Beleriand's page

I have never been a fan of the Free-to-Play model simply because I believe that something that is free has no value. However, I have come to realize that the Free-to-Play model can be an excellent way to attract large amounts of both positive and negative players alike.

The question is how to attract and keep the positive players of a Free-to-Play system while minimizing and rejecting the negative players.

I believe a community-based model is the solution.

Every MMO that I have played recently has been a 'single player game within an MMO environment'. This sacrifices the sense of community for ease of play.

So how do we rectify the situation? I propose the following:

• Subscribed PfO Players volunteer to be 'Mentors'
  
• All Free-to-Play players are required to create both a PfO Game Client login and a Pazio Forum account login
  
• All Free-to-Play players will be redirected to a 'Free-to-Play/Mentor' Pazio forum thread where they will request a 'Free-to-Play' pass
  
• Subscribed PfO Mentors will generate a Free-to-Play pass using an in-game command(eq:/genf2ppass).
  
• Each Subscribed Mentor will have a fixed amount of Free-to-Play passes that they can generate, which can be used to limit the Free-to-Play population
  
• Subscribed PfO Mentors will respond to the 'Free-to-Play/Mentor forum thread' and hand out their F2P passes.
  
• After character generation, the Free-to-Play player will be prompted to enter their 'Free-to-Play' pass
  
• Upon Free-to-Play player login, the Mentor and Free-to-Play player are added to each other's in-game friends list
  

My initial PRO/CON list:

PROS:

• This promotes the PfO community
  
• This provides in-game mentorship. F2P players won't log in and wander around like 'Baby Huey' wondering what is going on
  
• This is an excellent Company/Settlement recruitment tool
  
• This is (hopefully) enough of a convoluted process so that it deters at least some griefers
  
• Limiting the number of Free-to-Play passes per Mentor can be used to limit the Free-to-Play population
  
• Allows Mentors to police offensive character names as they are created
  

CONS:

• Makes trying PfO more of a convoluted process
  
• Requires PfO Mentors to watch the forums 24-7-365
  

I have no doubt that this is a flawed system, but I believe the general concept is workable.

I was hoping to start a discussion on a topic that I've been thinking about for some time.

I've played a few MMOs over the years (Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, LOTRO, DDO, NWO) and I've noticed a movement from difficulty-based games where there ends up being a class of player with better gear than most mainly due to skill/more time invested, to ones of accessibility where everyone can run all of the content and the rewards are basically uniform.

With regards to PfO, and this would mainly apply to PvE/Dungeon content, my questions to the community are this:

1) Is it possible to make content challenging for all players while not excluding anyone in the player base from completing said content?

2) If your above answer consists of a scaling or difficulty mechanism, how do you balance rewards so as not to exclude anyone from eventually obtaining the same loot while still rewarding those who complete the higher difficulty?

3) Do you believe, over time, that all players should eventually end up with the items that they want regardless of difficulty?