I would be happy to have mentoring completely removed from the plans. I have never liked the idea of downscaling your character. I think creating alts is a better and easier solution. It also allows you to have multiple characters around the world so it's easy to meet up with friends. While mentoring apologist will use the "if you don't like it don't use it" mantra, I see mentoring as a developmental headache that will just take time away from working on more important things. So yes, not having it is a benefit in my opinion.
Caravan - I neither like nor dislike. I think if they do end up having it you should have the option to log in with the caravan or log in where you last logged out. I wouldn't like being forced to log in when the group each time. I also think it could be exploited heavily for raids or other reasons. Say everyone caravans with someone then they log out and have one person run to a point and then they all log back in. There would have to be some time limits or something on it. Overall, I'm fine with it being left out of the game.
bigdogchris said:I also think it could be exploited heavily for raids or other reasons.
Like if your the leader of the Caravan and you get lost and log out in a zone 10+ levels higher then you, when the others in the party log in SURPRISE!!
Not an exploite unless done on purpose..
bigdogchris said:I would be happy to have mentoring completely removed from the plans. I have never liked the idea of downscaling your character. I think creating alts is a better and easier solution. It also allows you to have multiple characters around the world so it's easy to meet up with friends.
I'm going to have a ton of alts. I always do. I have found, for anything but a very basic friend setup, it's not a solution. Even a simple, common 'network' of friends makes it quickly impossible to play together.
If you have one friend with a different schedule you can keep an alt you only play with them. Another friend? Another alt.
But even with that, those friends that have a more difficult schedule than you, when they can play, want to play their main (they usually don't have alts) so if you aren't there, they play without you and you get a level difference.
If those friends play with each other as well as you, you get a level difference.
Bascially, if you take the normal variables of player schedule, player play time, character level and character class, the permutations and combinations make it impossible, never mind undesirable, to maintain enough alts to satisfy the needs of even a small network of friends.
With the flexibility of group level ranges we've mostly made it work in the past, but sometimes not and friends have stopped playing because they come online, can't play with you and, not being the ones that were driving the whole activity, have lost interest.
I'm not trying to make out it's the end of the world, but the point of Mentoring was it completely removes any of these complexities. Any one *or more* of the group can level down to the lowest player level of any group/friend combo. There would be just no worry in that regard and Pantheon would be extremely friend-friendly.
With caravans being out until later too, it's starting to feel like this might not be something to recommend to my less ordinarily MMORPG-oriented friends until many months after release when the more friend-friendly features have been added.
Like I say, not the end of the world, but a shame, since perhaps others that would invited their MMORPG noob/virgin friends might not do either until the features they thought would make that easy for them are added for fear of their friends being put off.
A mentor system or power suppression system is great for allowing a friend with say 50% more play time to play with their friends with less play time with out killing off the challenge or forcibly not leveling. The ratio being enough time to play more than the second person but not enough time to maintain two characters.
The caravan system was much more than a possible teleportation on a long cool down. It was much more about multi play session groups or loose coalitions that do not to be guild level formal but still helpful in keeping LFG times low. Focusing on one possible perk as a reason you don't like the entire systems seems . . . odd to me.