I am 100% for mentoring. i have many RL friends who are very casual. (like play once or twice a week for a couple hrs.) and TBH most of the time when they log in its to either hang out with me or because im asking them to play. why should i be denied playing the character i want to play simply because my friend is lower level? to me the answer is none, there really is NO reason to prevent mentoring, it does nothing but help and promote new players. an example. im 50 or whatever I have often seen the same guy in chat LFG for hours, im like hey, i'll help ya out. now if i had to create a whole new toon. level it to that persons level and then group with him.... i'd tellem sorry about your luck. as for PL'ing, i would like to say NO NO NO!!! but i wont, i love PLing even though it creates allot of people who know nothing about the class they just PLed to max in 1 day and now i gotta raid with someone who doesnt know how to play the class
If you don't want to make an alt, why not hire a mercenary?
Go to a tavern or adventurer's guild, select from a list of available mercenaries for the location you are in, pay a fee according to the level of the mercencary and then you swap your character upon succesfully hiring the mercenary. The mercenary hired is equipped with basic stuff, nothing overpowered. You must return the mercenary to get your character back.
Returning the mercenary with zero deaths will increase reptuation with Mercenary's Guild, allowing access to slightly better geared ones so maybe upgrade from wooden buckler to rusty shield to steel shield, nothing overpowered. A few deaths per mercenary hired will not hurt your faction standing but repeatedly causing mercenaries to die will increase the fees to exorbitant amounts in the future.
Restrictions apply. Obviously all the safeguards to prevent abuse must be in place such as XP is still split with the mercenary but the mercenary doesn't level up. You must be higher level than the mercenary you hire otherwise people will just use level 1 characters for the hiring process, etc.
As a person who likes to help others when ever I can, (its what the games are made for ..right?) mentoring is an awesome option to have. I play for pretty long hours and in the beginning when I play a game I always play with someone and promise we will level together..and I try lol, I really do..but for one reason or another I always level ahead of them. Having the ability to delevel my toon and go back and help them is awesome. This keeps players helping players, and yes Kilsin, I agree heavily with not having the ability to "streamroll" toons your helping through an area. I ABSOLUTLY DETEST when people do this to me. How incredibly boring and lackluster! DID`NT learn a thing about my character and now I have 4 new levels of abilities I know nothing about, not to mention the 3 abilities I had before that I stilll know nothing about.
If your level 40 helping a level 16, than when you delevel you should recieve the same amount of xp the level 16 is recieving, maybe a small increase for the fact that you are..but really Will it even matter, whatever happened to helping without the expectation of getting something extra for it?
Thoughts only..still hav`nt finished coffee.. Cheers :)
not to discredit what your saying zaktaros, but in my experience mercenaries, in the games i have played that implemented them, were the worst thing to happen to a game. they create means to "solo" granted the merc's were OP in my opinion. In my opinion i beleive merc's to be a terrible idea, granted every class will be able to solo (player dependant) but i hope and pray that pantheon will never see merc's it completely ruined grouping in every game ive played. why group when i can get a merc and duo(solo) everything from 1 to max. im not discrediting your post and im sorry if it sounds as such, perhaps this game could be different. but i prefer to play with people, not an AI.. i miss the days of joking and making new friends, but to be honest, given the chance (i consider myself a min-max player) i would take a merc and duo to max because i know myself and im all about time effeciency. however i would at the end regret not meeting anyone, or making friends or sharing adventures with new people, not to mention learning your class. you have to be able to play with others to be affective in grouping or raiding at ANY level.
AvianaSummerwood said:As a person who likes to help others when ever I can, (its what the games are made for ..right?) mentoring is an awesome option to have. I play for pretty long hours and in the beginning when I play a game I always play with someone and promise we will level together..and I try lol, I really do..but for one reason or another I always level ahead of them. Having the ability to delevel my toon and go back and help them is awesome. This keeps players helping players, and yes Kilsin, I agree heavily with not having the ability to "streamroll" toons your helping through an area. I ABSOLUTLY DETEST when people do this to me. How incredibly boring and lackluster! DID`NT learn a thing about my character and now I have 4 new levels of abilities I know nothing about, not to mention the 3 abilities I had before that I stilll know nothing about.
If your level 40 helping a level 16, than when you delevel you should recieve the same amount of xp the level 16 is recieving, maybe a small increase for the fact that you are..but really Will it even matter, whatever happened to helping without the expectation of getting something extra for it?
Thoughts only..still hav`nt finished coffee.. Cheers :)
OMG you could have taken the words right out of my mouth!!! im the EXACT same way. I always promise i wont out level people unfortunatly... i lack self control
Amsai said: In FFXI we had level sync. I thought it worked quite well. But it was not only used to level with lower level buddies. It was also used frequently get into Xp parties when there were none in your level range. And it is probably the best way not to trivialize content or challenge. It seems this is getting unhealthy doses of "its breaking my immersion". Immersion is important but not to the exclusion of game play or challenge. Let's be reasonable folks. It won't be the end of the world and I'd much rather have this than PLin any day!
This is a very good point^^^^^
I think mentoring is beneficial for the low level player in that you can go through content as intended. It's helpful in learning your character and how to play them as opposed to power leveling where you are more or less and xp sponge. It's difficult to learn healing when your max level friend isn't taking any damage.
I do think that the scaling down of gear, stats, etc. should be sufficient to make content meaningful if not challenging; afterall the point is to replay the content not destroy it. If I am mowing down mobs as a mentor aren't I just power leveling.
More to the question asked, I think that there is limited community or social value added to mentoring. With power leveling as an alternative most people will take the path of get me higher level faster.
Rhelic said:AvianaSummerwood said:As a person who likes to help others when ever I can, (its what the games are made for ..right?) mentoring is an awesome option to have. I play for pretty long hours and in the beginning when I play a game I always play with someone and promise we will level together..and I try lol, I really do..but for one reason or another I always level ahead of them. Having the ability to delevel my toon and go back and help them is awesome. This keeps players helping players, and yes Kilsin, I agree heavily with not having the ability to "streamroll" toons your helping through an area. I ABSOLUTLY DETEST when people do this to me. How incredibly boring and lackluster! DID`NT learn a thing about my character and now I have 4 new levels of abilities I know nothing about, not to mention the 3 abilities I had before that I stilll know nothing about.
If your level 40 helping a level 16, than when you delevel you should recieve the same amount of xp the level 16 is recieving, maybe a small increase for the fact that you are..but really Will it even matter, whatever happened to helping without the expectation of getting something extra for it?
Thoughts only..still hav`nt finished coffee.. Cheers :)
OMG you could have taken the words right out of my mouth!!! im the EXACT same way. I always promise i wont out level people unfortunatly... i lack self control
LMAO...i know right! But i always do return and help however I can. It just makes it so much easier with the ability to delevel and play through it again. I also keeps the person your helping from feeling like you are bored. Self guilt is a thing.
Power leveling, please, please don't do this. It makes no sense whatsoever. You power level your friend and when you aren't on he decides to get in a group and doesn't have the slightest idea how to play his character/ doesn't have any of the mechanics down any sort of spell cast timing, all he know's is how to follow a higher level around and mowe mobs down. Even boxing your alt for power leveling leaves you at a disadvantage of knowing your spells, cast times, manueveres etc.etc.. Probably no way around it, but yeah, Pwrlvling sucks ;(
I feel that mentoring is not needed in a open world with a large population of players. I have great memories of ligh level people come to Overthere in EQ1 PL'ing random groups just for fun. The mix of people made the world feel even bigger. If the population is not as large as the world though, players start losing options. Having friends/ guildmates filling in that hole via mentoring gives you the ability to continue on. So, my suggestion is to have mentoring ready in case server population is not ideal.
@Kilsin
This topic has been beaten to death in many threads previous as you well know - and it's one of the few topics where we disagree. :)
I'd argue mentoring is not the lesser of the evils between power leveling and alts. Mentoring allows you to have a character at any level you desire; whereas, with both alts and even power leveling they are only at a specific level range.
In a group focused game, you're going to screw the unguilded or player with few friends that is level 30 looking for a group, when a buddy has a max level friend that can magically delevel down and already has a cast knowledge of the game/content. And, more importantly already knows that player's skill level.
Mentoring worked for VG because it was a ghost town - and it had to have that much like EQ needs mecenaries today to fill out groups.
With a healthy population - neither mecenaries or mentoring is necessary and both will be detrimental to grouping.
Re: Mentoring:
Raidan (above) is right, in that Mentoring fills a need in mature, under-populated MMO servers. With a large level-spread and fewer players, the ability to 'morph' into any level character can prove useful.
NOTE:
1. After release, population on servers will be high/stay high for 6-12 months (at least)
2. If content is 'challenging, even for groups' then advancement for 'casual' to 'only moderately active' friends will be fairly slow. In a year, up to perhaps level 35-40 (Vanilla EQ1 at 10 hrs/week gave about level 20 in 1st year). I am imagining a group of friends who play (together) perhaps 1-2 x week, with a couple of them playing an extra hour or two here and there.
3. If gouping level spreads are similar to EQ1 (highest can be up to +50% level of lowest) and xp_per_level following an exponential curve (as per EQ1) this would, if the worst player (or lowest played hours) is only HALF of the 'most active' player (and that player is, say, level 36) he would be Level 30.
So, after a YEAR of one person playing 2x the hours of the other person and finally reaching level 36 ... he would STILL find himself able to group with his friend.
Even if he plays THREE TIMES as many hours as his friend, when the lower guy makes level 30 at the end of the year, he will be only level 41. STILL in grouping range.
From this perspective:
Mentoring is likely not needed for at lest a year. If populations stay high, it is not needed for a year after *that*.
Mentoring would ONLY be needed on a low-pop Rule-set server (Eg RP, or other niche rule-set)
Mentoring is one of the key features I would love to see in Pantheon. Playing with others is important, and level gaps between you and your friends can destroy any posibility of playing with them. A system where you can still play with your friends and have challenging content is important. For those -1- character people, like me, this is a big deal.
-Todd
This is always a hot topic, Kilsin's thread on facebook is blowing up. I'm in the anti-mentoring category, although I'm not as strongly against it as I am some other subjects. I know Brad really wants it in the game - it will definitely be in testing. In that one other thread (no I'm not looking for it lol) where Brad posted a long message explaning his desire to have it in the game, I see the points about us vets helping to usher in younger players who know only the instant gratification mmos.
So I have a request for the mentoring system, please make a seperate hotkey-bar when mentoring down! It was so annoying in EQ2 (Maybe it was changed, I only played it before the first xpac) when I mentored down, and my hotbar still had all my high level spells, I'd have to go through my spell book and locate the spells for the level I was scaled down to and switch them out etc. If a seperate bar comes up like in WoW when a rogue goes in to stealth.... so that our normal level hotkeys don't need to be touched.
Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I could have just ALT'd to a different bar in EQ2, it was too long ago to remember what I was doing exactly.
I prefer both. Allow mentor (with a reputation gained that grants access to _insert something interesting here_ in a major city) and allow standard powerleveling. I think adding a 'decent' incentive to the mentor with an interesting cosmetic or title would boost the effectiveness. I know that I would love to use such a feature while doing recruitment drives for a guild, so we can not only help new players to promote our guild, but we can also train up our 'younger' members once they join.
And the normal powerleveling aspect is always welcomed. Great for alts and side income for some classes. Still promotes socializing with others, and enables us to fill multiple roles easier. I'm a healer at heart, but have been playing tanks for years now. Having a cleric alt that doesn't require me to spend a hundred hours leveling is great for, and for whatever guild I'm in. Since both classes are usually shorthanded anyway, and my willingness to play whatever the guild needs isn't hampered by the long leveling curve. I sadly didn't get a chance to play EQ in a real guild, so my experiences are rather limited with what classes are rare. But the same applies, even though EQ and this are more than just a 'trinity' system.
If I had to choose one over the other, I choose powerleveling for selfish reasons. For the games success in a social aspect, I choose mentor. Guild recruitment and training, as well as my characters server reputation, would benefit more by the mentor system than the powerleveling.
Raidan said:@Kilsin
This topic has been beaten to death in many threads previous as you well know - and it's one of the few topics where we disagree. :)
I'd argue mentoring is not the lesser of the evils between power leveling and alts. Mentoring allows you to have a character at any level you desire; whereas, with both alts and even power leveling they are only at a specific level range.
In a group focused game, you're going to screw the unguilded or player with few friends that is level 30 looking for a group, when a buddy has a max level friend that can magically delevel down and already has a cast knowledge of the game/content. And, more importantly already knows that player's skill level.
Mentoring worked for VG because it was a ghost town - and it had to have that much like EQ needs mecenaries today to fill out groups.
With a healthy population - neither mecenaries or mentoring is necessary and both will be detrimental to grouping.
Aye, but as per the title, I had this listed for CM content months before it was posted by a community member and I need to work through it lol
Mentoring only allows you to lower you level and take a hit to stats, buffs etc. so it is only used in situations to help others, it is meant for those new and low-level players to keep them from logging out in frustration or leaving the game completely due to a lack of groups, lack of understanding of the game etc. we want our game to be harsh but not to the point it drives people away, so if we were to implement this mentor system it would just be an extra option on top of power leveling and twinking to help players experience the game as the appropriate levels by veteran players who can lend a helping hand both physically with their characters and by sharing tips and advice.
Mentoring was in VG prior to the decline in numbers and it worked very well man, along with the brotherhood system and caravans ;)
Healthy or not it just helps bridge the level gap and provides another option for players to connect within the same level range so the newer players can experience the game as it was intended without being fast-tracked through or miss content due to being power leveled but people can ignore it if they like and use other methods.
Again, this is CM content to spark discussions and engage with the community, I love getting feedback on these topics from everyone so if we ever do consider something like this I have a lot of information on it regarding the communities input :)
Kilsin said:Nimryl said:Why not have both? :)
You can have both, Mentoring is just an extra option to help players enjoy helping other at an appropriate level, we wouldn't take power leveling away :)
I'm a bit sad to hear you say that about power-levelling. Is there anything that trivialises a game's content and the efforts of 'legitimate' players more than powerlevelling? Why not just give players a button to press to level up? That would at least keep the PLers for killing all the monsters the 'normal' players are working on.
Mentoring should remove any *need* for power-levelling (where a high level friend wishes to play with a lower level one) and if you for some reason have a need for levelling with no effort whatsoever, well, should you really be catered to?
EDIT: I do notice you also said you consider PLing and twinking worse than mentoring "mentoring is the lesser of the three allowing others to play the game as it was intended and still be challenged". Worse, but not 'bad' enough to stop? I'm hoping what you are actually saying is "conceptually, mentoring need not do away with power-levelling and twinking" for the sake of the discussion...
Kilsin said:Raidan said:*Snip*
Aye, but as per the title, I had this listed for CM content months before it was posted by a community member and I need to work through it lol
Mentoring only allows you to lower you level and take a hit to stats, buffs etc. so it is only used in situations to help others, it is meant for those new and low-level players to keep them from logging out in frustration or leaving the game completely due to a lack of groups, lack of understanding of the game etc. we want our game to be harsh but not to the point it drives people away, so if we were to implement this mentor system it would just be an extra option on top of power leveling and twinking to help players experience the game as the appropriate levels by veteran players who can lend a helping hand both physically with their characters and by sharing tips and advice.
Mentoring was in VG prior to the decline in numbers and it worked very well man, along with the brotherhood system and caravans ;)
Healthy or not it just helps bridge the level gap and provides another option for players to connect within the same level range so the newer players can experience the game as it was intended without being fast-tracked through or miss content due to being power leveled but people can ignore it if they like and use other methods.
Again, this is CM content to spark discussions and engage with the community, I love getting feedback on these topics from everyone so if we ever do consider something like this I have a lot of information on it regarding the communities input :)
Yeah, I meant no offense by your creation of the new thread, I figured new healthy discussion was your intent. I made the statement as I figured you already knew where I stood on the issue. :). But some of these hotter topics are good to rehash with all the newer members.
Anyhow... for the sake of this discussion, remove the idea of power leveling and twinking altogether, neither has any bearing on whether I am for/aganist mentoring. I would argue that many (most?) that choose to power level would regardless if mentoring was in game or not. But, anyway, for the rest of this post - I'll just discuss my thoughts on mentoring.
So, viewing only mentoring, I see it as a a crutch in an otherwise social game. It allows a player to use /friends list or /guild and send /guild tells or /friend tells and theoretically play in a small bubble. It could almost turn an otherwise open world into a more anti-social world. Think of subcultures or clicks that form in any environment your in - school, sports, work, etc. Once you become familiar with people, it's much easier to send them tells or interact with them versus meeting new players. You'll have a lot less dynamic pick-up groups and overall interaction with the inclusion of mentoring. That was the main point behind my original post in this thread. And, if the population is healthy like EQ was at launch, it isn't necessary. However, without mentoring, it would force people into having to socialize, make friends, /shout for groups, and meet new people more OR, like you said, potentially become frustrated at times. But, that was the beauty of making friends in EQ, I could always find groups quickly - and it often wasn't in guild groups, and, even if I didn't always find a great group - (or any) - it made me appreciate them when I did and want to meet good skilled players. Basically, force people out of their comfort zones again to feel real connections with people - new people.
And, I definitely didn't play VG as much as you especially in the earlier years (quit within the first 6 months and came back much later), so I'll take your word on the mentoring system there and how it worked. When I started playing again closer to sunset (a year or two out) the population was almost non-existant and mentoring was necessary.
But, overall, I would agree with Evoras - I wouldn't be opposed to mentoring for the entire existence of Pantheon, but I don't think it's a system that should be implemented within the first year at least, and that populations and group dynamics should be measured before implementing it at all. Either way, it's not going to make or break Pantheon for me by any means - it's just my perspective :).
AvianaSummerwood said:Amsai said: In FFXI we had level sync. I thought it worked quite well. But it was not only used to level with lower level buddies. It was also used frequently get into Xp parties when there were none in your level range. And it is probably the best way not to trivialize content or challenge. It seems this is getting unhealthy doses of "its breaking my immersion". Immersion is important but not to the exclusion of game play or challenge. Let's be reasonable folks. It won't be the end of the world and I'd much rather have this than PLin any day!
This is a very good point^^^^^
This is a good point about a good point
Furthermore, power leveling should be curtailed to ensure that a person that leveled up the hard way (without special help), or even worse, paid for help, has value to his/her level when compared to the community at large. Power leveling by artificially inflating the average level of the community makes your dollar worth 75 cents; as an analogical example.
It warms my heart to see opposition to mentoring in this thread.
For both mentoring and powerleveling, there needs to be limitations introduced that did not exist in previous games if we are going to protect the sanctity of challenge in Pantheon.
In the case of mentoring, it should be there primarily to help the lower level player and not provide experience for the higher level. I also don't believe you should be able to mentor past a certain point (maybe level 10 or so).
Likewise, powerleveling should also have some limitations to encourage players to group instead. In EQ, it was really easy to heal, do partial damage to a mob (49%) or simply zone or feign death. Those powerleveling exploits should NOT exist in Pantheon. If you heal a player more than they damage a mob, they should lose experience. If someone damages the mob and feigns/zones, they should lose experience.
If Pantheon is going to bring challenge back to the MMORPG, its imperative that mentoring and powerleveling do not allow players to circumvent that challenge.
@ Raidan
I get the distinct impression Im missing something on how specifically mentoring worked in EQ compared to level sync in FFXI.
This:
So, viewing only mentoring, I see it as a a crutch in an otherwise social game. It allows a player to use /friends list or /guild and send /guild tells or /friend tells and theoretically play in a small bubble. It could almost turn an otherwise open world into a more anti-social world.
Doesnt make sense to me. So it must be something in the way EQ did it, because this simply wasnt the case in FFXI. Could you use your friends or linkshell members list? Yes, but your were more likely to level sync with strangers in the open world through shouts and looking for people with their party flag up. So lets say Im in a party of players around level 15ish. But we really badly need a tank and none seem to be available within that level range. But hey looky here a level 23 Paladin just put up his flag. So I send him a tell and ask this perfect stranger if hed like to party with us. So he meets up and level syncs down to the group and he gets a party to get xp, and we get a tank to help us get xp. Or maybe I was shouting and he just offered to level sync down to party with us. The point is this was what happened the vast majority of the time when people used level sync. It was simply used as a public grouping tool, not for private exlusive groups only. Basically it worked just like normal grouping only it greatly extended the number of potential players at lower and middle level ranges. So if done right I dont think it would hender the social element of gameplay. I would however be less immersive (not as big a deal to me at least).
@ Everybody
And Dullahan definitely wouldnt be on board with the higher level player(s) getting normal xp, but that is what happened in FFXI. But again that was to encourage more social gameplay in the form of strangers wanting to group with lower level players. I myself would be torn on this as well. It could be a considered a way for higher level players to eliminate challenge by getting normal xp rates without ever having to venture into less safe areas or fight more dangerous enemies. But if it causes more benfit then harm, then Id lean the direction of normal xp returns for higher level players. Maybe a cut off point like Dullahan suggested, but I think level 10 a bit too low. I'd say higher than level 10 but lower than level 25, assuming cap of 50 at launch. Whatever the case I am more troubled over how to properly incentivise and regulate "Mentoring" than having any worry about its effect on immersion or that it would stagnate social gameplay (with proper implimintation).
Meanwhile I have nothing but unpleasant thoughts about PLing or Mercs. I see nothing but all bads for these. And one or both will unfortunately be in the game regardless of my feelings so Ill deal with it. But these 2 things are IMO by far the worst offenders to challenge and difficulty that are right up there with zergs and zombieing as far as Im concerned.
I am OK with things like higher level players being able to give buffs to lower level players (within reason), just not sit there and baby sit them with non stop cures or doing damage or tanking for them.
I also dont have a problem with twinking provided the gear has increasing diminishing returns the further the level gap. The closer to the level gap the more stats you get from the gear, but the further then the fewer stats you get. At a certain point it should no longer be worth it and would be better to just wear normal gear your level. I dont know exectly what that gap should be but I envision at the very least if you are a level 1 character then that level 25 cheast piece should be absolutely worthless at least til you level up some more.