Change to Mentor position

[Foundation]

here is a simple fact, All rulers have a vested interest in retaining new players as it increases their power.

Since people with a vested interest are likely to take care in protecting that interest, Why don't we give the appointment of realm mentors to rulers?


The problem with letting just anyone opt into being a mentor is that every one who plays this game for power would do so, not really caring if they are a good mentor but just for the mentor points.

So here is my proposal, remove mentor form the subclasses, make it a position any class can hold, and allow the ruler to appoint x number of mentors. I honestly cannot see how this could be a bad thing for the game or player retention.

Not necessarily, good and active rulers have a vested interest and act on it, and how many of *those* do we have?  Not many that I've seen, especially in Monarchies/Dictatorships that are old and stale.  If a new player starts in one of those realms, I doubt they'll continue playing with poor mentors and pretty much no realm interaction/activity.

[Ays]

Peter, I see your point, you can have the best mentor on the worst kingdom and it would not serve the player or the game.

The underlying role of mentor is to help new players make connections.  Connection with the rules, the flavor and the running of the game.  And, connection with the realm, its leadership and customs. 

The last connections are missing in BM, and it is vital.  BM is a complex game, with collaboration at its heart.  Mentors must become an integral part of realm to sustain growth and foster collaboration.   

Having leadership appoint mentors would be many benefits:

• stronger players (because mentors are hand-picked experts)
• stronger realms (because leadership would/could consider new player needs)
• stronger game (because more players would connect and play)

It is always easier for realms to ignore new players, and recruit skilled/active players from other realms.  The game mechanics must encourage and reward mentoring.

[Igelfeld]

Not necessarily, good and active rulers have a vested interest and act on it, and how many of *those* do we have?  Not many that I've seen, especially in Monarchies/Dictatorships that are old and stale.  If a new player starts in one of those realms, I doubt they'll continue playing with poor mentors and pretty much no realm interaction/activity.

I see your point, but will a realm that doesn't have a good and active ruler be interesting to a new player anyway? 

From my experience we do have a lot of good and active rulers, ones who drive the character and actions of their realm. I don't know about you, but I am not going to stay in a realm that doesn't have one. What I have seen is realms with inactive or bad leaders will slowly shed nobles until they can't support their regions, or a rebellion breaks out. It is the realms with the good leaders that expand and grow larger. So I would contend that there are far more good leaders out there then you are admitting to, and realms without good leaders, will dissipate through natural selection. This may take some time, but strong leaders attract nobles and bad ones drive them away. The fewer nobles a realm has the weaker their army becomes and soon they cannot protect themselves from the good leaders out there.

One of the best examples of this is Jenred he is a great leader and because of that he is becoming an emperor. We will have to see how this turns out, but i doubt any would argue that the reason it is even possible is something other than the leadership.

Simply stated we cannot change the game externally to get rid of bad leaders, that is something we just have to deal with in game. However, we can empower leaders to increase new player retention by giving them the ability to appoint good mentors. And I don't think even a bad leader would want new nobles leaving all the time, so it seems that even the inactive and boring leaders have some motivation to appoint good mentors.

[Indirik]

I see your point, but will a realm that doesn't have a good and active ruler be interesting to a new player anyway? 

That depends on what else is happening in the realm, and quite a few other things, too. If the other leaders in the realm are competent, and the realm has A Plan, then the ruler is essentially a figurehead.

One of the best examples of this is Jenred he is a great leader and because of that he is becoming an emperor. We will have to see how this turns out, but i doubt any would argue that the reason it is even possible is something other than the leadership.

Leadership alone is not enough. To do what happened in Arcaea, you have to a lot of good players willing to work together to build something. Matt deserves a lot of credit for it. But so do all the other players in Arcaea. So, yeah, I would argue that leadership alone is not enough. You have to start with a core of good players, then add leadership on top of that.

Simply stated we cannot change the game externally to get rid of bad leaders, that is something we just have to deal with in game. However, we can empower leaders to increase new player retention by giving them the ability to appoint good mentors. And I don't think even a bad leader would want new nobles leaving all the time, so it seems that even the inactive and boring leaders have some motivation to appoint good mentors.

I wouldn't object to ruler-appointed mentors. But I would say that you also have to remove the Mentor as a sub-class. And if you're going to do ruler-appointed, I wonder if it might be prudent to also get rid of mentor goodies as well.

[Igelfeld]

I wouldn't object to ruler-appointed mentors. But I would say that you also have to remove the Mentor as a sub-class. And if you're going to do ruler-appointed, I wonder if it might be prudent to also get rid of mentor goodies as well.

 If you just remove it as a sub-class you can't keep the goodies. To many people would be mentors just for the goodies. So if you were to remove the goodies and allow it to be something you can choose to do that would work. I think a lot of players would do this for the good of the game. I would.

But I still don't see the harm in allowing for the goodies to remain and changing it to a ruler appointed position(s). This would make it a kind of honor to be a mentor and if the goodies still existed then there would be a strong motivation to get that honor.

the difference is that with ruler appointed mentors, you get a certain level of competition for the position, a political aspect to it, and you can keep the goodies. If you just let anyone opt into the position you can't have the goodies and you don't get the political aspect to the position. It becomes something almost outside the RP of the realm.

[Indirik]

My concern with a ruler-selected office being the only one that has access to mentor goodies is that you are giving a player the ability to select who gets access to bonus gold/hours/fame. Favoritism and "clique-ism" could result in only the ruler's favorites getting a shot at this stuff.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

At the same time, Ambassadors are ruler-selected. For them though, I can get why they would be linked to the ruler. Furthermore their "rewards" are probably less cool than the mentor goodies. That is debatable though.

[egamma]

My concern with a ruler-selected office being the only one that has access to mentor goodies is that you are giving a player the ability to select who gets access to bonus gold/hours/fame. Favoritism and "clique-ism" could result in only the ruler's favorites getting a shot at this stuff.

True, but the new player would have to agree that the mentor they have is worthy of the points. We can adjust the exit exam language to encourage them to only give points that are truly deserved.

And we can make it so that bad marks quickly prevent a player from mentoring.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Sometimes you just get some inexplicable bag reviews. I'm sure several of us here have had experiences where we basically write up personalized lesson plans daily, asking the student to ask questions, only to hear nothing, and sometime later the student leaves and gives you the lowest score. Experiences like those kind of made me stop doing custom mentor lessons in Tara after a few months.

Thing is, we could use a more structured system. As it is right now, everything is entirely up to the mentor working with the student. There is nothing to see whether the student is doing anything to learn.

[Ays]

Thing is, we could use a more structured system. As it is right now, everything is entirely up to the mentor working with the student. There is nothing to see whether the student is doing anything to learn.

Hear, hear!   Mentors must become more than thankless scribes.  That means making the position more than an afterthought.  It needs to be a structured position.  As you say, mentors need  tools.  Possibilities include:

• automatic welcome message from mentor(s)
• color for mentor messages
• workable charts allowing mentors to track progress
• a way to see if student is active
• automatic reports on gaining liege and army placement

 

Mentor goodies are nice and all -- but not about teaching players to be better players.  A structure system in-game and this forum would go a long way toward retaining players and improving game play.

[egamma]

Hear, hear!   Mentors must become more than thankless scribes.  That means making the position more than an afterthought.  It needs to be a structured position.  As you say, mentors need  tools.  Possibilities include:

• automatic welcome message from mentor(s)
• color for mentor messages
• workable charts allowing mentors to track progress
• a way to see if student is active
• automatic reports on gaining liege and army placement

 

Mentor goodies are nice and all -- but not about teaching players to be better players.  A structure system in-game and this forum would go a long way toward retaining players and improving game play.

I like all of these options. For the Charts, I suggest implementing a structure where mentors can create daily quiz of a few questions for new players, like this:
Day 1:
1. Who is your ruler? (realm member dropdown list)
2. Are commoners equal to nobles? (Choose from "no", "never", and "inconceivable!")

If they miss number one, present some links for them to view on the messaging and realm information to find this information out.

Day 2:
1. Who is your liege?
2. Who is your marshal?
3. If your liege and your marshal issue contradicting orders, which should you follow?

And of course, if they don't have one of the above, then perhaps this could be set for a later date.

I suppose the question is, should this all be done by the individual mentors, or something filled out by mentors, or something that's the same for every player and baked in to the game?

[Foundation]

I would prefer that mentors do this for the game rather than just for their realm.  All these are good ideas, but they still ultimately contribute mainly to the realm rather than getting new players interested.

If only there was a way for players to gather together and teach other players, note that I didn't say characters.

I think that an effective way to help new players to get over the learning curve will increase the percentage that stay.

[Indirik]

I have seen several games that a had a forum board specifically for new players to ask questions. Not the "helpline" one that we have now that is a generic help board, but a dedicated "Newbie Corner" kind of thing. Perhaps we could do that, including giving new players a link to that board in their IG welcome message. That would hopefully give newer players a way to ask questions about things, and maybe get a quicker response, due to the wider player-base they could access on the forums rather than their realm.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

The forum idea sounds pretty good. It'd be a nice use of this new resource. However, I think there's still room for an in-game type of mentor. For example, the wiki specifically says that things in the manual are left out for the players to figure out on their own. I know that I was one of the players who wanted to know more and wanted it fast, so I asked a lot of stuff. It would have helped a lot if there was someone I could turn to in my realm so that not only do I learn some neat secrets to this game, but my characters also gain them.

[Ays]

... a dedicated "Newbie Corner" kind of thing. Perhaps we could do that, including giving new players a link to that board in their IG welcome message.

Excellent.   As Artemesia said, a devoted forum section for is a good use of this new resource.  It would also answer Foundations concerns about player versus character mentoring. Including the forum link in an ingame realm mentor message would offer players a solid options to getting questions answered (and solve/fix key confusions newb players have).

However, I think there's still room for an in-game type of mentor.

Indeed, the forum section must not supersede our talks on improving the mentor position.  Mentors are key greeters, hand-holders and teachers within a realm. 

I suppose the question is, should this all be done by the individual mentors, or something filled out by mentors, or something that's the same for every player and baked in to the game?

This is also my question.   

Asking mentors to recreate the wheel to explain game functions seems a waste.  Yet, there are realm specific information mentors must impart.

The structure should support mentors time/effort and player understanding.  Mentor templates (creating solid information a mentor can build on), interactive quizzes and/or reports (enabling the mentor to know/support the student actions), and mentor links with visuals would be the good.

Changes must always build the connection between character and realm -- and player and game.