Nereus

 
Maybe it's just the way I express myself? When I have an opinion, I try to back up with facts, reasoning and logic. I don't always succeed, but I try. In this OP I stated up front it was a rant, which to me means it's likely to be emotionally charged, which clearly can skew rational thought.

I totally got where you were coming from, why I said earlier there is nothing wrong with 'ranting' from time to time.  And labeling a post as such makes complete sense.
 
Your posts have definitely been a bit more reasonable than the typical "I-Hate-EA/BF" circle jerks that usually go on in these forums.  Usually it's just, "ZOMG I hate EA, they are forcing me to buy their products at gunpoint!"  
 
Or another classic is, "ZOMG I hate EA so much I'm done with them blah blah blah," then a few weeks later you see them complaining about the next product they purchased from them AFTER swearing to be done with EA.  
 
Then there are those that need to CONSTANTLY remind us of how much they hate a game in particular as if we're talking about civil rights, and the world is going to end if they don't play the games they don't enjoy.  The reality is not everyone has the same tastes, and an individual not liking certain games is really not a big deal.
 
I think this was the initial thought, was that this thread would just turn into another therapy session for the few that feel like they need vent frustrations over and over and over and over....... as if they expect to like every single game they play, and want us to make them feel better about it.  There is a line, where dislike turns to complaining, and that eventually turns to just whining.
 
I see a clear difference between that type of mentality and your rant you are expressing.  Which I guess is the difference between dealing with adults, and those who still are a bit green on most things dealing with the real world.
 
 

I actually like playing BF3. I just find some of their business practices questionable although I will pay anyway. I had a tantrum 8 days ago because of AIMbotting in BF3 and quit "Cold Turkey". I wouldn't even be here but after spending hours a day playing Team Death Match, I don't feel comfortable unless I'm at my keyboard. Due to my declining health and advancing years, I'm reluctant to sit here and watch XXX porn all day. I don't want one of my neices or nephews to find such filth if I happen to pass away. I thought spending time here possibly helping someone else or learning something was better than watching porn. Did I mention what a really good job these 600 series boards do with the graphic details in streaming internet video?

I have a deep hatred towards ubisoft. Their support for their games ALMOST compares to creative's hardware/drivers. Probably worse

You are missing how this sets a precident for EA allowing (or rather profiting from) transactions of an unrelated series to give options or perks. Why this wouldn't surprise me, would be that folks are lemmings and will most likely buy into that title simply for more BF, which I find to be rather dumb.
 
Starcraft II is split up into 3 parts instead of being a complete product like its predicessor. The next 2 parts have TBA release dates. The broodwar expansion shipped for less than $60 for the original. The next 2 parts will be full retail for new game prices. It is just pure greed at this point.

I don't know where you were when BF Premium was leaked and then confirmed, but they have always said it was going to include all current and future DLC packs.  This has become a common practice starting last fall.  Publishers call them different things, Season Pass, VIP Access, or some other name related to the IP it's connected to.   Usually, when you do purchase these packs, there is some kind of financial incentive saving the buyers a couple bucks instead of paying for the DLC individually as they are released.  You might not agree with this practice, or it might not fit with your finances, then it's probably not for you.  But to take the extra step and assume it's "illegal" is pretty absurd.  Don't like it, don't buy it.  I think you need to understand that what expansion packs were back in the days of BF2 no longer apply to the current games industry.  It's all about DLC getting you to pay for content above and beyond what you get in the box that now extends the game.  The concept of DICE working for a year on 8 maps and pressing new CDs to sell in retail stores for $30 are over.  It's about getting content out there a few months after release to keep people playing your game and spending money on it.  If anything that has been my criticism of the DLC for BF3.  It's not coming out fast enough.  Not like it is on Call of Duty Elite.
 
Secondly, it's been debated over and over again that Premium because of the additional perks it offers such as the "Priority" list placement made it required to play the game.  You may think it is, but I honestly do not.  There are enough non-premium servers out there that really sitting in queues can be managed to the point where you don't have to be in them at all.  If there was not such think as 3rd party servers and DICE run or rented servers were the only way you could play the game online.  You might have some leg to stand on, but it would be a small one.  Add to that, the gear that the extra premium assignments unlock has no real effect on the performance of the player.  A new skin for your Solider is not going to make you aim better.
 
And on the subject of the BF4 beta, I think if there's anyone to blame it's the marketing department at EA.  I really don't think they checked with DICE when they accidentally post the pre-order details of Medal of Honor to Origin.  Based on their response to questions it brought up, they were completely blindsided by it.  No where did anyone say that it was promised to be some perk of BF3 Premium or any kind of time table for when it would happen.  DICE came out and said that it's very very very far off in the future.  Not until the DLC for BF3 is done and even then not even close to when that happens.  So far off that it really should have no impact on a $59.99 purchase you make for a game coming out this October.
 
Finally on the subject of Steam, ahh yes good old Steam.  Interviews with Origin and EA proper have said that it's Valve's own policies with Steam in regards to DLC that's keeping their games off the service.  As evidenced by the recent release of the Crysis 2 pack that includes both DLC pack along with the full game.  EA wants their games anywhere they can sell them.  If they didn't, the right thing to do business wise would be to make Origin the only destination to get EA games.  Which they don't, you can get them on GameStop's Impulse and Amazon's Download Store.  So I'm sad to say that this is one case where you can't blame EA... for once.
 
So there ya go, hope you like my little rant against yours.  Don't get me wrong, there's plenty to rant about when it comes to EA.  But I think you are focusing on the wrong things and not looking at the big picture.   I'll leave you with this though: EA dropped the MSRP on BF3 to $39.99 today in North America if it makes you feel any better.

forrestang

You're only a lemming or dumb if you buy MOH SOLELY for the purpose of getting access to play a beta A WEEK earlier.  Think about it...... for BF3, I don't remember exactly but I think they let people play the beta for about a month or so?  People who purchased MOH got a WEEK earlier access.  So that means, you didn't have to purchase anything, and you could still have played the beta for free for nearly a month.  There is nothing that says a company MUST allow you to play their beta, and there is definitely nothing that says you MUST purchase an unrelated product to play that beta.  My point is, the choice to be a "lemming or dumb" as you put it is solely up to the end user.  I for one simply WILL NOT purchase MOH just to get an extra/early seven days to play a beta with limited content.  That's not to say I wouldn't purchase MOH if I thought I would enjoy it, but I definitely wouldn't buy it just for early access to a beta.  To me it's simply not worth it.  Although others may find it worth their money, and that's totally up to them, and of course I personally wouldn't care what they do with their money.  I think you are taking this entire situation way too personally.

If you don't understand that this their way of testing the water for future methods of luring folks in, then I'm not sure what to tell you.

forrestang
About Starcraft, I don't understand what you mean?  Starcraft was released, then there were two expansions after it, which really didn't get much headway.  And then they followed that up with another expansion, "Broodwar" which actually seemed to catch on.

Well mainly because the other two "expansions" were more like DLC developed by a 3rd party which had similar quality to what people were home brewing with the SDK. The only real expansion was broodwar which was released by blizzard. There is a huge difference there. Of course this is back in the days before blizzard north left the company and then absorbed by activision, but i digress. Also, it wasn't broodwar:the terran pov, broodwar:the protoss pov, then broodwar: the zerg pov it was just broodwar which was all inclusive. This is what made it epic.

forrestang
Sure I suppose they could have done it all at once, but SC2 is one of the most well done games I've ever played, in terms of the ladder, the chat system, UI,  the content, how flawless it works (99.9% of the time), how much replay-ability you can get from it online....... I have never really seen any complaints about that game from anyone (except balance issues but that's usually just people whining b/c they get owned and are frustrated, and it literally took about 5-6 years to balance out the original sc games).

You do get that most of this is just ported over information based on the previous game right? The main focus wasn't on how things work and how they interact with each other because they already did that with SC and the warcraft series. This is primarially why starcraft is such a big hit, because it already went through the baby stages of the style with warcraft 1&2. This allows them to largely just focus on content, of which they split up into 3 parts to make more money. That's it, there is nothing more to it than that.

forrestang  If you play SC2, are you saying that you don't think "Wings of Liberty" is clearly worth the retail $59.00 they are asking for it?

Nope. Not a bad game for sure, but not a $60 one and definately not a $180 one plus tax.

So many people see evil conspiracies. I guess it's easier for you guys to understand things when you break them down into nice simple "Good vs Evil" like in the comic books. 

I don't understand what the big deal is about MoH offering early beta access to BF4. I've read through this whole thread and still can't understand why you guys think it is so bad. You don't have to buy it, you can play the beta without it; you literally won't miss out on anything BF4 related if you don't buy MoH. How is it any different from other companies offering something for free with the purchase of another product? How is it any different from trying to entice costumers to buy a piece of hardware on NewEgg by bundling it with another piece of hardware/software for free? You don't have to buy either one and you get access to something regardless of if you buy the first product or not. It's really not a big deal. I will never endorse EA's shady practices, their horrible customer service, their awful QA and QS, their ruining of some of my most favorite franchises, etc etc. The list can go on. This is nothing new to the gaming industry, however, and is certainly nothing new to the world of consumerism. It's all been done before, and certainly not only by EA.
 
On the note of Premium being required, I hope you've all come to the consensus that it is pretty silly to think that it is necessary to play the game. I've been flamed at and called names by other members in other threads on this same matter, so I'll keep it short. It offers nothing to make someone a better player. There are no advantages given to players who do have it over players who don't have it, save queue priority. I strongly abhor queue priority, and it never should have been included. Regardless, there are tons, and I mean tons, of servers that I play on that regularly have no queue and I can enter with relative ease. The only reason I got Premium, as many others have mentioned, was to get the DLC for cheaper. I couldn't care less about everything else bundled, and it sure as hell didn't make me a better player.
 
I can't comment on SC2 and Craptivision's policies, but I don't think much is changing, or has changed, in the realm of expansion packs. Games have always come out with expansion packs that could cost upwards of half the price of the whole game, with many expansion packs released as well. If what you say is true about SC2, being that the expansions are being released at $60 a pop, then I will say this: It wouldn't surprise me. People are willing to buy it, and that's all that matters. If the company can get away with it, then it has no reason to not do it. I played through the Wings of Liberty campaign and online, and didn't feel the game was really missing anything. It was much better than other games being released for $60 today. Charging $60 for an expansion is outrageous, but Activision/Treyarch have been doing that with another series for the past couple years. 

Well Phades, we could probably go on with this forever.  As always though, I would advise everyone to stick with the rational over the emotional, which is that when you feel like something is not worth your money, don't buy it.  What an individual thinks is overpriced is irrelevant, the market typically decides the worth of products.
 
It seems to me though, like you just want as much content as you can get, while spending as little money as possible.  And there is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with that, everybody desires that.  But the reality is that NOBODY is going to work for other people for free, not YOU, not ME, and certainly not Blizzard or EA.
 
But I think at the same time, you've got to be realistic.  Saying "Wings of Liberty" isn't worth the MSRP (as an example)...... well heck man, you're going to have a hard time in the gaming community finding games if you think THAT game isn't worth the MSRP.  Games just don't get much more functional than SC2.  And I say this as someone who doesn't even enjoy playing sc2 all that much, but I can clearly see it is worth every penny of $60.
 

I didn't go further than page one so I don't know if it has been said, but I hate BF3. I enjoyed it for some time, then a patch came out and since then the game has gone to crap. Then premium...bah, I paid extra to pre-order the game but i don't get anything extra and fancy...

johnalan

ARCTIC_EAGLE

WHAT YOU DARE TO QUESTION EA? I WILL KILL YOU!!!
that seems to be the opinion of many, they just want to thank EA (by doing favors of a TOS-violating nature) for the perfection that is BF3 and BF3: Premium. I, for one, love the horrible hit detection, terrible weapon balance, broken maps, crappy destruction, lack of VOIP, over charging, months between patches, crappy DLC content, over powered sun, horrible mechanics, EA existing......

LOL yea!!!!!! Don't forget about the multitude of hackers that are now roaming free on every server.  EA/Dice have lost a paying customer with me, with their "we are doing everything posiable to catch cheaters, glitchers and hackers" attitude.  They are doing absolutly nothing.  Almost to the point where I say fk it and uninstall the game.  Every day I'm getting owned by hackers and their excuses are lag, your bad connection, your slow computer, your lack of skill.  I say bs to all of it.  I've played for more than 500 hours on this piece of crap game and the cheating is getting 10 times worse.  Kill all cheaters and hackers................ better yet! give me a real M9 Bayonet or ABC-90 and tell me where they live.

 
Seems like you get little to no enjoyment out of the game.  The same applies to a ton of other people who make similar posts.  So why not just uninstall the game and stop buying EA products?  

EA and BF3 isn't the only one that puts out DLC that cost as much as the base game
 
look at Saints Row: The Third for example, the base game is $50 and it has about $60 worth of DLC content
 
I got the base game at the steam summer sale so I will pick up some of the DLC when the christmas sale hits.

forrestang

boredgunner


Seems like you get little to no enjoyment out of the game.  The same applies to a ton of other people who make similar posts.  So why not just uninstall the game and stop buying EA products?  

Whoa!!!!  This is the most logical thing I've ever seen you post!!!  

 
So you're saying that's the only post you've seen from me?