I'm done with EA

Graal said:
No, a more accurate analogy is both you and another customer bought the exact same model M3.
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In what possible world does "premium vs standard" equate to "Exact same model" in an analogy?!?!?

And your service booking analog misses the point entirely: BF3 advertised premium queue as a feature. How do you reconcile the "as a feature" part with "exact same model"? You don't. If BMW offered prioritized services as an optional extra in the initial price then yes, they will prioritize one call over the other...because they kinda promised to do so. As Dice promised to do so (& did).
More money = Better service. End of story. You can argue more money -> equal service all day long - the real world doesn't work that way.

Graal said:
Except you're not paying less. You're opting not to pay for an optional extra, and now you're essentially being punished for it.
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Paying less for less product. Paying more for more product. Same difference. Look at ADSL...if you pay extra for unshaped business cap, then OMG your packets get prioritized in the queue :D *above* the packets of others. (Or following your logic, others get punished and you have less right to the interwebs)

^^^Totally chuffed with my ADSL analogy. :D

Also, I think this is causing way to much drama. Hell I don't even pay attention to queue times. 1 min 5 mins...makes not diff if alt-tab'd out anyway.
 
Graal said:
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for businesses providing an advantage to customers who pay more, but when that advantage comes with the price of other customers being disadvantaged?
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That's kind of what it means to have an "advantage." To have an advantage you're placed ahead of others (read: disadvantaging them) :D

I don't see the issue with this really. I understand that it's not a great practice and it naturally leaves a sour taste in the mouths of those who don't have the money to afford the same privileges but that's capitalism for you: me pay more, me get better benefits.

It's hardly surprising that a company like EA (with its history) would implement a way to milk the hardcore fans as much as they can.
 
Sigh.

HavocXphere, once again you miss the point. Right from BF3's launch you had the exact same priority on a server queue as anyone else. You paid the exact same amount as them. Then a year later Premium launches and if you decide not to buy it or can't afford it your priority gets bumped down. Other people aren't getting more for paying more, you get less than you used to get because you decide not to buy more.

In order to enjoy the same benefits you enjoyed previously you will have to buy Premium. That's not fair at all. You don't see people in stores cutting lines simply because they've got more expensive purchases than other people.
 
Lycanthrope said:
That's kind of what it means to have an "advantage." To have an advantage you're placed ahead of others (read: disadvantaging them) :D
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Once again, there's a difference between receiving an advantage that places you ahead of others and an advantage that takes away benefits others enjoyed in order to advantage you.

If this was a F2P game it would have been fine, but it's not. This is a game we all paid at least $50. I should not be penalized for not buying additional content. Non-premium players have the exact same right to play on a server as Premium players.
 
Graal said:
Once again, there's a difference between receiving an advantage that places you ahead of others and an advantage that takes away benefits others enjoyed in order to advantage you.
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From my understanding nothing has really changed. Non-premium players are still in the same queues, premium players are just placed ahead of them/able to skip them?

That's a lot like paying a "premium" to get access to the VIP entrance. Still the same number of folks out front waiting to use the regular entrance, but you get to skip ahead and enter the club using the fancy one you paid for.

It's not "nice" but it's not inherently "evil." It's just capitalism: I get the advantages in life that I can afford. That's just kind of how life is. Best education? Pay a small fortune. Best medical care? Pay a small fortune. Best game experience? Well, either pirate it, or buy up all the DLC and "VIP" perks :p

But I know how you feel and I understand it. I wouldn't like that either. For example, I'm an OCD collector, I'd rather not support a Kickstarter game at all than not get the edition I want but can't afford.

I guess I'd feel the same way about a game I couldn't afford all the nice "perks" for. It would feel like a bum experience compared to the experience the guy who can afford it would have.

But at the same time, it's not an earth-shattering revelation to me either. Much of the real world works like that, it doesn't surprise me that a publisher like EA wants their games to work like that too. DLC isn't much different to "EXKLUSIV PREMYUM MEMBIRSHAP" to me and we've been ("optionally") buying that up for years.
 
Disney world and universal studios have a similar express line for the those who buy a 2nd ticket that let's you join a 2nd line that merges with the front of the pleb line.
Last time I checked nobody there minded. Although you were told how long the normal line is and told to move on for half an hour and come back later and get your place.

Btw anyone want popcorn
 
I'm in agreement with Graal on this, I stopped playing BF3 for a few reasons, and this was just one of them. The money making scheme, the game lost most of it's appeal of which I've been a avid fan for years. I paid for the original game which came with the karkland expansion. I was happy playing and was going to buy the extra content that was interested in getting, and skip those that was not.
Any perks anyone gets from buying these premium accounts, cool for them, it wouldn't effect the experience of playing of others who just got the original.

Then came along the expansions and premium, and with it the que jumping for premium members. For all the perks you get for being a premium member, that's great, but I despise the fact that I now have to sit and wait longer to play because I kept getting bumped. At the time when I was still playing this happened often, I would finally be first and about to join, and then suddenly I was rolled back and sat waiting in limbo wasting my time. I am a paying customer, not only that, a Battlefield fan - but I have limits to what I can keep throwing cash into, just because I didn't pay another R400-R500 for the premium content I am now penalised on my gaming experience.

No fuck that game model, it is a crap way of making games and I am hoping it does not become the standard with others.
The que system at disney or wherever, also a shitty way of making more money from the consumer, it should never be at the expense of others having to make them wait longer.

My greatest concern is that this is a sign of things to come and where do you draw the line, if people accept it so easily with their wallets then that que system can increase and the more you pay the quicker you can play.

i'm with Lyt too - play arma2 :D
 
EA have gone power-hungry a long time ago. It's sad, but there's little we can do about it. Hopefully, they get some new management and heads of the company.
 
Lycanthrope said:
From my understanding nothing has really changed. Non-premium players are still in the same queues, premium players are just placed ahead of them/able to skip them?

That's a lot like paying a "premium" to get access to the VIP entrance. Still the same number of folks out front waiting to use the regular entrance, but you get to skip ahead and enter the club using the fancy one you paid for.
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Except that this isn't a VIP club. These are privately run servers not paid for by EA. And BF3 purchasers were not told upon buying the game that they would have less rights to play on servers if they decided not to pay even more for more content later on. If I knew I was going to be penalized for not buying more DLC the day I purchased BF3 (and I didn't pre-order it, so I probably paid more than most here, not to mention the two content packs I bought separately), I would not have purchased BF3.

Your club analogy is also pretty weak. You are eventually going to get into the club. In the BF3 queue it is entirely possible that you get bumped out of a popular server indefinitely if there's a lot of demand to play and a lot of premium users want to join. It's nice that you can be 1st in a queue and and then be bumped to 4th and 5th, just to possibly have it happen again once you get close to first place. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy for spending R400 on BF3 and about R250 on two of the expansions.
 
Luckily there are powerful server tools out there,there is a option to only allow premium players to join a server and then there are custom server plugins that automatically kicks premium players from a server once it gets full or just kick them as soon as they join.

There was an outrage on the battlelog forums about those though.
 
DCWarhound said:
Luckily there are powerful server tools out there,there is a option to only allow premium players to join a server and then there are custom server plugins that automatically kicks premium players from a server once it gets full or just kick them as soon as they join.

There was an outrage on the battlelog forums about those though.
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Yeah, but that's understandable. I wouldn't want to kick players from my server just because they've got Premium. I've also heard of server admins who ban Premium players from playing on their servers. It's just as unfair to the Premium players then.

Ike_009 said:
Maybe ask the NASDAQ to de-list EA? Less angry shareholders pushing the NCI figure.
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EA was actually de-listed in December already. I think EA is in pretty huge financial trouble that they're just hiding reading well. Their share prices are down from $100 in 2006 to $15 today, and I think it's a mixture of the bad economy and a few financial missteps such as SWTOR costing them a fortune to make and not selling as well as they'd hoped.

Financial troubles will also explain why a game such as Dead Space 3 needs to sell 5 million copies to be successful, has built-in microtransactions and has $41 worth of day 1 DLC available upon release. Let's say a copy of Dead Space sells for between $40 - $60. At 5 million copies that is between $200 million - $300 million. That's really a lot of money for a single game to be considered successful. :wtf:
 
As a BF3 player, I'll give you a scenario, as it stands now, there are only a few servers (locally) that I play on (I only play Conquest which narrows down the number of servers I can join). One of these servers is an iGame server, so I select the server and I'm placed 1st in the queue (cool story, it's not like I haven't been in 1 before), about 7 minutes go by and all of a sudden I'm 3rd in the queue :wtf:, and endure an 15 minute long wait before deciding it's time to move on after only gaining back the 2nd place in the queue. I browse for vanilla conquest servers with an adequate population size* (I couldn't find any aftermath servers that were populated), this search eventually leads to the Do Gaming Metro 24/7 server (which is full), so I decide I might be lucky 2nd time around (boy was I wrong:rolleyes:), select server-> you are now 1st in queue-> 4 minute wait-> you are now 2nd in queue-> 5 minute wait-> still 2nd in queue -> promptly quit.

I eventually decided to play on a few US aftermath servers (dealing with upwards of 650ms of ping), then went back to the iGame, WAGE, and Do gaming servers much later, once the population had dissipated a bit. All in all I spent 30 - 40 minutes trying to play, but couldn't because of queue priority.

Now, I really love this game, but I can objectively say, queue priority is a very crappy/dodgy thing to tout as a feature IMHO. I definitely get where Graal is coming from. I really doubt that this scenario is unique to me.

*at least 15 players (most of them had 10 players max)

PS: This all transpired this past weekend.
 
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Priority in queues?
Looks normal practice aka VIP. Though, it puts non-VIP players at disadvantage if there is quite large ratio between VIP and non-VIP players, then it will turn out that non-VIP certainly will have problems accessing. That's wrong.

Need to buy again another copy of game to upgrade?
That's definitely wrong. Its extortion.

I knew one WoW'esque game, where at some point makes game unplayable without premium aka sort of "You have finished playing demo".

When raiding party members get killed, they are being transferred to "waiting area". Waiting time depends on level and amount of deaths during lifetime of character. At first waiting is about minute, but it grows to larger times... One must buy "ticket" via microtransaction to get past waiting.

Another thing, player base effectively kicks undedicated players from raiding parties, if one do not have "character enhancements", which "fix" 66% damage nerf, can be purchased via microtransaction again. I left game immediately after that patch.

EDIT: What's up with all HTML tags?
 
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All I read was "whinge, whinge, whinge, I'm too stingy to pay for Premium."

No-one cares for your attention seeking thread.

Life is unfair, deal with it.
 
Kuga said:
All I read was "whinge, whinge, whinge, I'm too stingy to pay for Premium."

No-one cares for your attention seeking thread.

Life is unfair, deal with it.
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So complaining because you're being penalized for not wanting to spend more money on a game you've already paid for is whinging. Good to know you're still the smartest person I know, Kuga.
 
Graal said:
So complaining because you're being penalized for not wanting to spend more money on a game you've already paid for is whinging. Good to know you're still the smartest person I know, Kuga.
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Fact of the matter is, people bought Premium to get all the expansions. The prioritized queuing system was just a bonus.

If you bought all the expansions individually, it would of worked out the same. That was when Premium was launched, not too sure what the pricing is now.
 
I don't think this thread is going anywhere. This is now for all intents and purposes a debate thread.

We can complain about this, we can argue about that.

Bottom line: until someone can change the mindsets of the money-hungry publishers; we will constantly be debating and arguing in circles.

This won't lead ANYWHERE!!

I've read many of the posts on this thread, and, the above mentioned is what it always comes down to: a useless discussion about something that won't change unless someone can convince them (publishers/money suckers EA) that their (publishers/money suckers EA) money-whoring ways are "wrong".

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I'm actually happy I don't play Bf3 anymore :)
 
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Are the Wage/iGame/Etc servers using this premium queue thing? Going by Saint_Dee's post, they are and that, in my humble opinion, is pretty doos.

Correct me if I'm wrong?


OT - I agree with perks and shit being available to different tiers of customer in MMORPG scenarios but in a shooter? Nah, ridiculous.
 
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