Mentoring system

[Gabanus family]

Dear devs,

When I first started playing (oh about 11 years ago or so I think) BM there was a mentoring system in place which worked perfectly. You could ask any question you had to these mentors and it created a form of personalized bond between the players, but also between the chars. It was a form of constant interaction with at least one character in the realm, which kept you interested in the realm and in the game in general.

These days we have an OOC forum where you can ask noob questions basically and that's it.

I'm not sure why the old mentor system was dropped, but can't we re-instate it, with possibly one or two changes to make it work again. I remember being a mentor as well in Sartania for quite a while and had a lot of fun guiding the newer players back then and you really did get a personal connection. I think to bring this back into the game would help us to keep more of the new players. Once people have their place in BM and start doing stuff and know how it works, they're usually hooked. I mean for most players the graphics (say wuuut) and the game mechanics are not the things that make the game so awesome, it's the players and the interaction. We can try to do this as players already, but I think the mentor system was a great help in achieving this.

[Anaris]

There are a number of reasons why the old mentoring system was dropped. A few of the top ones are:

• Too much confusion over how much it was supposed to be IC and how much it was supposed to be OOC (it was mostly intended to be OOC, to teach how to play the game)
• Giving IC rewards for a function that is primarily OOC
• Too many players ending up in a realm without any mentors, or a realm with 3
• Restricting mentorship to people willing to give up being any other class

If you want to mentor new players, and form that connection, there's absolutely nothing stopping you. You can perfectly well send greeting messages to new players when they arrive, introduce yourself in-character as someone who likes to mentor young nobles just starting out, and form that connection without any special game mechanics.

[Gabanus family]

Those problems are all relatively simple to solve I think.

* Remove the confusion and just claim it's both for OOC questions on how to play the game as well as IC to create connections etc. Why should it only be OOC?

* We could built a failsafe that as soon as a realm has no mentor, you can contact mentors from other realms?

* Then don't make it class specific, but something else where you can say "hey I want to be a mentor, yes!" This should also help with the availability of mentors as it's no longer limiting.

I agree that there is an opportunity to do this already and I try to do this as much as possible already myself, as well as trying to keep the realms I'm in entertaining. But it's my belief that if we would re-instate the mentor system (with the above changes) that more people will actively help to keep the new players in the game. Sometimes people need a bit of a push and the lines of communication are easier this way. I really think that the old system brought with it amazing interaction between characters and players. I would like the devs to at least consider such an adjusted version of the mentoring system. What's the harm?

[Vita`]

I would be for this. I think, though the knowledge is OOC, the means of conveying it being IC is good interaction between characters and that is a healthy thing. As someone else told me, too much seems to be via OOC message or forums and this would be a way of providing an IC interface.

Yes, someone can just message the new player. But, how many of us have messaged new players over the years?  And how many of us still do? Those lack of replies and disappearances aren't exactly inspirational and people stop trying. But people do reply to messages sent to them and are glad to help out new players when given opportunity. So by providing an interface that new players can find and write someone, it promotes interaction more than what currently exists.

[Gabanus family]

I would be for this. I think, though the knowledge is OOC, the means of conveying it being IC is good interaction between characters and that is a healthy thing. As someone else told me, too much seems to be via OOC message or forums and this would be a way of providing an IC interface.

Yes, someone can just message the new player. But, how many of us have messaged new players over the years?  And how many of us still do? Those lack of replies and disappearances aren't exactly inspirational and people stop trying. But people do reply to messages sent to them and are glad to help out new players when given opportunity. So by providing an interface that new players can find and write someone, it promotes interaction more than what currently exists.

Just this!

[Zakilevo]

I still write to new players :D That is what you need to do in a democracy!

[JDodger]

I miss the mentor system from back in the day. I always planned to make my chars mentors when they were old and grey, and write books. The latter of which I always thought was one of the coolest things about the mentor class.

I'd suggest the following, to make the mentor class more attractive and to encourage its use across all realms:

Make it similar to the Ambassador position in that it is a realm-assigned role and not a subclass. This will make it more attractive for players who also want their chars to be heroes/traders/diplos/whatever, also enabling new players to learn about those subclasses from those who actively play as them.

Figure out a good ratio of mentors:total noble count and implement some form of incentive to get realms to assign the position accordingly, with each realm no matter how small having at least one, and increasing the total number of mentor "slots" according to the size of the realm.

Allow new players to select mentors on each of their characters within a certain time limit. Have a system where their different options on each character come along with some kind of metrics showing who is more active, who is more active in direct messages to their students, who plays what class(es), etc. This will enable new players to choose active mentors involved in the classes that interest them.

[Indirik]

The old mentor system was hit and miss. Some realms had good, and some bad. The mentor I had wasnt very good. Sent me two copy/pasted letters and said I was on my own.

Some form of in-game system may be good, so long as it wasn't tied to a class, and not even to a realm.

[Wimpie]

To be honest, I liked the old mentor system. But I have to agree that you needed to be in luck and have a good mentor, of course.

I'm all for reviving this, with some possible tweaks of course. But I understand this will not be a priority 1 for now. I'm just not a fan of such OOC mentoring forum. We already have ingame help of other chars, regular forum, wiki, IRC,.. Information is already everywhere and so hard to find for new players. But it does mean faster responses when you pose a question of course..

Anyway, I liked the ingame interaction between mentor and new character. You can make it as much IC or OOC as you like imho.

[GundamMerc]

To be honest, I liked the old mentor system. But I have to agree that you needed to be in luck and have a good mentor, of course.

I'm all for reviving this, with some possible tweaks of course. But I understand this will not be a priority 1 for now. I'm just not a fan of such OOC mentoring forum. We already have ingame help of other chars, regular forum, wiki, IRC,.. Information is already everywhere and so hard to find for new players. But it does mean faster responses when you pose a question of course..

Anyway, I liked the ingame interaction between mentor and new character. You can make it as much IC or OOC as you like imho.

Completely disagree with you about the mentoring forum. While those who are older players may look at the old mentoring system with rose-colored glasses, it wasn't a complete success. The fact that it used a class slot is of course one drawback, but the other was the reliance on only players in your realm rather than throughout the island, meaning it could take a while for you to receive a reply.

I agree that we should have an IG system that encourages teaching the game, but that shouldn't replace the OOC mentoring forum. The wiki is outdated in so many areas that its usefulness as a guide is limited at best. Hardly anyone uses IRC, many people wouldn't want to even if they knew about it, and that's a completely OOG (and OOC) source, meaning you'd have to include that along with the OOC mentoring forum in things to get rid of based on your arguments.

Many players don't use the regular forum, and other characters IG requires you to be in a realm that actually has players who care enough to answer questions, something which unfortunately isn't always true.

[Indirik]

I agree with just about everything GundamMerc says. I think both the IC character interaction and the OOC forum have their uses.

The IC thing needs to not be tired to a character class, but to a self-selected toggle. Also, it should be island wide, not restricted to just your realm. And it needs to have some way to stomp on abuses.

[JDodger]

I disagree with mentors being island wide. Makes no sense for a new player's closest relationship to be with someone in another realm.

[Indirik]

Better a mentor in another realm than no mentor at all.

[Vita`]

Yeah. If you have a mentor available in your realm, you get those choices first with a secondary link to island-wide selection just in case your realm's mentor is not replying. If you don't have a realm mentor available, you get an island-wide selection.

[Gabanus family]

Yeah. If you have a mentor available in your realm, you get those choices first with a secondary link to island-wide selection just in case your realm's mentor is not replying. If you don't have a realm mentor available, you get an island-wide selection.

I think that would be a suitable compromise. If you fail as a realm to even have one person willing to be a mentor, then your nobles will get connections with other realms.