Nanfoodle said:Dubah said:Nanfoodle said:Mentor System is a big reason why i pledged. My wife and I play a very different speeds and I hate having to keep up to chars to level with her. I can play solo with nol fear of passing her and keep up with guildies and when she plays I can just go down to her level and use my main. MATTER OF FACT: I would like to propose VR follow GW2 in this Mentor System. You should be rewards for the level you are when you level down. Get exp like your killing mobs your level. Items (not epic or rares) like commons you sell to people or vendors should be based off your real level. Make it so people love Mentoring. Have high level people coming down to hand with lower levels all the time.
FACT: What often kills games a few years in, there is no reason to kill low level mobs other then to get to where you need to go to get to the area of your level. This makes it very hard for new ones who join a game 2-4 years latter. Cant find a team your level, go mentor with some low level players and still have a great time and so do they. Its win win. Make this a reason to play with guildies and friends no matter their level. This will also stop the PL stuff that goes on. So sick of seeing a top level char with someone that does not know how the games works. Mentoring helps them learn the game. Why do you PL? To be able to play with friends and guildies sooner.
No offense, obviously, but this is exactly what I don't want to see. There shouldn't be some big reward for mentoring. Definitely shouldn't be able to get max level from mentoring down to level 20. That will keep people out of the high end zones because the level 20 stuff is much easier to kill.
I like PL'ing to still be an option. Why not? We had it in EQ, and had very little problems, granted there was always that one guy who did cause problems because he had to be greedy about it, but for the most part anyone could fix that problem. That and I'm sure VR would be willing to put a stop to it, SoE and Verant would way back in the day, then they just stopped caring, and sold the game again to another company, which made it even worse. But I'm sure VR will intervene with stuff like that. However, back on topic, mentoring was never a system designed for the playing that is mentoring someone but for the mentee. Usually, like EQ2 he got an EXP boost. But it rewarded the player with a very small and most time insignificant amount of exp. That's what I feel mentoring should do. Redistribute most of your exp to the rest of the group and give you a small amount. Enought to keep the death penalty at bay, but not enough to make you want to level up that way.
I get where you are coming from but I would rather team with someone who mentored his way to the top in a team and has a good idea of how his skills work over someone PLed and learned to play his class from youtube videos. Also PL takes away from being with the community as it segregates a group of people that have no need for everyone else. Often takes large number of mobs from an area making it unplayable for other teams. Mentoring keeps people playing together and teaching them the best skills they can get, how to use their skills in a team with a wide verity of classes. I am 100% for Mentoring and I hope PLing is not something we see in this game at all, as it is antisocial.
How does staying at level 20 help a level 60 cleric learn how to use his skills? And again, like I said, I don't mind PL's as long as they are regulated. If the guy getting PL'd is taking too much, then yeah he needs to be stopped, which I'm hoping VR will do. I don't mind PL's as long as they aren't being a pain to the community.
eldrun said:I’m honestly really against both the mentor and progeny system.
If you want to help new characters you can always give them a piece of special gear, or give them a few high level buffs. Or, roll an alt yourself and play with them at the same level and add to the group.
The arguments for is that “It gives an incentive to help new players by rewarding them with better stats” if this is the case there is absoultely zero reason to get your first, or even second character BiS gear. You’re going to want to level them as fast as possible to max level and then boom progeny system kicks in giving your new level one has things other level ones would not have.
To me that seems like a disaster in the making. Even if it is optional it is the ONLY option at that point to become a relevant character.
I agree with this 100%. I don't like the idea of progeny or mentors. I think it takes away the entire point of having a higher level character. High level characters vs low level characters would literally mean nothing. Roll an alt. It provides longevity for the game and forces the players to try new things. I hated how any level could group with any level in Guild Wars and I hate how new players can insta be level 80 or 90 in WoW without having to put in any effort like other players had to. Please, #DreamBoatBrad, don't do it. I'm begging you, lol. I want to group with people my level, not a watered down max level person. Something about it just ruins everything for me.
eldrun said:I agree with the above poster, mentoring is NOT meant for the higher level player. It is used to help the lower levels community and new players.
You can still play with your friends and gain a bit of exp. But not even close to equal of what it would be at your level.
Not sure why people are trying to turn mentoring into something that is made for the high level toons.
I dont think anyone is trying to do that. Mentoring will always be more beneficial for the lower level. But the higher level should gain some benefit experience wise. Like I said before. If you choose to level up via mentoring it should take you 4 or 5 times LONGER then if you killed even cons of your actual level.
This is the same thought process behind the con level of the mobs you kill. If you kill yellow cons you will level up much faster than if you were killing light blues.
Porygon said:eldrun said:I agree with the above poster, mentoring is NOT meant for the higher level player. It is used to help the lower levels community and new players.
You can still play with your friends and gain a bit of exp. But not even close to equal of what it would be at your level.
Not sure why people are trying to turn mentoring into something that is made for the high level toons.
I dont think anyone is trying to do that. Mentoring will always be more beneficial for the lower level. But the higher level should gain some benefit experience wise. Like I said before. If you choose to level up via mentoring it should take you 4 or 5 times LONGER then if you killed even cons of your actual level.
This is the same thought process behind the con level of the mobs you kill. If you kill yellow cons you will level up much faster than if you were killing light blues.
That I would be fine with.
eldrun said:Porygon said:eldrun said:I agree with the above poster, mentoring is NOT meant for the higher level player. It is used to help the lower levels community and new players.
You can still play with your friends and gain a bit of exp. But not even close to equal of what it would be at your level.
Not sure why people are trying to turn mentoring into something that is made for the high level toons.
I dont think anyone is trying to do that. Mentoring will always be more beneficial for the lower level. But the higher level should gain some benefit experience wise. Like I said before. If you choose to level up via mentoring it should take you 4 or 5 times LONGER then if you killed even cons of your actual level.
This is the same thought process behind the con level of the mobs you kill. If you kill yellow cons you will level up much faster than if you were killing light blues.
That I would be fine with.
I agree
Let the new players suffer equally, no better exp than failure. I want to group with a player with equal game skills in the game , not someone that power leveled in 1-4 areas and has no clue of the rest of the world. I know..I know, sounds mean but to be honest this team needs to deliver a game first and efforts should be placed elsewhere rather than how to accomodate someone just starting. Best teacher is playing with trial and error and if you want to be a teacher then roll a new character to go along with the pupil.
Nanfoodle said:eldrun said:Porygon said:I dont think anyone is trying to do that. Mentoring will always be more beneficial for the lower level. But the higher level should gain some benefit experience wise. Like I said before. If you choose to level up via mentoring it should take you 4 or 5 times LONGER then if you killed even cons of your actual level.
This is the same thought process behind the con level of the mobs you kill. If you kill yellow cons you will level up much faster than if you were killing light blues.
That I would be fine with.
I agree
I think its pretty hard to argue with the concept of mentoring if it is delivered as well balanced as we have been discussing and if the xp is as scaled to such a minimal degree as we have been discussing. Those if's are imperative.
Yaladan said:Let the new players suffer equally, no better exp than failure. I want to group with a player with equal game skills in the game , not someone that power leveled in 1-4 areas and has no clue of the rest of the world. I know..I know, sounds mean but to be honest this team needs to deliver a game first and efforts should be placed elsewhere rather than how to accomodate someone just starting. Best teacher is playing with trial and error and if you want to be a teacher then roll a new character to go along with the pupil.
Hey Yaladi... Yaladan ;)
I might have mis understood your comment and sorry if i did, you might be refering to Power Leveling instead, but re the teacher bit i thought you might have meant mentoring. If the person you want to play with or teach is level 1 - 10 then sure you could probably jump on as a new char and try to catch up to them, but the Mentor system is not based entirely around teaching people and would probably not be used that way all that much, although the name does allude to that!
It is more about being able to play with the community of players lower level than yourself at will, or have one of your high level friends able to play with you where the level split between gaining xp is too great, and the lower level player can earn xp while the higher level player earns only a tiny bit of xp allowing the lower to catch up. Or maybe it will be used to be able to help out some strangers struggling to fill a spot, and if you as the higher level feel like offering a hand you can mentor down to be able to assist them with their goal.
Hopefully VR hears us trying to reach out and make it clear that if implemented we don't want a mentor system where the mentor is over powered and takes away that challenge for the low level players they are engaging with, and as the latter part of the thread went through no one wants mentoring to be a way for a high level to make any decent xp.
One thing I enjoy about mentoring and forgot to add earlier (and I didn't see if it was already raised) is that it really helps when friends comes or comes back after some absence. Some MMO now have "fixed" that gap by adding either Payable character boosts or completely trivial and unrewarding levelling (or either, sync from 1 to lvl max, ala Eso), because they thought the best way to fix the level difference is to make a fix that will affect the whole game balance and perenity.
Take the picture, X guild (I know some are out there) goes on pantheon while one or a few of their members are busy or unavaliable (Army, studies, etc...). When the guy comes back and want to play with his friends, he is so late that the task is tremendous. Now the guy is surrounded by friends and guildmates that can simply mentor him and play with him, hastening a bit his progression until he catches up the difference.
I know the case will look close to what a new player will experiment, but new players will make new friends while established groups tends to remain together and enjoy their playtime together, and I think it was worth pointing out pantheon player can litteraly surround friends and latecomers with non PL or non trivialized progression.
Not a fan of these mentoring systems. I thought powerleveling in EQ was annoying; watching these poor sods waste their time helping a friend while taking a farm spot, but mentoring in EQ2 was 10x more frustrating and prevalent. From the perspective of someone not being mentored it was basically the same thing as plvling except it now benefits the pleveler to do it. All they did was make it far more accessible instead of keeping it taboo. I might be okay with mentoring so long as there is 0 xp gain for the mentor and the mentee takes an xp hit.
geatz said:Not a fan of these mentoring systems. I thought powerleveling in EQ was annoying; watching these poor sods waste their time helping a friend while taking a farm spot, but mentoring in EQ2 was 10x more frustrating and prevalent. From the perspective of someone not being mentored it was basically the same thing as plvling except it now benefits the pleveler to do it. All they did was make it far more accessible instead of keeping it taboo. I might be okay with mentoring so long as there is 0 xp gain for the mentor and the mentee takes an xp hit.
I do think it should be as valuable as the mobs are, ie : if you're 50 and kill a lvl 20 mobs with mentoring, you should get the same amount of shared exp than your lvl 20 friend, but since you're high level it would mean next to nothing in your exp pool.
I'm fine with no gain at all too, and against any incentive that would make mentoring something worth more than helping others. Typically mentoring is for offering your help to friends or newcomers, and what you get is good reputation and new friends.
There should be no bonus for the mentored player either except having one more partner or group member, or it will became a norm "lvl 20 war lf mentoring, paying 100pp per hour" as it would be faster than normal grouping.
Fine scaling is also important, and mentors shouldn"t be stronger than good geared players of the appropriate level.
Most people who are power leveled are playing their 2nd or higher character. The already know the world. They already understand the game.
People that are playing there first character and being power leveled are usually friends of the PLer and probably have significant mmo experience already and will have no issues acclimating to the game.
If a friend of mine wanted to play pantheon as his first mmo, I wouldnt power level him. I would make him level on his own. It's not very often you find people at max level who have no idea what they are doing because they were power leveled. Most of the time if they are bad. They are just bad.
The only thing i suggested was that the tool could be utilized to tune encounters to specific levels. There will be AI that tell mobs to run or portal out if there are too many people trying to zerg or the levels of the people are too high, a way to counter this is mentor down to a specific level with the correct number of players and you can access these encounters. Have we not all felt the frustration of wanting to go kill naggy/vox and didnt want to start an alt just to do it?
Porygon said:Most people who are power leveled are playing their 2nd or higher character. The already know the world. They already understand the game.
People that are playing there first character and being power leveled are usually friends of the PLer and probably have significant mmo experience already and will have no issues acclimating to the game.
If a friend of mine wanted to play pantheon as his first mmo, I wouldnt power level him. I would make him level on his own. It's not very often you find people at max level who have no idea what they are doing because they were power leveled. Most of the time if they are bad. They are just bad.
Right. And if someone were powerleveling another person they wouldn't be mentoring down to do it as there are always far better ways to do it.
By the same logic then every twinked alt in EQ was powerleveling...but they weren't.
I have a wife and 5 kids that play games together. Everyone has different schedules and dedication. Mentoring is a must. It's almost impossible to maintain enough alts to be able to play with them all.
In my experience, mentoring OPENS you to more people. Specifically, people with more experience and knowledge. There are many people that would not be at my level. Mentoring allows them to help teach me the finer points of the game and allows them to team with the new blood of the game. Thus, STRENGTHING the community.
This is especially true if you play in "off-hours", when there might not be many people on in your level range. Through mentoring, higher level people can fill those needed spots in your group, instead of waiting for an hour to find the people at the right levels. Again, this opens you to many other people you may not normally play with.
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.
Beefcake said:I have a wife and 5 kids that play games together. Everyone has different schedules and dedication. Mentoring is a must. It's almost impossible to maintain enough alts to be able to play with them all.
In my experience, mentoring OPENS you to more people. Specifically, people with more experience and knowledge. There are many people that would not be at my level. Mentoring allows them to help teach me the finer points of the game and allows them to team with the new blood of the game. Thus, STRENGTHING the community.
This is especially true if you play in "off-hours", when there might not be many people on in your level range. Through mentoring, higher level people can fill those needed spots in your group, instead of waiting for an hour to find the people at the right levels. Again, this opens you to many other people you may not normally play with.
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.
I agree totally. This game for me first and foremost is about community. Mentoring will strengthen the community.
If I see someone IRL struggling my nature is to help. Why would I be any different in-game?
There has been a slew of threads revolving around LFG wait times. Mentoring will be part of the solution. Need a tank a higher level tank could mentor down. Seems a viable solution to me.
Everyone on this forum more than likely has extensive MMO experience but just reading the FAQ's, interviews, watching the streams etc it is abundantly clear that the VR team also wants to entice people who play co-op in a nonpersistent game. These are the players that mentoring will help, they will know teamwork but may be a little shaky on other aspects of an MMO.
I would never want a player to endure my first week in EQ. Running around lost, dying, looking for a corpse, falling out of Kelethin, all while a sea of acronyms swirled around me, frustrating. It was only when a ranger jumped into a fight (which was going to kill me yet again) and saved my weak lyrical butt that songs started to make sense. She then gave me the equivalent of Excalibur (ok it was a bag, but a great bag) and took the time to explain how a bard plays, where I should be at "x" level, what camps are and so many more little things. Things I take for granted now, but we should not. We need Pantheon to be inclusive and to embrace all players no matter what level of experience. More importantly, we need to extend a hand.
The main benefit of Mentoring is being able to group with friends you out level. There does not need to be a big benefit to anyone, though a small xp bonus to the lower lvls could be ok. The mentor should be nerfed down to a reasonable power level - typical of the level mentored too or maybe a slight twink at that lvl. Most games Mentors are way too powerful which is a problem, that needs to be addresed well if mentoring happens.
If they get the scaling worked out properly mentoring should work just fine. It should work so that regardless of what items you have the skill stats you have at that level will determine all. If they make the skillups scale up slower you prolly won't notice as much of a difference when you scale down a few levels. Or it could make a huge difference because those skillups have more meaning when they scale up slower. They will get it working properly. I have faith.
I feel like if there's any sort of mentoring (especially if it's like GW2) I will be too turned off to play Pantheon. I understand why some of you would want it, but if push comes to shove, why not play an alt with your SO? My hubby plays at max speed while I dabble in this and that. But if I want him to play with me, he just rolls an alt, and we play together as that, or he helps me with quests with his main. Mentoring makes high levels feel moot. When everyone can group with everyone and get all the same rewards, where is the show for your hard work? Dumb.
Perplexing89 said:I feel like if there's any sort of mentoring (especially if it's like GW2) I will be too turned off to play Pantheon. I understand why some of you would want it, but if push comes to shove, why not play an alt with your SO? My hubby plays at max speed while I dabble in this and that. But if I want him to play with me, he just rolls an alt, and we play together as that, or he helps me with quests with his main. Mentoring makes high levels feel moot. When everyone can group with everyone and get all the same rewards, where is the show for your hard work? Dumb.
I agree, plus what if I don't want to group with my friend who is just going to run me through everything and not let me figure this stuff out, now I gotta be rude. I think that most of the people here that are endorsing this stupid feature were probably mentoring down being that person and not mentoring up, I never had a problem being pleveled in EQ because I know what I was getting into, boring fast progress, only the one powerleveling me hated it or if he had to make an alt to play with me, but as the mentee in EQ2 it always sucked, I hated it. If my buddy wants to go outlevel me, go for it, but now he is gonna ruin my experience and possibly others by constantly removing what is supposed to be a challenging game by just mentoring down and helping all while he continue's his own progression while doing so, forgot that, hated it in EQ2 and I will hate it again, it's gonna suck. The amount of alts doesn't compare to the amount of mentors, only later in the game's life will there be alts running around with epics that know everything but mentors will be there right in the beginning ruining everything man I hate this.
geatz said:Perplexing89 said:I feel like if there's any sort of mentoring (especially if it's like GW2) I will be too turned off to play Pantheon. I understand why some of you would want it, but if push comes to shove, why not play an alt with your SO? My hubby plays at max speed while I dabble in this and that. But if I want him to play with me, he just rolls an alt, and we play together as that, or he helps me with quests with his main. Mentoring makes high levels feel moot. When everyone can group with everyone and get all the same rewards, where is the show for your hard work? Dumb.
I agree, plus what if I don't want to group with my friend who is just going to run me through everything and not let me figure this stuff out, now I gotta be rude. I think that most of the people here that are endorsing this stupid feature were probably mentoring down being that person and not mentoring up, I never had a problem being pleveled in EQ because I know what I was getting into, boring fast progress, only the one powerleveling me hated it or if he had to make an alt to play with me, but as the mentee in EQ2 it always sucked, I hated it. If my buddy wants to go outlevel me, go for it, but now he is gonna ruin my experience and possibly others by constantly removing what is supposed to be a challenging game by just mentoring down and helping all while he continue's his own progression while doing so, forgot that, hated it in EQ2 and I will hate it again, it's gonna suck. The amount of alts doesn't compare to the amount of mentors, only later in the game's life will there be alts running around with epics that know everything but mentors will be there right in the beginning ruining everything man I hate this.
You might consider how the feature can be done so that it doesnt create the exact same issue you are citing from EQ2. No matter our stance on mentoring as a whole we've pretty much all agreed we dont want EQ2 mentoring with OP mentors, everyone has said it over and over again. I am sure you can contribute to the testing and feedback of the mentor system upon alpha / beta and help us ensure that it is in as a balanced system that doesnt trivialise content. If it was implemented as we have discsused we would like it to be on this forum would you consider changing your stance?
I doubt highly that Brad and co want to have their content trivialised by their own system based on the clearly stated tenets of the game / devs.
Hokanu said:
You might consider how the feature can be done so that it doesnt create the exact same issue you are citing from EQ2. No matter our stance on mentoring as a whole we've pretty much all agreed we dont want EQ2 mentoring with OP mentors, everyone has said it over and over again. I am sure you can contribute to the testing and feedback of the mentor system upon alpha / beta and help us ensure that it is in as a balanced system that doesnt trivialise content. If it was implemented as we have discsused we would like it to be on this forum would you consider changing your stance?
I doubt highly that Brad and co want to have their content trivialised by their own system based on the clearly stated tenets of the game / devs.
I do trust the dev team to make a great game and add this in as best as possible, but no matter how you spin it or how it is implemented whether the mentor is OP or not, it's a feature only designed for the convenience of the mentor which are generally your power gamers or early adopters. This feature doesn't benefit the mentee, he doesn't care if his friend plays an alt or not and he/she should have the ability to experince the game as the outleveled friend did, and it doesn't benefit the wider community at all, it only threatens to trivialize content and inhibit social interactions. I believe it’s a selfish feature, I think for players that find creating an alt as too inconvenient to play with their friend. I just don’t understand how it improves my experience by having a mentor in my group or in the game world in general. So, NO, how it is being argued will not change my mind, however, if someone wants to try and explain or argue how having a mentor improves the game for anyone outside of the mentor, please go for it, that may change my mind.
In my mind the mentor would bring with him knowledge of the zone. Knowledge of AI mechanics. And knowledge of his class. If the mentor system is done correctly that is all they will bring. It will be like grouping with just another person of that level who has fought in that place before.
If i am playing an alt i might not be as firm on certain skills and abilities so i would probably fumble a little learning that class.
geatz said:Hokanu said:
You might consider how the feature can be done so that it doesnt create the exact same issue you are citing from EQ2. No matter our stance on mentoring as a whole we've pretty much all agreed we dont want EQ2 mentoring with OP mentors, everyone has said it over and over again. I am sure you can contribute to the testing and feedback of the mentor system upon alpha / beta and help us ensure that it is in as a balanced system that doesnt trivialise content. If it was implemented as we have discsused we would like it to be on this forum would you consider changing your stance?
I doubt highly that Brad and co want to have their content trivialised by their own system based on the clearly stated tenets of the game / devs.
I do trust the dev team to make a great game and add this in as best as possible, but no matter how you spin it or how it is implemented whether the mentor is OP or not, it's a feature only designed for the convenience of the mentor which are generally your power gamers or early adopters. This feature doesn't benefit the mentee, he doesn't care if his friend plays an alt or not and he/she should have the ability to experince the game as the outleveled friend did, and it doesn't benefit the wider community at all, it only threatens to trivialize content and inhibit social interactions. I believe it’s a selfish feature, I think for players that find creating an alt as too inconvenient to play with their friend. I just don’t understand how it improves my experience by having a mentor in my group or in the game world in general. So, NO, how it is being argued will not change my mind, however, if someone wants to try and explain or argue how having a mentor improves the game for anyone outside of the mentor, please go for it, that may change my mind.
Wait. Are you saying that downgrading yourself to play with lower level players is an advantage for the person who downgraded ? I'll leave it untouched because I do think the sentence by itself shows the absurdity of that reasoning.
It's only an advantage if it gives you an edge in something, wether it's reward or anything, but trust me : You get no personal benefits to be downgraded to a lower level because you could crush your ennemies ten times better at your real level.