I hate games that require you to pay in order to retain a competitive edge, like runescape (quit it for that reason ~5 years ago). One-time-fee games are the only acceptable main-stream ones in my opinion. I downloaded Combat Arms and played for a while, and, like in runescape, people that payed real money had an edge in everything. They could purchase all sorts of things that gave them an advantage, such as equipment that upped spead, armor, etc., and most importantly, guns that are simply better in every way than anything I could get for free. Since members played in every server/game, I was continually beaten simply for not paying for the game. Special boxes fall periodically that allow you to get an item by buying a key and opening them. Of course, the vast majority of these boxes require keys that you have to pay money for, and the boxes that don't almost always give you a crappy gun for a day or two, whereas the others give you good guns permanently.
It would be difficult to impliment "premium" features in a game like elements without pissing off all the people that don't pay. One possibility (hypothetically) would be to allow people to pay real money to upgrade cards. These cards would be marked as being upgraded through real money, and as such could only be used in a special pvp arena (if at all in pvp). This would give players that pay an edge without giving them much permanent advantage over players that don't pay. They could, at best, upgrade any deck they wanted to, but most players that regularly play elements already have a fully upgraded deck.
Giving more/better spins would be a touchy subject. I would be okay with something like the ability to purchase 20 extra spins for a dollar, one spin being added to each game you win, so fighting 20 false gods would net you 33% more spins for a dollar (something like this, math's obviously off).
Basically, aspects to the game such as rare cards, nymphs, and upgrading cards (if you can use them in pvp) should be carefully balanced in features that people have to pay money for. If a feature lets you get 1000 spins for $10, people with plenty of extra cash to blow could farm false gods and rapidly surpase other people in electrum, rares, upgraded cards, etc., giving them an unfair edge. An easy solution is to put caps on everything (you can only buy X extra spins per day, for example).
To summarize: I stick long-term to games that are all-around free and don't give competitive edges to people that pay money head-to-head against people that don't. In Soldat, for example, people that pay money get cosmetic benefits. They can change their character's appearance in more detail, change the color of their jet-cloud, get a star next to their name, etc., but in no way does paying money help them win in the game in any way. In a grindy game like Elements, it's not quite as touchy as a shooter (the nature of Soldat makes it hard to impliment features for members, anyway), since you can make it slightly easier to grind without unbalancing the game, but in general, implimenting special features that give members any sort of edge directly against non-members usually steers games into the wrong direction and ends up in me quitting them. As long as members have to fight members with the same access to advantages, and can't use those against people that don't pay, I don't care.
by the way, I'm camping, and it's pitch-dark (a few scattered lights from other campsites) as I'm writing this post, so I apologize for any errors, I can't see the keyboard.
