Mentors

[Coz1969]

I like a lot of the suggestions that have been posted.... one thing I haven't seen, though, it with regards to mentor qualifications.


With the VU 9.4 mentor system, in order to become a mentor, you only needed 100 skill points in ANY of the graduation skills. This means someone who stepped off the transport ship and fired an opalo for a few days could, with that system, become a mentor. Not a very knowledgeable mentor at that point.

Perhaps, to start raise the skill points requirements for mentorship. I would suggest at least 1.5x the skill points for any graduation skill. (i.e. 2000 rifle skill points required for graduation... mentor must have 3000 skill points... 600 required to grad in survey/prospect... mentor must have at least 900 skill points...)

Second, perhaps a mentorship "test". If you want to be a mentor, you must first pass this test. General knowledge questions, etc... "So, you want to be a mentor" There really is nothing worse than a mentor who hasn't got a clue about Entropia Universe.

Perhaps taking this test, along with the required skill points would unlock mentor... and only those who have unlocked mentor can offer mentorship to new players.

 

[Rentonx]

One thing we realy need is a system where a disciple can ask a question to the mentor when he is ofline and when the mentor is online he gets the question from his disciple. This way it is easyer for them to communicate whitout the need to be both online.

*we also need offline message system in general. So that we can offline message people on our FL. I was going to suggest this too, but i think thats an aspect which is for the general messaging system we have now.

 

[Carlito]

Thats why you introduce the concept of the disciple getting a gift too - that way if they leave the mentor at 99% he won't get anything unless he started all over again with another mentor at 0%

which reminds me,

*If disciple leaves mentor, make it possible for disciple to rejon mentor again without having to start all over again.

Good point.

 

[Dalas]

Just checked through the thread and didn't see anything about a

MENTOR CHAT CHANNEL!

And of course, byebye farming. Liking the idea of messages that can be left between Mentors and Disciples.

Thanks Marco for giving us the chance to suggest things.

 

[shiek]

Minimum professional levels for mentors.
any one avatar should only be allowed to have 2 disciples at a time, then they would have more incentive to get them graduated, and not just lock them in after 10% and set to ignore.
You could do something at the soc term maybe where new avatars sign up for mentorship, then someone who wanted to spend the time could accept their new disciple. this would eliminate the predatory atmosphere in PA where the sharks lay in wait for the newbie to get off the spaceship.

 

[Rentonx]

MENTOR CHAT CHANNEL!

!!!!!!!!!!!!

Awesome idea, and if you have multiple disciples they can all talk to eachother within that channel too, as well as you the mentor!

 

[aia]

Some general points (to the current mentoring system):

Let mentoring skill drop in gradually when the disciple either have performed a certain task (like arriving at Twin Peaks teleporter) or gotten a certain level of skills (let's say each 500 level) instead of at the end.

As for tasks a disciple can do to give the mentor skills, it could be things like getting a few useful teleporters like Twin Peaks, Camp Phoenix, Athena Spaceport and Emerald Lakes Mall. Other goals (that cost) could be to have sweated a creature, to have killed a creature and to have dropped a mining bomb/probe.

Goal for graduation: Instead of skill points, it would be more logical with professional level.

Make the goals for graduating visible to the disciple, right now it's only visible in some news archive.

Let disciple chip in any skill not affected by mentoring - and let the mentor be able to "disqualify" a skill to let the disciple chip it. (Chipping in is the main disadvantage for a disciple.)

Enforce a minimum skill requirement for a mentor: At least, to take on disciples a mentor should have reached the graduation level himself.

Implement auto-graduation. A disciple should be able to graduate even if the mentor is "on holiday".

 

[Shadowmage]

For disciples:
-) Adding quests like "reach xxx skills" or "reach xxx professional standings"
-) Adding quests like "kill this and that mob"
-) Adding slight skill bonuses for a certain period of time and/or small gifts ("Disciple Edition") on successful quests.
-) Adding more newcomer contents in general (chopping wood, digging oil etc.)


For mentors:
-) Complete new reward system where you can choose your reward from a certain selection, also enabled to stack up reward points to get other gifts (for example gift selections for 1,5,10,25,50,100,... reward points). You get reward points all xx% a disciple reaches towards graduation, not just at the end.

The gift not necessarily need to be any uber stuff, the more points needed the more they value on market anyway, so also could be other rare special mentoring items like clothes, decorations etc. (since most mentors are getting tired of FreanD and EWE ME.)


For both:
-) After graduation the disciple gets a rating sheet with chosen questions to rate the mentor ingame. Therefore a mentor reputation system gets added where players who get invited to be a disciple first can see the ratings of the certain mentor before they choose that person as kind of protection system from mass mentors and mentoring scammers.

-) Quests that mentor and disciple have to do together (w/o third parties), the mentor gets certain points (see the point above) for each quests he does with his disciple, the disciple a small bonus/gift.


Probably necessary to make some of above points possible:
-) Later graduation on 3000+ points to make it harder for sharers.

 

[ALEXANDER]

some simple to implement ideas:

-Mailing system: Does not help only mentors and disciples but other too.

-Search system: Search the character you want to find and see details about him, his society, levels etc How does this relate to the mentors and their disciples ? I got a friend to play this game (he plays EVE too) and when he entered the game he asked me on skype what was my name so he can add me to 'addressbook' and mail me when he has problems ... What to tell him other than that the game sucks at this kind of stuff...

-Tracking system: Are you a mentor that hunts or mines a lot ? Want to help your disciple and still do your stuff ? the map should have an option to track one of your disciples/friends , by showing their current position on Calypso. It should work like a request system, when you want to 'track' him, he gets a incoming trade-like window...

 

[LeeLoo Faith]

Skill bonuses for the mentors would be a great incentive for the veterans and 'ubers' to bother with mentoring. Perhaps a +100 skill increase in a chosen skill at a full disicple graduation. When you're getting to the point where you are very skilled, that would seem like a sweet deal.

that is an awesome idea!

a small gift for the disciple as well for graduating might be fine too

maybe the way there could have some steps in between to reach to keep it more intersting for the disciple (like gathering all tp on amthera, all tps on eudoria, getting a special amount of skills in different sections or alltogether

also would be cool if the disciple could give his mentor points about how good the mentoring was after graduation.

 

[AJack10600]

The Mentor system was not bad at all, it just needs some crutial tuning to make it work:

1) Bring back some usefull presents for the mentor as an initiative to mentor.

2) To avoid Disciple Farming, allow no more than 5 at a time and make the graduation dependent on activity done together with the disciple

for example:

2) a) Have quests like Guide disciple to X number of TPs, Fight X mob with Disciple in a Team...

3) Make the Mentor skill more usefull as an exponential topup on your skills.
For Example:
One graduation: 0.1 Skillpoints, i.e. 0.1 extra skills multiplier on the skills taught to disciple. So if the Disciple graduates in LB, multiply the disciples skills by 0.1 and add to mentor skills. If I teach somebody a skill, I should become more skilled myself. That's an old saying.
Second Disciple graduates, get another 0.1, so now you have 0.2 skillpoints, disciple graduates in laser, get his laser skills *0.2.

I ideally there should be a mentor skill for each skill the pupil can graduate in.

4) We need a mailbox system like any other MMO where you can send Messages offline, it's a nightmare for disciples to be online with no help at all and no means to get in touch with the mentor.

5) Make the choice of mentor, disciple flexible. The disciple needs to be able to change mentor. Only grant the mentor the skills he is due during this mentor period. It's a tricky one but it should be possible to mentor anybody under 5 or even 10k skills (one is still a n00b in many ways...). If a Mentor is shit, one needs to be able to change Mentor. If one can change mentor, the graduation issue should not be so great anymore if the mentor is seldom online, one can change mentor.

6) Provide a starter pack to newcomers who accept a mentor for free. I.e. make it possible to choose between a hunter, crafter or miner pack when a new joiner accepts a new mentor. That could include a CB5 (L) and some ammo and a fap (L). So that any newcomer can try hunting ...

People who have done it are much more likely to deposit.

Also make sure that the TT return on low level hunts give decent return with profits, otherwise where is the incentive to progress...

Over and over I am told by n00bs that they quit cos it's too expensive.. they don't even progress from combibo youngs.. they give up before they become big spenders.




That's my thoughts for now.

 

[Rentonx]

any one avatar should only be allowed to have 2 disciples at a time,

2 is abit low, some people actually do mentoring as one of their main ingame activities (like Alice)... others may have less time to deal with multiple, but the ones that can take on more shouldnt be punished.

Before i think limit was 50? or something - new limit should be set down to between 10 and 20. I've had some disciples who took over a year to graduate mainly cuz they were busy, but that shouldnt effect whether i can take in more disciples or not.

 

[Carlito]

Minimum professional levels for mentors.
any one avatar should only be allowed to have 2 disciples at a time, then they would have more incentive to get them graduated, and not just lock them in after 10% and set to ignore.
You could do something at the soc term maybe where new avatars sign up for mentorship, then someone who wanted to spend the time could accept their new disciple. this would eliminate the predatory atmosphere in PA where the sharks lay in wait for the newbie to get off the spaceship.

95% of noobs quit within first week. Your suggestion wont work.

 

[chielsen]

As a mentor gift, space miles. You can use them to get free tp to other planets / asteroids. This will also help them to mentor noobs on other planets more easily.

 

[Dalas]

Oh, another idea, how about making a Mentoring building or area in the areas where newbies start? With MASSIVE signs directing them where to go as soon as they log in?

EDIT: Yet another idea! The Mentor could INVITE the Disciple to begin a MENTORING SESSION. This would ensure that the Mentor is with the Disciple and the Disciple agrees that they are being taught something. The Disciple would have the power to end the session and time spent in the session would count for the Mentor, maybe the gift would be related to amount of time spent with the Disciple? Or even whether they were allowed to finish with this Disciple at all. (Hmm, could still be exploited by multiple avatar people..)

Oh, I'm full of it today, another one! A kind of "Rating" system where the Disciple could vouch for the Mentor to gain a good reputation or a bad one, and if it's bad, then maybe the mentor could be BANNED :O (...From Mentoring, after achieving below a certain rep level?).

 

[Dr.D.C.]

already some cool idea here.

my little input.

I think mentor must get in any case some for his time also if the disciple quit the game. I have full of disciple at 60,80, also 94% that just leave the game. I spend time and ped for them i i get back nothing.

A disciple must have the possibility to change mentor if his mentor is never online.

yes also the disciple must get a gift.

a skill bonus for mentor and disciple when they team together will be more then welcome, ofc there is the possibility that someone will use this to gain extra skill, but i guess our uber leadership is not in danger in any case.

why not some quest, like gain together x tp, kill x different mobs, etcetc

 

[Skam]

To develop this a little further:

Skill bonuses for the mentors would be a great incentive for the veterans and 'ubers' to bother with mentoring. Perhaps a +100 skill increase in a chosen skill at a full disicple graduation.

Instead of a fixed 100 skill increase for example, get a type of skill implant with a random TT that can be used to boost any skill.

 

[GandalfSzary]

- Be realistic as to mechanics and rewards (no "after ten disciples the mentor get a full Shadow").

Just one suggestion. I don't think mentors expect full shadows or stuff like that. However getting 20 times in a row items worth tt+1 with tt=0 is really slap in the face. Mentorship takes often weeks if not months therefore rewards need to be a better than that. I know a lot of people gave it up since it was simply not worth the time. There are of course knights and patient entropians who simply like to guide but I'd say there is few of them.

 

[Waheed]

To develop this a little further:



Instead of a fixed 100 skill increase for example, get a type of skill implant with a random TT that can be used to boost any skill.

Honestly - It wouldn't work... Would crash some skills in value big time - Imagin getting a 50ped implant and inserting it into Body Sculpting

Imagin ppl got such implants daily - Skill prices would fall appart, ppl would lose trust in the value of higher cost skills etc and everything would soon be below 1100%

If skill implants should be a gift, it would be smartest to give it in the skill that the diciple finished in, and giving an implant equal to what the diciple had to gain (Aprox 10ped TT I guess in HG/Riffle/LB etc)

 

[Sonea]

Make the soc the Mentor

A little note; a game should be designed in order to get a new player going in the initial 5 mins but u seem to need the old players involved to help the transition phase until the new players deposit & be able to buy initial items.

Why not make the mentor "business" a soc "affair" then ? Lets says that any established soc holds a newcomer spot (per every 5 members, 10 members 2 spots & so on...) & not counting for total skills ranks.

Any soc member can invite a newcomer if the slot is free.

After a desired time & or rank in any profession of the newcomer the entire soc, newcomer included can then access a special beacon (lets say that soc leader has a time limit to activate the beacon, a week ?) as reward & initiation party for the soc members & newcomer. The newcomer must confirm that beacon activation is ok if he's satisfied with his initiation, if not no beacon party.

Not too big items as rewards as you did in the paste, MKV ME etc...

No "ties" between soc mentor & newcomer, each must remain free to leave & kick at any time, if so no final party & no rewards.

After beacon party, newcommer slot opens free again & the newcomer get in soc by default (or not) but his skills will count for soc skills ranks.

 

[Carlito]

Just one suggestion. I don't think mentors expect full shadows or stuff like that. However getting 20 times in a row items worth tt+1 with tt=0 is really slap in the face. Mentorship takes often weeks if not months therefore rewards need to be a better than that. I know a lot of people gave it up since it was simply not worth the time. There are of course knights and patient entropians who simply like to guide but I'd say there is few of them.

Yes i agree.

 

[humbll]

How about giving the disciple a small gift of, say an opalo + 500 or 1000 ammo once all tp's are on their map. A set of cheap armor for some other milestone would compliment this.

This is equivalent to sweating for an hour or 2 as far as cost is concerned..

As for the mentor, a gift at graduation as in the past should suffice, just be sure to make it something they can use or at least sell for a fair amount of PEDs..

 

[Marco|SDS]

Extremely good feedback with high quality and well though-out ideas! =)

One more question - how long is a "suitable" time period from 0% to graduation? 1h 5h? 10h? 20h? 100h? And I speak of "active" time - time actually spent on doing stuff within the Mentor system, not total time online in general.

 

[Huskie]

Here's some of my suggestions, made it in bullet points for an easier read.

To make mentoring more useful for begginers:

• Give them a more detailed description of how mentorship works and it's benefits in the form of one of those help pop-ups. The current one is not clear enough. Have it provide trusted links to online guides and forums and also how to get rid of their mentor should it prove necessary, even after the dsciple's own "kicking" period has expired.
• Give the disciple incentives to continue in the form of small non-TT-valued rewards upon completion of a task, for example, like being able to enable an increased skillgain bonus for one hour upon activating 5 other TPs.
• Improve communications between mentor and disciple: let messages from either get to the other even if they're offline (it gets stored and pops-up as soon as the offline party logs back in).
• Let mentors register a "mentoring" e-mail address which is easily accessible and always displayed in-game for the disciple, for mentors who, for some reason, can't log into the game but are still willing to help.
• Let disciples who have kicked their mentor or had support remove them from discipleship still be able to be taken as disciples even if they would otherwise be over the skills limit to be taken as disciple. The requirements for graduation would, of course, have to be calculated accordingly to the disciple's current skills, to retain the same TT value gain required to graduate in each skill.

Now, to avoid "Disciple farming":

• Let disciples flag their mentors as "unresponsive". Such a flag can be toggled on or off by the disciple and each disciple would mean one flag. A single flag would still let the mentor take other disciples and claim his graduation prize. Two flags would mean no more graduation prizes can be claimed. Three flags would mean no more newcomers can be taken as disciples. The flags would remain for as long as the disciple avatar is active and remains it toggled on and would only be removed upon it's turning off, or the purging or deletion of the avatar in question.
• Just like with the event system, let disciples add to the mentor's Reputation score once per week and make the Reputation score and rank visible when an avatar invites another one to be his disciple. Make an extra warning, like the TT's confirmation, when accepting the mentorship of an avatar with below average Reputation.

One more question - how long is a "suitable" time period from 0% to graduation? 1h 5h? 10h? 20h? 100h? And I speak of "active" time - time actually spent on doing stuff within the Mentor system, not total time online in general.

I guess something around 10 hours would do. That's like one and a half hours per week of pure professional activity, which is a realistic time for people who are just starting in the game and still aren't completely engaged in their activities.

Should make for mentoring taking a couple weeks or so if the disciple is active weekdays or up to a month if he's not too active.

 

[nutrageti]

i like the ideea of gifts for disciples but how about giving them out as the disciple progresses?
10% 500 ammo
20% 1k ammo
30% a random piece of armor of pixie/goblin/gnome
40% a tt sword
.
.
.

would definetely help motivate a disciple in my opinion

 

[Skam]

Honestly - It wouldn't work... Would crash some skills in value big time - Imagin getting a 50ped implant and inserting it into Body Sculpting

Imagin ppl got such implants daily - Skill prices would fall appart, ppl would lose trust in the value of higher cost skills etc and everything would soon be below 1100%

Well you didnt really expect me to develop a whole system in a couple of sentences? See Marco's post, he's asking to keep it short -so I kept it short. I provide ideas and they will have to do balancing around it if they decide to implement such an system.

(And who said anything about 50 peds -there would most likely be a cap, or it would be extremely rare.)

Further developing the idea, you can for example have the choice between getting the gift of random skill or the gift of random item.
Skills could perhaps be locked to the person, so that skill volume wouldnt be possible to chip out again. So it'd still be useful for active players, while those looking for profit might choose the "random gift" instead.

If skill implants should be a gift, it would be smartest to give it in the skill that the diciple finished in, and giving an implant equal to what the diciple had to gain (Aprox 10ped TT I guess in HG/Riffle/LB etc)

Thats a good idea but not nearly as good incentive.

One more question - how long is a "suitable" time period from 0% to graduation? 1h 5h? 10h? 20h? 100h? And I speak of "active" time - time actually spent on doing stuff within the Mentor system, not total time online in general.

Considering that the road to graduating is also about the newcomer feeling s/he's becoming a part of the community and game, not too long. But not too short, it'll be too easy. Perhaps ~25 hours, it should be able to be completed within a week, with ~3 hours playtime each day. (taking into account that these hours are used at the tasks to graduate, not standing around chatting.)

 

[Rentonx]

Mentorship takes often weeks if not months therefore rewards need to be a better than that.

When i used to do it, i had one that took 1 year and 3 months.

Agreed that items that have no value at least in a sentimental way turns people off mentoring.

So ideas for gifts:

ME Clothes,
similar to OJ's but in more fetching bold colours like navy blue or deep red. They have low tt, can't be tradable - but they sure have some sort of sentimental value seeing as you can actually wear it

ME Medals,
Wearable on ones chest, different designs of medals to show higher amount of disciples graduated through you

ME gun, (this one may be abit TOO out of the box)
only one can be owned by a person at any one time. Gun starts off with total stats that are low. The more disciples that successfully graduate, the higher the max stats increases (gradually) - of course there will be a decent limit as to the maximum stat it can go up to.

ME box (just a random name)
Inside box is a random item from EU world that has actual use! Like 500 of ME, or 50 PED's worth of ammo, or 10 PEDs worth of extra bombs. Once the contents have been taken out the box disappears. (only purpose of box is so that the ME gift still has its name and we dont have to come out with new items like Mind Essence ME, or Ammunition ME etc)

 

[MajorYoyo]

no bashing here i agree ..... woo hoo

 

[Cail]

Extremely good feedback with high quality and well though-out ideas! =)

One more question - how long is a "suitable" time period from 0% to graduation? 1h 5h? 10h? 20h? 100h? And I speak of "active" time - time actually spent on doing stuff within the Mentor system, not total time online in general.

That's a tough one... some people are faster learners than others, i just spent 1 year educating my disciple (who btw. just made it to graduation level after VU10 so i hope you don't throw the old disciple data away!), who wasn't that active but, we spent a helluva lot time together, not always even doing anything but just discussing 'bout the game, even though he learned very quickly, it was maybe ... 5-6 hours and he already new all the basics, how to use auction, etc.
Then again, one of my previous disciples kept asking how to use the drill for 2 months

So i guess it depends... make some neat learning curve algorithm so that it'll be dynamic and naturally, fast learners graduate faster.

Ps. Will we have the old disciples still along with the new system?

 

[Bernz]

Extremely good feedback with high quality and well though-out ideas! =)

One more question - how long is a "suitable" time period from 0% to graduation? 1h 5h? 10h? 20h? 100h? And I speak of "active" time - time actually spent on doing stuff within the Mentor system, not total time online in general.

I'd make a new thread with poll for this subject Marco.
This one will be hard enough to read in less than 2 hours I think.

But if you ask...
Let's say someone play 2-3 hours/day....
40-50 active hours is enough I think.