Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
For the mentor it should be the opportunity to either get good rewards with their main and experience the content again or be able to do it with a twink.
A good lore integration imo can make the system more enticing. Meaning that it's not just simply a UI Element where you have to click a few buttons but a system that is integrated into the world.
For example it could be Black-Boards in hubs all over the world where Mentors can advertise their services. There could be a NPC faction that hires adventurers for this purpose. That wouldn't be much more than a building with a few NPC's so not a lot of resources have to be spent there.
The mentor in its gameplay form should a "coop-mode" to play the game where the mentee dictates the content but the mentor can see that beforehand so he/she can agree. It should also be somewhat limited in size. Meaning, one Mentor can't train 10 noobs at a time. 3 should be max.
In terms of the actual question I think it is important that there are strong benefits to use the system. One can even consider to use it to force socialisation for players. That's an important aspect that mmos over the years have forgotten. So while playing solo isn't grindy its double more effective to help each other out.
Don’t have ideas of what that reward would be, but that’s my stance nonetheless.
As far as tools go, I think a mentor/mentee chat channel would be great. And I think you should have to be max level to be a mentor and below level 10 to be a mentee.
Concern:
If there are rewards such as titles and cosmetics, people will definitely either abuse the system and mentor themselves on alt accounts, or they will frantically search for people to forcefully "help". We do not want new players bombarded with experienced players, overwhelming them with demands for mentor pairing. We want new players to be able to explore the game at their own pace and seek assistance when they want it.
Suggestion:
A system where new players can ask questions or request assistance, an experienced player can provide that help, and the new player can then click a button to recognize that their request has been met. Mentors can tally up a success number. Bars/meters are usually all it takes for a player to do something. This provides recognition that mentors can show off, while not incentivizing the swarming of new players by those who wish to exploit their existence for more substantial rewards.
Additionally, a level-syncing system would be great for mentoring. Allow high-level high-gear players to scale down to their noob friends and play along with them (without one-shot exploding everything).
Side notes:
Games like WoW do not properly explain their systems. The guide and newcomer system there is flooded with people either attempting to emote /wave to an NPC or mistakenly using the wrong chat, as there is nothing to explain chat, emotes, and chat channel changing in the game. Mentoring in Ashes would have its place, but it would still be necessary to have in-game guides and tutorials so that new players can be familiar with the fundamentals. Over-reliance on WoWhead is a serious detriment to new WoW players.
Mentees should probably get a reward to increase incentives for community interaction by giving mentors a shot. Maybe just give them similar rewards to normal quests around lvl 1-10.
The Mentor and Mentee group up and perform the grind that the Mentee wishes to learn at the Mentors level. (this is easier if they are paired via group-finder of desired activity, ex, hunting, crafting, exp from leveling and questing)
Mentor loots the normal drop with a tip, Mentoree receives downgraded/his-level-appropriate rewards but is shown the where and how of how it works.
Mentorship lives on two simple things, I argue the two most important elements: Participation and Engagement Quality
So with that in mind, the design question becomes - "How do we attract players to Mentor and how do we ensure they actually engage the Mentoree?"
I think this is an issue of convenience. Mentoring is a low priority for many players and the rewards are usually not worth the effort for EITHER players to earn or the devs to create (on a regular basis)
Solution: Avoid giving a "reward" for mentoring and instead make the Mentor-Mentoree interaction meaningful.
A party system based around grinding. The Mentor recieves accellerated grinding and the Metoree recieves in introduction into the system and how to do it efficiently.
Lets take a high level Hunter/Gatherer grinding a Resource mentoring a newbie that just grabbed the skill because it looked cool. They go out together and hunt mobs/plants at the Mentor's level, and both gather from the kill in some way. The Mentor recives what he is grinding with a boost (lets say 1.5x of normal) and the Mentoree recives at-level (low) resources. Imagine a skilled hunter harvesting all the best cuts and a novice protiege trying his best to replicate this but just getting a few rough chunks of flesh. If the Master mines gold from a rock, the Apprentice might be able to just get some quartz.
This works for literally anything. Mob killing. Mining. Making furniture. Blacksmithing. Questing.
Gotta balance the drops doled out in the system, but it is highly transferable.
Give the Mentor a boost to their grind, show the Mentoree how to perform the system effectively and see a higher evolution of it
Remember the Participation and Engagement?
1. High level characters will jump DAILY at the opportunity to make their lives easier.
2. High level characters will be more inclined to engage verbally if they are profitting (and thus ingratiated to the Mentoree). The longer they stay paired with the newbie more they can show and teach the newbie, but also the more they themselves gain.
A system like this has huge potential to upend traditional Mentor systems and make it not only a part of the regular player's bag-of-activities by tying it to grinds (with the extra benefit of improving any grinds they are doing both in profits and in enjoyment)..and will also garner huge long term participation and provide REAL meaningful help to the mentee.
I use crafting and gathering as my examples - but this works with literally anything. A new set of rules will be needed to get added to loot tables but that's relatively easy compared to creating an entire new "shop of rewards system" and keeping it updated
I'll Play With You! (Quin#7800 in Discord)
On the forum topic...
Some random ideas I have seen in some the past games I have played.
* Add a hyperlink so we can share discord information in game. Will allow us to talk to other players and screen share to show them how we navigate the GUI.
* New player help system like a GM ticket system but for new players to look for advice and rate the mentor.
* Player Support Buildings (Community Halls) Tracks New player logs and progression for anyone who opt in for new player support
* Consolidate new players who opt in for support to a New player Guild or New player Faction that kicks them out when they achieve their goals or hit a max time limit.
* New players should not be able to join or form guilds unless they abandon their new player status
I started playing FFXIV a few weeks ago just to try it out. I talked to a NPC that talked about the mentoring program, but it didn't help me as a new player in any way. I didn't know who to reach out to next (was I supposed to spam chat saying I was a new player looking for a mentor? Was there some sort of UI I was supposed to use to find mentor(s)?) this might work well for someone who has a friend already in the game, but I don't really know cause I didn't really have a way to use it.
For instanced content:
I think mentoring could fit really well with a group-finding tool (not an auto-matchmaking tool. those are bad for community). But if you had a tool where a leader was looking to setup a group, and someone who was newer queued up, the leader could see they don't have the experience, but maybe there is some sort of reward for the rest of the group if they take the risk of inviting that newer player into the group?
When the groups done, have a dialog for the mentee to rate the group. The higher the rating the more points. This will encourage the group to not just ignore/carry the mentee, but to engage with them and help them learn the encounters.
For world content:
This is probably best done through guilds. What sort of incentive can you give a guild to bring in some new players and mentor them? (without alts gaming the system?). Maybe a guild wide reward for characters as they level (but only if the account has not achieved that level before). Perhaps a guild wide reward the first time a character defeats a boss, succeeds in a siege, crafts x items, harvests x resources, etc (but only if no other characters on the account have accomplished these milestones before)? Maybe also put requirements on the group content that at least 5 of the 8 people in the group are part of the guild when the boss is defeated?
Perhaps these rewards is a special "mentor" currency that can be used to unlock benefits for the guild? (special structures for the guild hall, cosmetics, etc).
You probably don't want to do a 1:1 mentor program as the mentor and mentee might not have a lot of overlap in gameplay. But if you have a guild invested in long term mentorship, then that can go a long way.
Some stuff that could work on a mentor system :
1- Some building to register/hire ppl, with open spaces, maybe a library or a tavern with maybe a ranking in a wall. All those with indicators on mini-map, with indicators on real world and with npcs guards or guides that show where those buildings are located
2- limit the amount of time of the system to avoid exploits. A timer or limits time per day is a must
3- the mentor gets some good exp in the end or maybe some rare loot/recipe etc that u can only get by that system
4- the mentee could get double xp for the time that they're in the system (and as long the mentor is near and only on the sorounding area), that would make new players to look into the system right away, you guys should make it from the start a thing, the new player should know that this is available somewhere.
5- the prizes could change depending of the node where the building's at. Money from the Economic, exp and gear from the military and so on.
6- the caravan could maybe offer some discount while both are near eachother so ppl can be introduced into the caravan system
7- the contract should have some clauses like ''if the mentee dies the mentor dont get the prize'' or something like that, so ppl be really invested into what they are doing, some of those rules can make great ingame interactions
8- the mentor system could be associated with classes, factions, secret societies, race, anything that u guys could make that ppl resemble and learn (that would be a great deal in matter of classes). Probably the better way to deal with that would be allow the mentee to search for all classes/factions/etc or to refine search and look only for a mage if u are a mage, for example. If it was from a faction point of view, the mentor could get some respect, maybe that could work on a guild system also.
9- Would be awesome if u do it over and over - *over time* - and at some point get some achievement or bonus
10- Quests from a quest master or some npc would be cool, asking to get stuff for 'em, kill'em boss, do dungeons (even high tier dg so the new player get a glimpse of whats commin, he either gets some momentary high tier when enters the dungeon or go with his underlvl tier and the mentor protect him - or even the mentor gives/lend some tier by his own-)
would think a lot in the lvl difference (or time played) and on the benefits to avoid exploits
I cannot see a reason for needing a formal mentoring system in a game. It would indicate to me that the game lacks common goals and has to find other means to encourage mentoring. When you have a guild then you naturally want to get the best out of your members so ad hoc mentoring occurs naturally when there is a need.
I've never seen a formal mentoring system in a game. I will have to research them. .
My reasons for mentoring are 1) so that the mentee can contribute more towards common goals. 2) so that they get a more fulfulling experience out of the game. 1) is quid pro quo 2) is just for good karma and often builds good friendships.
As a mentee I would say thank you and hang around at least long enough to contribute sufficiently to my mentor/guild to show that my debt of gratitude was genuine.
Some will abuse the relationship, but most people are decent. Even in a server of 50k accounts reputations will eventually catch up with freeloaders and give their actions some consequence.
To directly answer the prompt, I'd say if you wanted players to actively want to help new players outside the goodness of their heart, you'd need some kind of reward. The problem is, most rewards you could give would create an unfair advantage or even sometimes grounds for exploiting.
Maybe something where if you party with a new player you rack up points based on a percentage of the xp they earn (less if you contribute to the fight, in order to stop powerleveling), which you can spend on mentor/friendship based furniture for your house?
While not perfect something kind of in those lines of systems could be a great incentive.
Edit: Another thing which was discussed in another thread recently would be what Wildstar (and also GW2 to a very minor extent) did where they had a tutorial instance that served as a prologue to the main world and explained all the basic mechanics of the game.
In Wildstar it fit very well because the story of the game (like AoC) was the two factions heading to a new planet, and you spent the tutorial instance making arrival preparations and making sure you were prepared for the dangers that you might find. This is very similar to AoC, and as such I can see this working very well.
Your character could start on Sanctum where you run through a quick 10-15 tutorial where npc's are having you run through the basics of the game to prepare/make sure you are prepared for Verra before you end it by walking through the portal, and load into the main game at whatever Verra starting portal you chose.
Mentors would not be necessary, beyond the people you meet (sunning, rupees, clans) and who inform you of what they have not yet discovered either by level or because you have not been to one area or another.
The idea of playing a game like Ashes is to form friendships, gulds, parties.
I use Youtube if i was stuck on a problem ingame, the fun part is trying to rally up players for your epic adventure and sharing that experience.
The problem with these mmo's, there holding your hand guiding you through the content just because your not intelligent enough to work out how to interact with other players and other come difficulties. (intelligent players are normally in well established guilds) JOIN ONE.
Its all this i want attuited, i paying for this game and i demand i want to do this activity NOW, why should i be the one making effort to make a party, raid ...etc i want , i want , i want.
Where is my auto raid button, where's the auto party button, where's my mentor !!!!
Very little
Getting corruption by killing someone on a lower level should automatically reset karma to 0.
For a mentee it would be cool to have an early (optional, repeatable) quest that requires to play together with a mentor (or the mentor could even be the quest giver somehow). Some games give early previews within the game of how the game will feel more towards the late game, so a mentor quest could give a build preset for maybe 5 or 10 minutes and you get to experience a mini boss fight with a simple but interesting mechanic. The preset build would allow to do that quest at any time within the first 10-15 levels.
Apart from having some experienced player you could ask questions I think it's more important go get early contact to at least one other player who's on the same level. Therefore the described quest could be designed for 3 or 4 players (incl. 1 mentor) and introduce the Tank/DPS/Heal trinity.
This can help people to make friends in the game early and have a functioning team of players to level with.
The best option would be to include an OPTIONAL but recommended introductory questline/hub that gives you a brief overview of the games SYSTEMS, upon completion you are placed into the world like any other regular character, placed in a mentor/new player friendly global chat channel and left to play.
While including the option for players tagged as mentor, whom which can apply for such a role, to answer questions in the channel and be able to scale down in level to people in their party for a more hands on approach.
If you want a player driven game then all aspects should be player driven, leave people to their own devices to make friends and meet mentors/learn without too many dedicated systems, games have managed for the last 20 years without overbearing mentoring systems, you don't need it now.
Rewards are unnecessary for either party, it adds no real benefit to the overall game but would rather force min max players to game the system for the reward just because it was a reward they could get, and would dilute the mentoring system of actual mentors and help.
There could also be some sort of rating system for the mentor and when they reach certain milestones (e.g. after helping so many people successfully) they would also then receive additional rewards like titles or cosmetics.
This would then give incentive for people to become mentors and help new players but then it could potentially weed out anyone that would give unhelpful answers as they'll be rated on how helpful they were.
If personal mentorship is the aim, I believe it should be similar to The Division 2 in the sense that mentors only achieve "experience" as a mentor if the mentee endorses them. This would encourage mentors to actually be helpful with the questline/ dungeon and /or the questions being asked. If the mentee neglects to endorse them, that's fine, that's not the primary purpose of the mentorship program. The primary purpose is to help players learn the game and their characters.
In fact, I would be perfectly comfortable with mentees frequently forgetting to endorse in order to weed out all of the mentors who only show up for the benefits.
This endorsement could easily contribute to multiple aspects of the mentors life. Whether it be the religion they've subscribed to, or as a direct contribution to the node of which they maintain citizenship.
A mentor could also take on multiple mentees at a time, but it should be unanimously agreed upon by both the mentor and the existing mentee(s). (Some sort of tagging system should work here)
I believe the two of these in conjunction would satisfy any mentorship needs within the game.
* Mentoring should be a role you can apply for after a specific milestone depending on the activity.
* There should be Good and Bad rating on the mentor, but also on the questionair.
* Each question should be handled in a UI and anon, to ensure the ratings can be sent to GM if an unwarrented bad rating occur
* Penalties for questionairs asking for in-game currencies etc. like timelimited bans of mentoring program.
* penalties for mentoring, can't be a mentor
* benefits on mentoring, monthly payouts to best rated mentors.
* To mitigate staked teams going for mentor rewards:
Anon mentors and questions
1 question per account active
you can only help the same account once per day.
higher tier of some milestone can't ask questions.
my 2 cents
For rewards, initial thought would be some cosmetic rewards but if the system is tied to something like a guild, family, or node, possibly exp for that system. If it was tied to node, then i could see it being that until they claim citizenship to a node, all the exp they generate, goes to the node mentoring them instead of the node they are in the ZOI of.
In the end (a pun if make it to the end of this post) I would say, No rewards. Why? Because it will cause abuse of the system as you are giving those who want nothing to do with it, a reason to mess with it. As controversial as this may be, I think the helping of others, meeting new people, and making new friends, will be the reward in of itself. As it is the people that will make or break your game. The more people you know the more opportunities you have with trading, crafting, dungeon running, raid completing, node sieging, node building, guild activities in and out of your own, and most of all, more fun.
A tool I would include to the game in general on this topic is sharable map pins to help others navigate areas to which you have described, as in real life we can mark maps for each other.
DETAILED SYSTEM BELOW:
A system I thought up on the spot.
A brilliant system could be like a board posting, be it held in town or in the UI interface. A mentee/newbie could post for help, and mentor/veterans could respond to that posting. Different types could be set, that way a mentor can look and help in the areas they know. Such as, UI, Professions, Social Organizations, Guild, Combat, PvE, PvP, Dungeon, Raid, etc. You could possibly exclude that however, because it may not be wholly necessary. Having a Guild section though, could help if you don't mind guild ads, as then one could chose whether to see these or not, simply have a punishment for guild ads not categorized as such. Or have a different system for Guild Ads all together.
Problems that could come up with the system is, using it to recruit (or spam ads) for guilds/groups/dungeons/raids, and trolls. To fix this I would suggest:
(1) Only one posting per hour, per account. If a newbie has more questions they can be asked of the local people, their guild, the person that helped previously, or wait the hour. This will also help from there being trolls, as their posting is also limited. The mentees will want to make it count, or be ready for a wait. If one hour doesn't work take it to two, but no more.
(2) When a posting receives a response, have it automatically be taken down. The mentee will need to confirm this is a legit response, or fixes their problem/answers their question. (Example for buttons on a response received: Helpful | Not Quite | Abusive) If the response they received was, not quite what they were looking for, or abusive, they can chose to have it reposted. However, the reposting time should have a delay of 5 mins, as this will encourage the mentee/newbie to read over the responses carefully, and discourage trolls or ads, as they will have to check for responses at all times to keep their posts up.
(3)Limit the amount of new posting per account to 50 per month, and the amount of reposting to 5 per post. And if you also limit the post uptime to 1 hour, this means one could only troll/advertise up to 50 hours a month. Some posts will not even last the full hour due to responses to said post causing the post to be pulled down. And even if they chose to repost it, it would take 5 mins before it is seen again. Since they can only repost 5 times per post, it also means if people are vigilant in responding to these ads/trolls, they will only get a maximum uptime of a few mins. That being said it will be in the players best interest to report the post, more so than responding to the troll/ads, as they can mark the response give as Abusive.
(4)There should be a report button on the board in use with the provided limitations to catch and ban abusers from this system. If one exceeds the limit of posts per month they should be auto banned until the posts have been reviewed. If one reaches the limit of reposting with more than one report on said posting they should be auto suspended from the system for 24hrs. If one reaches 25 reports on the system within a month they should be auto banned from the system until posts can be reviewed. If one reaches 5 reports on one post they should be auto suspended for 24hrs. If one is suspended more than once in a year, they should then be auto banned from the system until posts are reviewed. If any posts reviewed come out to be innocent and non-abusive, the reporters of said post should be documented and if the reporter is caught reporting innocent posts 5 times in one year they should be banned from the system until they repeal the ban, with explanation, and they should then be warned, if it happens again it will be a permanent ban from the system.
(5) A karma based structure for responding. Do not use a Karma based structure. This would give incentives to friends and guilds to get on regularly to boost their scores with each other and not even need to help mentees/newbies, plus it would allow trolls/ads to also use friends and guilds to continue posting/responding abusively. If one has their response deemed abusive, five times in a week, they should just be suspended from the system for a week. (6) Warnings and important information should be visible to the user at all times. How many postings do you have left? could be visible like such (Example: 13/50 used) in a corner of the interface. How many reposts are left for this post? Could also be visible like the Example above (Example: 3/5 used) You could also show time left on a post, time till post reappears after repost, and time left until you can post a new post, but this may be unnecessary because you likely don't need this information, as it could just help abusers of the system. However there could be a small alert in your chat box or visible on your UI telling you that you can now post again, or that you have received a response.
(6) No rewards. Why? Because it will cause abuse of the system as you are giving those who want nothing to do with it, a reason to mess with it. As controversial as this may be, I think the helping of others, meeting new people, and making new friends, will be the reward in of itself. As it is the people that will make or break your game. The more people you know the more opportunities you have with trading, crafting, dungeon running, raid completing, node sieging, node building, guild activities in and out of your own, and most of all, more fun.
When grouped you can mentor down to the level of the person you choose. The mentee gets regular exp and the mentor gets equal exp. for their level.
Have a designated HELP chat channel where people can ask questions, and those that want to help out can answer them.
The reward should be helping others.
Formerly T-Elf