfectly happy to do so when this all started
Result: i wasted over an hour and over $20(25 hive) to get 1000 ash to cbm wallet. Which I will likely let sit there and rot now because the last thing I want to do now is get involved any further with this "company". So instead of a customer that was willing on a whim to pay $12 on one of their games that i don't even play so that I could then spend $100+ on their fishing game that I didn't even try yet lol, just wanted to impulsively buy the cards first. They got a bitter user to write a horrible blog about them.
P.s. then for another nice kicker, if you want to buy the nft cards on the fishing game you have to pay with hbd. Most people im guessing dont run around with hbd in their account accept what they have in savings. So captain inconvienence strikes again and says if you wanna spend $100 on nft's on my game then you have to convert $200+ from hive to hbd and wait 3.5 days for the other $100 back and lose $10, from 5% in fees to convert that $200 of hive to hbd.
Anyhow if any users with more insight then me about these seemingly insane business decisions have an light to shine on why they would do this then I would love to know!