Elitism and subscription fees.

[Whispering Cynic]

why do some people paying a subscription fee think they're in the upper class of gaming

Ï hate to say it, and this will sound ugly; but they say that because more often than not it's true.

Unfortunately, a subscription is the best way to keep out many (not all) gold farmers, multi-boxers, hackers, language deficient, trollish and generally unwanted individuals.
.

This is true, unfortunately. I've had the dubious opportunity to observe the transition of SW:TOR from subscription only to F2P model and the change in player base was absolutely staggering. One day you are playing with pleasant, considerate, helpful and friendly players (vast majority of them were, at least). The second day you are surrounded by spammers, trolls, idiots who can't figure out the right-click (despite using it several times already), people begging for money and stuff... and anything else you can imagine. Oh and about 40% of them can't speak english. At all.

The thing is if you have to pay to play a game, you apreciate it more. You put in an effort into your playing. Just by forking over a subscription fee you are demonstrating a degree of dedication, which many (not all) of the F2P players lack. They expect everything to be handed to them on a silver platter and are angry and even abusive when that doesn't happen.

Call me elitist if you like, but my experience says that as long as there is no F2P option subscription fees are a great filter for undesirable players.

 

[Xarathox]

Well there's two things, not that I agree with either.

There's a perception that F2P models either unbalance the game (which they can) AND/OR they destroy the community (there's no entry standards therefore the standard of player must be lower). If you hold that view you must be of the opinion that people who pay are a higher class of player since you play a higher class of game and/or you are part of superior community thus the elitism.

The secondly elitism is built into the game in F2P models. That is people paying have access to more features (whether cosmetic/gameplay/other) therefore the people paying must be better in order to deserve all the extra stuff. Some players also have the notion that people that just take advantage of the F2P features without ever contributing financially to the game are leeching too.

That's the short and long of it.

I witnessed first hand how bad a company can abuse a F2P system in order to leech $1000 or more a month out of their player base (those willing to pay that at least) just for godly gear. That game was Perfect World and it's a fucking mess anymore.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

Half the people in the world have below average IQ. Most of the people with top end IQs will have busy jobs and will often not use things like Facebook, but will use tools such as LinkedIn for their networking, and the ones left on FB will understand the futility of conveying points through peer to peer (P2P ) computer networking and will ignore that type of feature (ie. the will never comment in public groups. Or frequent those groups in the first place.) This lowers the average IQ on a networking site such as facebook to be lower than normal average IQ; following on from this you end up with collective pockets of idiots polarising to a single obvious viewpoint and creating a false sense of belonging by ganging up on you.

 

[elvor0]

So anyway, why do some people paying a subscription fee think they're in the upper class of gaming and somehow elite and desirable? Just cos you pay a fee doesn't mean you're somehow a better member of the community. I mean surely the game will still have rude people etc.

Well for the most part...they do tend to be better environments. Sure you still get dicks, but not nearly as many, you don't want to get banned from a game you're paying $15 a month for, so the average toxicity is lower, as is the level of toxicity from an individual player. Plus it helps curb gold spammers and bots.

Not only that, they tend to have better and more content than (most, I believe Guild Wars 2 is the exception, but I'd say that was rather dubiously called an MMO) free to play games. Not only that, it's much fairer to the individual players.

Most of the time, F2P is less about giving you a good experience and more about nickel and diming you, which I feel breeds more elitism, as the rich kids just buy all the fancy shit, it's basically money=power. At least in say...WoW, everyone pays the same flat fee and are all on the same level regardless of skill level, and you all have /access/ to the same content, rather than having to pay to enter a fucking dungeon.

Even though League of Legends isn't an MMO, I'd say it has the best F2P you can get, nothing is locked off to the non paying player, aside from cosmetics. And I'll buy cosmetics, I don't feel forced to buy them, I'll buy them because I think "Hey that looks cool, I'll buy that!". Unlike SWOTOR where I need to pay to hide my fucking helmet, and have a second fucking profession. Most F2Ps cripple you to the point where it's almost pointless playing unless you want to spend loads on micro transactions in the first place, or just go with their subscription model for the sake of actually being able to play properly.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

Look at it this way:

They could be up to nearly $200 in fees when the subscription model falls apart and they need to go F2P.

 

[DocHarley]

I think you can be right, but still be an elitist dick.

The F2P MMOs I've played, while far from being a rigorous sampling, have all pretty much been crap in one way or another--or became so when they went F2P.

When the revenues drop, the first people laid off are either the ones creating new content or the community "police" who keep the griefing riff-raff out. Either way, the quality of F2P games is much lower than the subscription-based games I've seen.

There's also the perception, right or wrong, that if you're not paying for the game, you're a free-loader. You're taking up space, using up resources, and yet you contribute not one penny to the continuing development of the game.

So while you might have just run a gauntlet of jerks who can't make a point without a healthy dose of elitist bile, they still have a point. City of Heroes went down only a year or two after they went F2P, D&D Online and LotR felt like ghost towns the last time I visited them, and I can already smell the stench of death around Secret World.

All while P2P games like WoW, EVE Online, and even Vendetta Online appear to be doing just fine.

 

[DanielBrown]

I don't really understand why a sub fee would be such a huge deal breaker to people. For the tiny amount of money compared to the game time you get you won't have to deal with a shitload of restrictions and adds in the game to buy stuff. That's in most cases though... iirc TESO is P2P as well as having a fucking store. -_-'

But yeah, going elitist is retarded in either case. Both sides are jerks.

 

[GoaThief]

Having a monthly fee IS desirable for many, myself included. That in and of itself isn't elitist, is it?

You say you let your feelings be known too, have you got a link to what was said so we can see your phrasing exactly?

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I actually prefer the subscription model to F2P and for a game I want to play, I would always rather pay a sub for a proper experience, than get a pared down version with chargeable extras. I like knowing that my single payment includes everything the game has to offer rather than getting things piecemeal.

 

[Ayay]

I for one like subs , i cant stand the F2P model because its never free to play , and i absolutly hate being nagged about stardollars ebonycoins or what ever else crap they have as ingame money. But then its a choice i stopped playing a few mmo that went free to play because of it.For me it have nothing to do with "elitist" bs. Guild wars 2 is the exception they started out free to play so i knew what i bought.

 

[Something Amyss]

It usually strikes me as a justification by people who are paying more than they should.

 

[Eve Charm]

Eh it's not really elitism but fanboyism. You just said you didn't like the thing they've been waiting for since day one, ya your gonna get it. The best recent example is the Xbone Online every 24 hours, kinect must be connected, no used games, as bad as all that stuff was, you still had people Defending and trying to justify it and still would buy it if they added a clause that MS get's their first born. And of course they said " I've always got internet and don't mind if the kinect is watching me, maybe you need a tin foil hat.

 

[lacktheknack]

I've seen this behaviour a couple of times on The Escapist as well (sadly), mind you.

I've got to justify my $20-a-year subscription somehow! D:

How else will I do that if I don't adjust my avatar size and forum title, and thus make passive-aggressive people snark at me so I can feel superior to them?

 

[Foolery]

I think Whispering Cynic said it best. It's to deter troublemakers. I'm cool with that. Also, I really don't like microtransaction paywalls. I'd rather just put down 12 or 15 bucks a month, and not have content locked away rather than getting bits charged piecemeal. It also allows the devs to do more. Final Fantasy XIV is getting an update with housing, the Crystal Tower dungeon from Final Fantasy III, etc. And that's just a patch.

 

[Something Amyss]

It's to deter troublemakers.

Yeah, that argument's been made about 42 billion times for Xbox Live. So...Ummm...You want to rethink that?

 

[JediMB]

Personally, I was thrilled when the F2P announcement for SWTOR first came. And for a while things were good.

But eventually I realized just how much content we were losing out on so the minimized team could focus on the real-money store, its stupid "cartel packs", and that paying ?15 a month just wouldn't get me the same amount of enjoyable content as it would in a subscription MMO.

Oh well. I'm playing the rebooted Final Fantasy XIV now. At least Square Enix had the good sense to fix their mistakes rather than come up with new ways to bleed their remaining fans dry.

 

[Jadak]

It's hardly just subscription fees, people will use anything they do to act Elitist, it's the same reason that leads to nonsense like PC elitism and 'console wars'. It all boils down to our need to justify our decisions, regardless quality or correctness, we will argue to any extend including putting down others to support our belief that the decisions we make are best, even if they're not or it doesn't matter.

 

[Yopaz]

I don't really understand why a sub fee would be such a huge deal breaker to people. For the tiny amount of money compared to the game time you get you won't have to deal with a shitload of restrictions and adds in the game to buy stuff. That's in most cases though... iirc TESO is P2P as well as having a fucking store. -_-'

But yeah, going elitist is retarded in either case. Both sides are jerks.

Well, I am one of those who don't like subscription fees. When you're paying a subscription fee you're paying for access for a month or maybe a couple months at the time. Now I am the kind of person who plays multiple games simultaneously while a game with a subscription fee makes me feel like I have to play that game in order to get my money's worth. I don't want to pay $20 for a month when I am likely to just use it for those rare days I have the time to sink into it.

OT: People on the internet being elitist? Well of course they will be. That's one of those things we sadly can't avoid.

 

[Amir Kondori]

While I have no interest in any MMO personally I think it is smart that ESO is starting off subscription based. ESO was always planned as a WOW clone using the Elder Scrolls IP, it was designed around that, and if they had a to find a new way to monetize then it would have thrown off a lot of their game design and that would likely show in the finished product.

Personally I think it is much more likely than not that despite the brand recognition they will have that they will fail. Everyone and their mama tried to replicate WOW's success, no one has even come close.

 

[happyninja42]

Basically I was interested in TESO until the P2P subscription fees announcement came.

Finally got round to unliking the page on FB today but not before commenting on a post they'd made expressing my distaste for the P2P system.

My post got tons of comments with people saying "cheap ass punk" "glad scum like you will be kept out of OUR game" "maybe you should get a better job if paying for a game is an issue", "glad we're paying fees to keep annoying kids out of the game" basically people thinking they are better because they're willing to pay for a game on a monthly basis whilst I'm not.

So anyway, why do some people paying a subscription fee think they're in the upper class of gaming and somehow elite and desirable? Just cos you pay a fee doesn't mean you're somehow a better member of the community. I mean surely the game will still have rude people etc.

Why? Because people can be assholes. That's pretty much all there is to it.