I'm getting sick of how lowly the people that work on CoD are getting. Elite is the biggest ponzi scheme in gaming and I haven't heard or read about it anywhere. First of I want to say that I was gullible and bought the PS3 Hardened edition of the game so I'm an elite premium member.

Before the game was released EVERY ad or interview that talked about the Elite service never ever mentioned that Xbox would be getting the maps or DLC first. I know that there's an contract between MS and Activision that all DLC will be sold on 360 first, but I thought that Elite would not be affected by that, and a lot of my friends thought so too. Before release they were saying that Elite premium member would be getting the DLC before ANYONE else. As soon as the game was released their wording was changed to Elite Xbox premium members will be getting the DLC first. I understand that and don't really care as that is the way it has always been. Today Robert Bowling said on twitter that the first DLC for non premium members will appear on Xbox on the 20th of March, one month before the PS3 premium members get them, that is BS.

The other part of being a premium member is the clan integration in the game, that is the main reason I bought Elite, and for the first 3.5 months the clan operations and challenges were not functioning, clan challenges are yet to be added with no ETA. There was no mention of it being unavailable at launch, there was no ETA and for 3.5 months I got ZERO value return for my membership. If you bought Elite last week you would be on the same level as someone who had it since launch. It is like buying a year's membership for WoW but being unable to level up you're character for 3 months.

This is a clear case of false advertisement, I got nothing of what I was promised, the service runs like shit, the Elite website looks like something from the 90s, it is slow and buggier than Skyrim, it is one of the worst websites I've visited (don't they have professionals working on this stuff, didn't the beta improve anything) and it is hands down the worst service I've bought.

@Fire_Of_The_Wind said:

Elite is the biggest ponzi scheme in gaming

You have no idea what a Ponzi scheme is, do you?

Ever since Modern Warfare 2 the DLC has come out first on the Xbox. This should be no real surprise to anyone.

@Demoskinos said:

Ever since Modern Warfare 2 the DLC has come out first on the Xbox. This should be no real surprise to anyone.

Except people that didnt know that.

@Dagbiker: If you remotely pay attention to gaming I don't see how you couldn't have known that. Especially someone who plays the Call of duty games.

your first mistake was buying CoD.

What did you expect? Seriously.

Elite sounded bad from the beginning.

@Fire_Of_The_Wind said:

Before the game was released EVERY ad or interview that talked about the Elite service never ever mentioned that Xbox would be getting the maps or DLC first.

They never mentioned that they weren't going to release them there first either.

There was another thread complaining about the same thing a while back. This particular problem is a non-issue since it's been well-known for a while now that Xbox gets CoD maps first. Even PS3 Elite members don't get CoD maps before Xbox 360 members.

There should be a lesson here: Don't be a chump for stupid marketing schemes. That's what this was. I'm not calling you an idiot, but Elite doesn't do or have anything worth any amount of money. Be wiser with your money.

@believer258 said:

Don't be a chump for stupid marketing schemes.

We all learn this lesson one way or another. Always research your products before buying them, and above all make sure your going to get lasting enjoyment out of your purchase.

I really fell for the Halo Reach hype, even bought the C.E, and then as soon as it came out, me and all my friends realized we didn't like it as much as COD or Halo 3. Thatt's when I learned my lesson about marketing campaigns and hype.

@Arker101 said:

@believer258 said:

Don't be a chump for stupid marketing schemes.

We all learn this lesson one way or another. Always research your products before buying them, and above all make sure your going to get lasting enjoyment out of your purchase.

I really fell for the Halo Reach hype, even bought the C.E, and then as soon as it came out, me and all my friends realized we didn't like it as much as COD or Halo 3. Thatt's when I learned my lesson about marketing campaigns and hype.

QFMFT.

I went through the same experience with the Forza 3 LCE, only to find out that they began handing out the LCE content a couple of months after launch. Not to mention that it was a shittier game than Forza 2.

I'm almost at the point where I'm going to stop getting DLC altogether. I can't think of an instance where it's made me happy enough to buy it, short of isolated car purchases in driving simulators.

@believer258: As someone who paid for Elite on the Xbox I disagree. Its been paying off for me. New maps every month so far.

@Aus_azn said:

@Arker101 said:

@believer258 said:

Don't be a chump for stupid marketing schemes.

We all learn this lesson one way or another. Always research your products before buying them, and above all make sure your going to get lasting enjoyment out of your purchase.

I really fell for the Halo Reach hype, even bought the C.E, and then as soon as it came out, me and all my friends realized we didn't like it as much as COD or Halo 3. Thatt's when I learned my lesson about marketing campaigns and hype.

QFMFT.

I went through the same experience with the Forza 3 LCE, only to find out that they began handing out the LCE content a couple of months after launch. Not to mention that it was a shittier game than Forza 2.

I'm almost at the point where I'm going to stop getting DLC altogether. I can't think of an instance where it's made me happy enough to buy it, short of isolated car purchases in driving simulators.

The best DLC I can think of was Borderland's Zombie Island and Armory of Knoxx, but those only worked for me because my friends and I played that game for long, long stretches of time.

But overall there really isn't too much great DLC out there.

What did you expect? Seriously.

Elite sounded bad from the beginning.

@Video_Game_King said:

@Fire_Of_The_Wind said:

Elite is the biggest ponzi scheme in gaming

You have no idea what a Ponzi scheme is, do you?

this

I'm enjoying Elite on my PS3. I like having the stats and the heat maps of my past games, and being able to track my friends stats as well. Earning the badges for the Lone Wolf operations has been nice too - I didn't even know that were going to have those. The only major thing I would change, which might happen, is how they give prizes out for ops. The current system is clunky...

So far the maps they have dropped have been very good, and the map due for PS3 at the end of the month looks good. The fact is I knew going in that some of the content they would drop was not going to be to my taste. Getting three MP maps in the first few rounds works for me. Once they start dropping Spec Ops maps (I don't play that mode) I'll be bummed...but that's the deal. Some months we'll be getting stuff I don't want, but other players will have been waiting a long time to get.

I usually buy some of the maps for COD - some years I might even buy all of them - but the fact that people will already have been playing them for a long time before they become available to me as a non-Elite gamer is enough to convince me not to bother getting them when they are finally available to me. I like COD but I'm already playing it far less than I was a few months back for the very reason that the maps already feel old. By the time the DLC drops for me I'll have moved on.

Bad decision by Activision in my opinion.

@Fire_Of_The_Wind: I do agree that the ads before the launch were very misguiding. Not mentioning 360 elite users will get the maps before the PS3 elite users are just shitty.

They should have made that clear.

@SamFo said:

@Video_Game_King said:

@Fire_Of_The_Wind said:

Elite is the biggest ponzi scheme in gaming

You have no idea what a Ponzi scheme is, do you?

this

It does seem odd to use this as an example.

Out of all the hundreds of thousands of people who compete in an operation(ie those who paid for Premium Elite), they hand out one single solitary iPad2. Wow.

@Demoskinos said:

@Dagbiker: If you remotely pay attention to gaming I don't see how you couldn't have known that. Especially someone who plays the Call of duty games.

Kind of a shame that one has to "pay attention" to know what they're getting when they buy a game these days.

This thread reminds me of that uncomfortable moment with Brad Muir when asked if Iron Brigade was coming to other platforms. These are the exclusivity deals Xbox Live gold subscriptions pay for. You should be happy the maps are even coming to PC and PS3 at all.

@ProfessorEss: Yes, its a shame someone has to put forth some sort of effort as a consumer to know what they are buying. What a crime!

@Demoskinos said:

@ProfessorEss: Yes, its a shame someone has to put forth some sort of effort as a consumer to know what they are buying. What a crime!

I didn't say it was a crime, I just said it was a shame that the process of buying a videogame has become so needlessly convoluted.

I'm getting sick of how lowly the people that work on CoD are getting. Elite is the biggest ponzi scheme in gaming and I haven't heard or read about it anywhere. First of I want to say that I was gullible and bought the PS3 Hardened edition of the game so I'm an elite premium member.

While I am getting what I feel is my money's worth from Elite there are some changes I would make.

1) Make three or for spots where people can talk about clans: a "Come into my clan thread" , a "I need a clan thread", and a "What is wrong with my clan" thread. That way every single comment space isn't filled with clan chatter

2) Totally dismantle the winning of prizes from the Online Play events. If people participate in an event they get a raffled tickest, and then ALL prizes are raffled off. The fact is these contests are not working, it takes too long to figure out who won with the less (notice I didn't say 'no') cheating. If you set up a contest people will cheat, so at least lower the need to cheat as much with a raffle system. They can still give out teh Bronze, Silver, and Gold emblems but the prizes need to be taken out of the "cheating pit" we see online.

3) I wish the site could generate "infomatics" that would tell me more about how I play. I find that data they provide helpful, but I wish they would figure out more way to show off more information in more interesting ways. I'm sure I do crazy things over and over it would be cool if they could compile months worth of data to show me a "heat map" for ALL kills, or if my kill-to-death ratio over time were set to music it would sound like ...this.

4) I wish you could do things with groups, like a way to find the members of a 'group' to see if they are playing.