To me it is just unwarranted elitism. Sure most sites have watermarks and severe quality downgrading but you can go on Batoto, Exhentai or Fakku and get high quality pictures. The last two are hentai sites, but still. Also, Batoto and Fakku load the next page while you're reading the current one, meaning the next page appears instantly without having to load. Direct downloads are torrents are often unreliable and strewn as a collection of single chapters which must be tediously downloaded by hand. If I read online, I can get what I want, isntantly, without having to delete it later.