For a game to sell an XP accelerator is like a restaurant charging you a fee to eat half your meal for you. With rareexceptions there is no actual reward for playing a game other than the experience of playing it, so to compress that experience is to offer less of your product. Nobody should want that if it is a good product.
A well-designed experience curve should be part of the fun of the game. Whether it's leveling up in an RPG or earning guns and perks in a shooter there's fun to be had in incrementally increasing, and if it's more fun to improve faster then the curve should change until it's optimal. In a well designed game you don't want to skip ahead. How many people would buy a special edition of Chronotrigger where for $10 extra you start at the max level? Or a version of Skyrim where you begin with every skill?*
Yes developers can argue that different people like different skill curves, and if that's true they should include options, like they do for difficulty. With rare exceptions you don't have to pay extra for hard or easy mode. What bothers me about these accelerators is not that someone might level faster in an online game than I do, but that I'm probably playing a less fun progression curve just so the developer could upsell the other guy.
As for this 'feature' in a single player game...well... I don't like to have to buy my games on installment.
My only hope is that the reputation damage done to developers who use this "mechanic" is great enough that it hurts their bottom line and it dies the death of the online pass.
*Sure those things can be fun as ways to wring a bit more out of the game by breaking it, but I'm talking about your primary experience.
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