MINX said:I respectfully disagree Dull. People who want to behave in an exclusionary fashion are going to find a way to do so no matter what.
Lets also not forget that VR is building Pantheon to appeal, in large part, to an adult playerbase; a base that may not have the same amounts of free time they once did. This is certainly true for me I can tell you that. The more options I have for grouping in my limited time the better.
I love puging and meeting new people. As a guild leader in the past I have often used it as a form of recruitment. However, if a friend of mine needs help to finish the last leg of a challanging quest or some such, there is nothing worse to me than having to say "Sorry I'd really love to help you but I am too high lvl".
In my 7 years in EQ2 I never saw mentoring being used to promote exclusivity. It was not well balanced I agree and the mentor was often more than slightly but perhaps not grossly OP for the lower content, depending on if you had regular instance gear or raid gear etc.
I think the benefit outwiegh the risks.
You definitely played EQ2 more than I, but in the maybe 1-2 years I played it across several goes since launch, I had an entirely different experience. I'd say inclusive mentoring outnumbered random mentoring probably 4:1. Very seldom was I part of a completely random mentored group, but always that of a personal friend or group predominantly consisting of a clique of players from another guild. Even then in the latter scenario, those groups were usually filled up and unavailable (or uninterested) to randoms.
Of all the games that I have played with mentoring, probably the only one that created a truly open atmosphere was that of Final Fantasy XI. That was because the game was designed around the releveling process to raise other jobs and increase your versatility, much like the progeny system on Pantheon aims to achieve.
Dullahan said:You definitely played EQ2 more than I, but in the maybe 1-2 years I played it across several goes since launch, I had an entirely different experience. I'd say inclusive mentoring outnumbered random mentoring probably 4:1. Very seldom was I part of a completely random mentored group, but always that of a personal friend or group predominantly consisting of a clique of players from another guild. Even then in the latter scenario, those groups were usually filled up and unavailable (or uninterested) to randoms.
Of all the games that I have played with mentoring, probably the only one that created a truly open atmosphere was that of Final Fantasy XI. That was because the game was designed around the releveling process to raise other jobs and increase your versatility, much like the progeny system on Pantheon aims to achieve.
I'm sorry you had that experience! I think what you are describing is more a byproduct of you being in the situation where you were starting out on a new toon in a game where the playerbase, for the most part, aleady has multiple max level toons per account. That is a rough situation to be in for sure and a hard nut to crack so I see what you are saying. Most veterans leveling up a new toon in that situation are not looking to stop and smell the roses by any means. They eventually just started selling lvl 80 toons with "heroic" gear so people could skip right to end game or near end game.
I don't know that preventing mentoring in that situation would have helped, however. Imagine you finally convince your friend or friends to try out Pantheon a few months after release, you get them in game, and the best you can offer them are some high level buffs which trivialize the content and rob them of a true newb experience. Or worse yet offer to PL them to your level instead of being able to just heng out with them organically. I dont know that there is any perfect answer but I do know that I like options wherever I can get them.
Me again - trying to get an opinion in on any existing topic I care about so I look like I'm spamming the forums.
I support mentoring, on balance. In a game that pushes grouping it is highly desirable to allow higher levels to group with lower levels.
The one concern is that mentoring in some games makes the higher level player Godslike compared to the mobs. Ideally if I am mentored to level 10 I should have the strengths and weaknesses of a level 10. Difficult to do or the other games would do a better job of it.
One point on this that may not be entirely self-evident is that Pantheon encourages slower than typical leveling (and I heartily agree). This means that in the early phases of the game many players will be working their way up and focusing on a "main" and not have gotten to the point of creating "alts". So even a month into the game a new player - and I think we can agree that encouraging new players is important - won't find nearly as many potential partners to play with as he or she would have found the first week. We don't want new memberships to dry up after a while as people find the starting areas sterile and lonely.
By the way mentoring as used in this thread refers to adjusting effective level to facilitate grouping. But there are other types of mentoring e.g. having a "mentor" channel a la FFXIV where experienced players can help newer players. Something apart from any world chat channels which often become overcrowded with less helpful discussion and even < trolls.
dorotea said:The one concern is that mentoring in some games makes the higher level player Godslike compared to the mobs. Ideally if I am mentored to level 10 I should have the strengths and weaknesses of a level 5. Difficult to do or the other games would do a better job of it.
Why should someone who mentored to level 10 ever be as weak as a level 5? The idea of mentoring is to take someone that is too high to play with you and bring them down to your level So you can play together. Why should the higher level player be forced to be weaker than the level mentored to?
To prevent abuse, they simply set the mentored maximum stats in line with what the level should be. it's not rocket science, just computer science.
Oops. Crappy editing on my part, sorry. The two numbers were intended to match - if I am mentored down to a level I should have the combat abilities of that level. Most games with mentoring may try for this but do it poorly - they don't take all of the skills or abilities or advanced gear away. So the mentoring person fights as if they were a significant number of levels higher than the nominal level they are mentored down to.
Edited my post to fix it at the risk of making your accurate comment harder to follow.
@MINX In what game were you ever unable to help someone because you were too HIGH of a level? That argument is absurd to me. This isn't a game where you won't be able to go into an instance with your lower level buddy because you're too high level. To say that you enjoy grouping and meeting new people as an argument to defend the mentoring mechanic is, to me, completely backwards. That makes no sense. Go make new friends, go group with new people and experience new things. Is this a virtual world, or is this some hand holding game that caters to everyone?
From the Twitch Stream it sounds like mentoring will be in-game, can't say I'm happy about it, but we will see how they implement it. I have yet to like this feature in any game that incorporated it. I feel it steals what could be a new and different experience from achieving a high level. In eq, I embraced such a new and unorthadox experience when trying to help a lv 20 toon level with my lv 50 mage, it was a nice escape from the normal grind of dungeon crawling, or camping, which had become pretty much routine. Working out strategies that kept him and me alive, but dumped all xp to him was no easy feet, but in the end was more exciting than just two level 20's camping for sure.
Krixus said:@MINX In what game were you ever unable to help someone because you were too HIGH of a level? That argument is absurd to me. This isn't a game where you won't be able to go into an instance with your lower level buddy because you're too high level. To say that you enjoy grouping and meeting new people as an argument to defend the mentoring mechanic is, to me, completely backwards. That makes no sense. Go make new friends, go group with new people and experience new things. Is this a virtual world, or is this some hand holding game that caters to everyone?
In several games, specifically in EQ2. There is an XP level range. If you are too high and group with someone, they do not get XP. Also, several quests will not update if someone in your group is too high. That is why they put mentoring into the game; to allow you to help others when your level was too high.