after mentoring for almost two years, I would state few comments.
- threshold for mentoring class seems to be low, and i saw number of players who in my humble opinion did not take effort to learn very basics, but suddenly i see them as mentors. i can only imagine how can it affect new players.
- from what i see, the absolutely largest problem in new player retention is deep disappointment of some when they do not receive answer to their question within 15 minutes after they posted it. by the time you are able to explain them about game dynamics, many left already. there is also problem with players who, after they receive several initial lessons and several invitation to ask their question to at least send some voice of themselves - those who never answer a single letter are normally hopeless.
here i am talking about problem of very new players retention only. for bm in my opinion much bigger problem is old and half-old players retention, but that would be another subject.
so the welcoming message should:
- clearly explain to players that this is slow-paced game and they can find much interest in other things than online hanging
- encourage players to talk to their mentors. together with mentioned raising of threshold that should be very useful.
yes, to complete this proposal, something should be devised on how to motivate mentors.
while it can be true that some players do not want to give up their subclass, i would say that more problems is with incentive.
mentor goodies is very nice idea, but currently most of those goodies are rather weak, scout reports 13 turns old are not so big deal, or earning 30-40 gold, they should be made somewhat more fruitful.
and, yes, what about some sort of mentor rank based on cumulated number of goodies? few good sounding titles that could be reached and held whenever mentor class is switched on could gain i-c respect for the characters, our chars are claiming titles anyhow and that could be good incentive.
