Change to Mentor position

[Indirik]

Let me put it this way: Don't hold your breath.

[Indirik]

Hmm... I didn't mean to be so abrupt and kill the thread. I think these are all great ideas, and they should really help the mentor program.

But we have to face the reality of the fact that there is very limited programming support available. There are only 3 active coders for this stuff: Anaris (who has been doing most of the new features, bug fixes, etc. for the past... year?), Tom (who's really about 1/2 active and working on more major underlying codebase changes), and Foundation (who is also 1/2 active, but has done cool stuff like training matches and flagged messages). Even if Tom agrees with a class change to Mentors, I wouldn't expect it to happen in the next 3 or 4 months. Maybe not even the next 6 months, unless some specific coder decides to take it on as a pet project.

And having said all that, I don't see any reason why this can't continue as a community project. Start a new forum thread on the Helpline board discussing which direction the mentor documentation will take. Start a new Mentor documentation project on the wiki. (Bedwyr and I are both wiki admins, and can give any required wiki support, if needed. Though I don't think any is required.) And get to work on doing the community portion of the project. Get active and get this thing going. Show community support and dedication, and you may attract coder notice to do some of the IG changes. Maybe we won't get Mentors changed from a subclass to an opt-in checkbox for all characters, or an official ruler appointed Royal Mentor, but maybe some of the other minor code-related stuff can be done, like auto links to a forum newbie corner, moving mentor/student links on the messages page, etc.

[egamma]

http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Mentoring

Let's get to work!

[Peri]

Some time ago I attempted to modify the Battlemaster Basics page that, even if very nice, was lacking clarity in my opinion.

While at first I was lost to look for the draft the good Indirik has one solution for everything and put the link in the discussion page. This is it:

http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/BattleMaster_Basics/draft

The whole idea was more to give a feeling to newcomers how the game looks like when you are playing it since a while, rather than just giving basic informations such as "that button does that". If they understand how the game looks like for those who play since a while or are in a position of power, they can may be more interested in tolerating the "few" option knights have at their disposal, while teaching them what is going on on larger scales.

Maybe I'll return to work on it again in the future.

[egamma]

Some time ago I attempted to modify the Battlemaster Basics page that, even if very nice, was lacking clarity in my opinion.

While at first I was lost to look for the draft the good Indirik has one solution for everything and put the link in the discussion page. This is it:

http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/BattleMaster_Basics/draft

The whole idea was more to give a feeling to newcomers how the game looks like when you are playing it since a while, rather than just giving basic informations such as "that button does that". If they understand how the game looks like for those who play since a while or are in a position of power, they can may be more interested in tolerating the "few" option knights have at their disposal, while teaching them what is going on on larger scales.

Maybe I'll return to work on it again in the future.

That looks good, but we need some of that information put into the signup process, and the rest in the new player messages.

[Peri]

That looks good, but we need some of that information put into the signup process, and the rest in the new player messages.

Well if that page is somehow integrated with the student/mentor portal on the wiki, I'm sure a link to it can be added somewhere by the devs so that newcomers would see it and go there.

[Gordy77]

Just coming in out of nowhere, talking about mentoring on the discord.
I say, take mentoring out of a character class and give it to the PLAYER. You give this role to players who are active, enjoy the game and have time and opportunity to post.

Give mentors the "task" of engaging new players and checking up on them at regular intervals, say, as close as possible to day 1, week1, month 1, etc. The responsibilities could rotate or be shared among the mentors. Give them their own mechanic to see which players are due for their catch up, so mentors can drop in, check the list, write a mail, ect. They can make that engagement general, "how are you liking things, are you getting enough things to do?" or very specific, "how did you go with that task I gave you last time? now I want you to x"... Players could opt out of the mentoring system like office refusal, "I don't want to be bothered by mentors"

Additionally, the council - and the ruler - who are responsible for fun - should be able to see certain metrics,
When is the last time we had a roleplay? a tournament? held a festival, had a string of roleplays that lasted x number of days? Visibility drives these things.
make it visible for every player so they can share the responsibility of driving interaction - or opting out of it if they don't want that responsibility (which is fine - not everyone has time and opportunity).

[PolarRaven]

All good ideas, but sadly the Mentoring class was removed from the game quite some time ago.

I too would like to see the Mentoring Option re-added to the game.   Not as a class, but like Gordyy says, as a player option.

[Gildre]

I think it is a bit unnecessary, and creates an obligation that will fizzle out for players.

What we need is to encourage interaction and roleplaying. That is what keeps players interested and staying in the game. We have OOC messages for "How do I recruit troops" and stuff like that, and I have never seen a question like that ignored. Players generally want to help each other on an OOC level.

[Gordy77]

Like any position, why not let the players decide what their obligation would be, and disown it if it becomes a burden? We have players right now complaining of failed interactions and poor communication between knights and elected positions. Having a mentor role wouldn't be onerous if split between 2-3 people. If they want a reward, give them a discord tag.