There's a few older MMOs that I never got the chance to try in their primes but always wanted to such as SWG, EQ, Ultima, and EQ2. A couple months ago I jumped at the opportunity to experience a classic version of EQ2 (Progression Varsoon Server) and one mechanic that completely surprised me was the Mentor system. Its the ability to voluntarily delevel your character to that of your party member so that they can group with you but still gain experience/rewards. You yourself can also still gain experience but this was at a reduced rate depending on the level difference.
I remembered seeing a few bits of feedback a while ago in relation to how this system might have been exploited at one point or another, but I'm hoping to get more direct feedback on what people think of it because when I first came across this, it made me realize that hardly any games employ something like it or anything similar.
What if it was in Pantheon?
One of the bigger qualms I've noticed people have towards jumping into MMOs that have been up for a while is the idea that you'll be far behind or that you wont be able to immediately play with friends. When it comes to games with the more traditional LFG board system and/or no incentives through dailies/weeklies/etc to do previous dungeons or lower level content, it seems to also cause frustration for some because the majority of players may already be at endgame. In Pantheon's case I think the idea of embedding higher level zones into the lower level ones and features like the perception system would help greatly with this, but what if it also employed the mentor system? Do you think it'd be more of a benefit or a detriment?
People always say "there's alts for playing with your lower level friends", but we know how it works. Your alt's level and your friend's level are too easy to go out of sync if you don't play together continously.
One of the things I like about FFXIV is how easy it is to go back to old dungeons/raids with level sync. This really keeps all the content open, instead of locking you out of it just because your level got too high. And in FFXIV you can choose to do an old dungeon or raid level-synced, or un-synced. If you really want to PWN the place (or do something solo) you can just go un-synced. But if you want to play with your lower level friends you just sync down.
I really hope that Pantheon will eventually have a mentor system that allows something similar. Maybe not as launch feature but I wouldn't put it off too long, as it can really help to keep all the content fresh.
This is a system that is already planned for pantheon, but not at start unfortunately.
I agree the level sync is often so tight you can hardly play at a satisfying rythm when you have a day off and not unsync from your friends or their Alts somehow. The dance of "I'm going to help you level!" while accidentally kill stealing most ennemies isn't really remotely effective.
I had always hoped to see a mechanic in the system where you could save a 'ghost' of your character. A saved snapshot of you abilities, skill level, attributes levels, gear, etc. As if you logged out and haven't logged back in since that time.
NOTE:. I understand there are variables that would be troublesome.
Limitations would be required, your items that had been deleted sold or otherwise are no longer in the world or attached to your account would be useful for some tasks but limited to prevent gameplay disruptive collisions.
Let's look at a basic example:
You are a level 50 ranger but you want to group with some friends that are level 20. You have a 'ghost' of your level 20 self saved, it includes no gear your lvl50 now possess with the exception of a pair of +1 speed boots and a hat that has been kept but you modified it with a red feather granting +1 charm at level 30.
Your 'ghost' is you at level 20 with the boots and hat but the feather is gone.
At level 20 you also had a bow with +1 agility but you sold it at level 25 and now is used by someone else on that server. That bow is back in your possession but is locked to you/no drop/no trade AND can not be used within 100m proximity to the real item. (So if you and the 'real' item are within 100m of each other the 'ghost' version is unusable and only shows in your 'ghost' inventory.
Other considerations are needed. No bank access, no dropping your 'ghost' items(you can't even give away the boots that you had and are still in your possession at level 50). No auction access , crafting level etc also drops to the 'ghost' lvl.
Any new drops you pickup using your 'ghost' can be given away/traded. Only during that 'ghost' time. Your aquired gear is gone when you 'de-ghost'/revert. (Think Eventide Island in BOTW)
If you die as your 'ghost' you loose XP normally but otherwise your 'ghost'gear is unaffected.
Now, experience points: you as a 'ghost' gain XP as a normal level 20 in this case, and you get to apply that gain to the level 50 you put aside temporarily.
I'm sure this has been discussed before and I relish the continued debate on all the flaws in your point of view. Also I think that VR should scrap what they are doing and focus on appeasing my unique and brilliant idea.
Edit: also you 'choose' the saved 'ghost' at the mid point of your level. Each time you hit the 50% leveling of any level your 'ghost' is created. If you are not paying attention and hit the 50% progression mark while naked with only a bag of banana nut bread in your pack then that's your ghost for that level, you will be of almost no use but will provide a good story. BUT! You could kill yourself a number of times to drop below 50% and redo the 'ghost' save, if you don't want your level 20 'ghost' to be the naked banana nut bread person. You all realize that if this was the case I would totally save a naked banana nut bread 'ghost' at level 20 and run wildly throughout the lands during some celestial events of my choosing.
1. In theory a mentor system is good because it allows people to play together more readily.
2. In practice it often works very poorly because the higher level is too powerful for the content even after being reduced to a lower level. At best this means little or no challenge for the lower level. At worst this provides a means of the lower level getting a major power-level and skipping most or all content. Often the cause of this is that the game leaves the high level with all of his or her abilities and just reduces hit points, "to hit" numbers and the like.
3. An ideal system might simply reduce the high level to a norm for the destination level in terms of hit points, armor class and the like and disable any and all abilities that the class does not yet have at the destination level. Graying them out on quickbars but not removing them (so as not to trash the quickbars for the high level after he or she reverts to normal level). No MMO I have tried does this.
dorotea said:3. An ideal system might simply reduce the high level to a norm for the destination level in terms of hit points, armor class and the like and disable any and all abilities that the class does not yet have at the destination level. Graying them out on quickbars but not removing them (so as not to trash the quickbars for the high level after he or she reverts to normal level). No MMO I have tried does this.
EQ2 did this pretty well, they definitely should've made higher level players scale more in line with the intended mentor level, but when mentoring was first implemented, spells were greyed out and players had to use lower level versions.
It's an argument causer, but I really don't get why.
Some folks think it's a waste of time, but anyone who actually wants and tries to play with more than one friend or family member or regular group or guild knows that alts - even if you love having them - do not address the issue.
In my experience, I play more than most friends/family, so if they play rarely, I can just keep an alt of the appropriate class and only play when they do. Except they don't just play *less* they also have *different* schedules, so play when I don't. They should play an alt, right? So that we can always play together on the other? But they don't have enough time to make good progress if they split between a main and alt, so I end up having to level my alt when they aren't there to keep up with their main.
Then another friend starts and we all want to play together, so we all have to start new alts? Well, I do, because I'm the only one with the time to split amongst three. Friend A makes a new alt for a while, but wants to just play his main because he's short of time, so I have to somehow *powerlevel* friend B up to friend A level when not playing with friend A and then we all have to try and stay close-ish in level when playing at times the others can't play.
Etc etc etc.
It ought to be obvious that alts are not an answer when you have more than one friend with differing classes and levels and schedules. Never mind regular groups or guilds that have varying requirements and timings.
My favoured system is to have something I some time back called a Temporal Trainer. At the Temporal Trainer you could go and retrieve a previous version of yourself from Temporal Storage (putting your current self *into* storage) and use that to temporal version to adventure on with your friend(s).
The idea would need some finessing, but the basic concept of using an actual previous version of your character will avoid any problems with scaling and whatnot.
I personally feel a mentoring system would be one of the saving graces of such a group focused game once it starts to become more top heavy. I know the ideal situation is a constant influx of new players that allow for grouping at all levels at all times. However, plans for non-ideal, but historically realistic, scenarios should also be implemented. Especially for off-peak players.
I honestly think VR's design decisions greatly favor a mentoring system.
Stats:
They're already working on target time to kill rates for leveling speed calculations which means they have ideas of the average and range of stats each class will have at each level. They can then cap mentor stats at the max of that range.
There shouldn't be power bonuses to mentors beyond that stat cap, in my opinion. I want to group with friends to have fun, not to get carried and breeze through content. Plus, giving mentors stat bonuses starts to go into powerleveling territory which is a completely separate discussion.
Spells and Abilities:
The removal of spell and ability ranks means all of them will scale with your stats. If your stats are lowered as you mentor, even the later stage skills will decrease in power, making them not overpowered for those levels.
The power creep of mentoring should be the access to those higher level skills giving mentors a more diverse and versatile toolkit for the challenges they're helping with. That and FFXIV grays out higher level skills when you mentor in dungeons, and I really dislike how it throws off my gameplay eliminating skills I've been using for dozens, if not hundreds, of hours.
Rewards:
Unless it's to help friends, the majority of people will want some benefit to mentoring others. If helping that random stranger in global looking for a group 10+ levels lower will slow personal progress, many of us (myself included) will continue looking for a group closer to our own level with our sometimes limited time.
Possible solution? XP. VR's recently announced experience gain system is based on an enemy's con relative to your level. If you mentor down from 35 to 22 and kill level 23 mobs, you'll still be receiving level appropriate experience.
If certain gear will be relevant for several levels, as Joppa stated is their intention, you may even get upgrades while helping those who are several levels below you. People may even look for lower level players as they farm certain dungeons and rare spawns in order to mentor down to them, simultaneously keeping the content difficulty up (from capped stats) and XP gain worthwhile.
I personally would not like to see a system where you can level all the way to level 50 by killing level 20 mobs (continuing to gain level appropriate exp by "leveling down" to 20 forever).
One one hand, if someone is enjoying level 20 content so much that they just want to keep playing there, cool, let them. But on the other hand it just doesn't make sense to continue to gain experience once you've "mastered" that content.
Ranarius said:I personally would not like to see a system where you can level all the way to level 50 by killing level 20 mobs (continuing to gain level appropriate exp by "leveling down" to 20 forever).
One one hand, if someone is enjoying level 20 content so much that they just want to keep playing there, cool, let them. But on the other hand it just doesn't make sense to continue to gain experience once you've "mastered" that content.
It's a tricky one. I would like to see mentoring 'encouraged' but also, yeah, to see people mentoring all their way to max on loew level content does not feel good. Hmm.
Ranarius said:I personally would not like to see a system where you can level all the way to level 50 by killing level 20 mobs (continuing to gain level appropriate exp by "leveling down" to 20 forever).
One one hand, if someone is enjoying level 20 content so much that they just want to keep playing there, cool, let them. But on the other hand it just doesn't make sense to continue to gain experience once you've "mastered" that content.
I did think of this. The downside is they'll be gimping themselves by only getting level 20 gear and items drops. Unless they're also farming and selling gathering materials in that area and hoping to win the rolls on the rare item drops in their groups, they'll be fairly broke and undergeared compared to their peers.
Throw in Pantheon's principle of the journey is the destination, and you're talking about potentially spending literal months on the same mobs to hit max level. I'm sure there's a very very small percentage of people who might be into that. Hoewver, I fear for their sanity while at the same time respecting their decision.
The upside for them would be that they may potentially group with every person on the server as they level through their 20's since typically you need someone to mentor down to, lol.
Mauvais_Oeil said:This is a system that is already planned for pantheon, but not at start unfortunately.
Just in case anyone wonders where Mauvais_Oeil's info comes from... In the May 2020 Dev Roundtable (source) they mentioned that the Caravan and Mentor systems are still planned but not expected at release.
Personally I don't mind Mentor systems where you can Attune your level to match your friends, with a few caveats.
1) It's optional and not something that happens based on the area you are in.
I disliked how some games would limit your level to the zone you are in. So you could be level 40, but if you enter a newbie zone suddenly you are 'deleveled' to level 15 or something while you are in that zone. It means that no matter where you are or what you are fighting everything is the same difficulty. Not something I enjoy.
2) You can only level down.
I only think players should be able to 'down level' to match their lower level friends. The game should never let a player 'level up' temporarily to adventure with their high level friends in the higher level areas.
You may think this seems like a no-brainer, but I've actually played some games that lets you go into high level zones and it artificially levels you up so that you can actually fight there. Totally defeats the entire point in leveling your character. You never care about your actual level because it doesn't really matter, you just get up or down leveled to match the zone you are in.
3) You don't get any normal leveling experience.
While you are Mentoring a low level friend, you should not be able to earn normal experience that let's you progress your own levels. Like @Ranarius said, I don't think high level characters should be able to keep leveling themselves to max level by killing low level enemies while Mentoring.
Instead I suggest that there be a special 'Mentoring' points system. While Mentoring a low level player, you instead earn special Mentoring Experience which lets you gain Mentoring Points when you fill the bar.
These Mentoring points could then be used to purchase special things that are only available using Mentoring Points. These wouldn't be progress related things like Mastery Points, but perhaps things that help with Mentoring, like a special buff that let's you and your low level friend move faster while you are in Mentor'ing mode. Or a special Mentoring Pet which uses 'Lick Wounds' on your Low level friend that increases Regen while Resting but only available while you are in Mentoring 'De-Leveled' mode. Perhaps you can earn special Titles like 'Goofy the Mentor' or 'Professor Goofy'. Or perhaps special cosmetic things like a deployable training dummy or special clothes you can wear in town to show off.
Just my thoughts on the subject.
It seems clear that the primary benefit of mentoring is to let people more readily group with friends or guildmates or people that they might want to become friends or guildmates.
Giving "normal" experience to the high level is neither necessary nor desirable for that objective. Giving no experience at all might work fine especially if the high level gets loot appropriate for the level but that could be tricky.
Ranarius said:I personally would not like to see a system where you can level all the way to level 50 by killing level 20 mobs (continuing to gain level appropriate exp by "leveling down" to 20 forever).
One one hand, if someone is enjoying level 20 content so much that they just want to keep playing there, cool, let them. But on the other hand it just doesn't make sense to continue to gain experience once you've "mastered" that content.
This was my fear as well.
I dont mind the aspect of a mentoring system if done correctly and not easily exploited.
dorotea said:It seems clear that the primary benefit of mentoring is to let people more readily group with friends or guildmates or people that they might want to become friends or guildmates.
Giving "normal" experience to the high level is neither necessary nor desirable for that objective. Giving no experience at all might work fine especially if the high level gets loot appropriate for the level but that could be tricky.
That's what I can't figure out then. What is an appropriate reward? I see what Ranarius and the others are saying about the experience. I agree with you that level appropriate gear can be tricky as well. A special currency was another suggestion, but I get the vibe that special vendors and currencies aren't the route VR wants to take.
Can we put forward a bunch of ideas for rewards that would be fair, motivating, non-exploitative, and optional as GoofyWarrior mentioned?
So far we have xp, level appropriate gear, and special currency. (Funnily enough FFXIV has an incredibly successful dungeon mentoring system that utilizes all three of these, lol)
I think the mentoring system is about helping friends and guildies. More importantly though, it's about making that new player with zero in-game friends feel like groups are readily and consistently available. Trying to get a feel for a game that you joined because of it's group focus only to find it's very difficult or time consuming to find a group would be detrimental to the health of our population in the long-term.
Of course, I can contradict myself and say no rewards are needed. That Pantheon will be so wildly successful that we'll have millions of subscribers with healthy populations at all levels at all times of day like the big 5. A person can dream.
Feastycentral said:That's what I can't figure out then. What is an appropriate reward? I see what Ranarius and the others are saying about the experience. I agree with you that level appropriate gear can be tricky as well. A special currency was another suggestion, but I get the vibe that special vendors and currencies aren't the route VR wants to take.
Well in the past this was listed in the Pantheon FAQ:
4.11 Can I play with my friend’s new character using my high-level character? What about alts?
Yes, through the Mentor System. Mentoring temporarily de-levels your character and allows you to group with them. You will either scale down or assume the character you were at that lower level (TBD) and be a huge help. This will enable players to group together without one being overpowered and content trivialized.
The Mentor System is voluntary although there will be incentives to mentor, giving your character certain advantages (points, recognition, and other rewards – the details are TBD). We want to encourage people to help new players. Additionally, there will be incentives to create alternate characters through the Progeny System (where when you reach a certain level you can create an alternate level one character who will have some advantages over a brand-new character).
Personally I'd hope it offers little if any experience (less than a group killing green con mobs of appropriate level) and that the player mentoring down would be handicapped to be slightly worse than an average character of that role/class at whatever level it might be. However if said mentor dies they would gain full "normal" experience up until they point they return to the same total they had prior to death.
Rewards I can think of that I am more open to are points towards cosmetics if they have some kind of appearance system, bonus faction/reputation gains, titles/nameplate icons,
GoofyWarriorGuy said:Mauvais_Oeil said:This is a system that is already planned for pantheon, but not at start unfortunately.
Just in case anyone wonders where Mauvais_Oeil's info comes from... In the May 2020 Dev Roundtable (source) they mentioned that the Caravan and Mentor systems are still planned but not expected at release.
Ahh very cool, I wasn't aware of this at all. I suppose it may not really need to be a thing for months after launch so that makes sense. Very interested to see what form of this they have planned.
Really appreciate everyone's posts, they've been very insightful to read through and I'm looking forward to seeing more!
knee-jerk thinking about it: If it were as simple as scaling down stats and armor and spells and then scaling back up, this would default to level/item bloat where new levels means new armors and old armor/weapons are useless, and old spells are useless (Like what WoW became) If it were as complex as having to reorg your spell sets and ability sets down, and pick from a limited set of armor and weapons based on previously completed quests or the like- that might take too long. I think some harsh dev RNG type DnD stripping to create strange combos never seen before be-CAUSE of the RNG stripping (Like the one DnD character a guy created on tiktok: a seafaring cat rogue that could dart in double distance and speed and double damage backstab and dart back out double speed- unheard of but legal) would be good on the mentor.
You dont know what you would get but when you mentor down the rules are: 3 stats on present armor gone, 3 resists on present armor gone. Remaining stats and resists reduced by variable commensurate with level so if you have +10 at level 10, you go down to +2 at level 2 or whatever, that is a simplified example. Any weapon procs reduced by 75% accross the board. What this means is you could suddenly have a super strong caster that- can really swing a 2hander, or a wickedly dexxed out warrior that hits so many times the MoB gets stunned, not alot of damage but the stun is a nice effect to learn to play with that the warrior never had before not will ever have again unless he lucks out in mentoring down and the RNG gods favor that combo.
For spells and abilities, I dont see any help but to have to re-org your LAS from your limited spell set which would all be on the first pages- ah HA, the RNG here would be ability points if any. Same like stats and resists, reduced down to- maybe even what you had back then but RNG would shuffle them where it saw fit, so you may have an ability maxxed that you never wanted maxxed at that level- suck it up. When you mentor down you bring knowledge of the class and the thrill is still being able to play how you know, but discovering suprises based on what you now have and maybe even taking that knowledge with you when you mentor out to tweek your main-main. Alts? who needs 'em! get some more newbs in here so I can mentor them!
*edit* Added: The only other brainstorm for wanting to mentor down is- Effective Trivial loot code in place. If Starting Cities are far from each other. No cheat races like gnomes, dwarves and elves being one-away from each other seperated by a newbie zone- giving a sense of adventure and "going somewhere" rather than center-spoked out like Erudin and qeynos where you ended up in one and never saw the other. Then as a race you level up before you get somewhere else to faction and discover new quests for things that you really want but oh no! that item is a newbie item and with TLC you cannot get it unLESS- you mentor down.
So a Dark Myr level 15 so emboldened and travelling- safely and scaredly- to the gnomish floating city, talk about a fish out of water! and discovers the quest for pan-flute/kokopeli/pied-piper AE mez thing and at first thinks its garbage because- air. Flutes need air but the Myr swims, no air, but then realizes- sound waves, WAVES! ripples on water like sound waves in air, frequency! and wants the thing but a piece is quested in a newbie dungeon the myr learns from talking to gnomish newbies strangers who chastise the myr for being OP for the zone and will kill all their mobs and take their camps. But the Myr, wanting to quest for the piece, mentors down and groups with the gnomish gnewbies for the piece and other things they may need.
Living codex: Perhaps the living codex will either grant exp? or grant AA point boosts? or perception increases? or Faction mods? or innate passive abilities/resists? or combination of these to the un-mentored character based on completed quests? So once the Myr hands in, and gets the flute which is nifty in of itself and then mentors back to level 15 the living codex glows and the player can see what they got for spending time mentored down.
If you're mentoring down to say lvl 20, should you be able to get exp like a lvl 20 and "virtually" level up to lvl 21, lvl 22 and so on by playing with your lower level friend(s)?
The alternative would be having to leave mentor mode once your friend(s) level up, then mentor down to the new level again. But that would feel artifical and immersion breaking IMO (if you're not arguing against the whole mentoring from an immersion point of view already :)
I would prefer the first way. And I assume it would not be too difficult to implement, after all when you mentor down you gain a virtual level anyway, so why not work with that and allow regular exp gain for that virtual level?
Also, how would death work in that situation? Would you lose exp from your "real" exp pool, or your "virtual" exp pool (this would obviously be a big boon compared to you friend(s))? Could you virtually "de-level" while mentoring?
Questions, questions.. :)
I already chimed in about rewards - albeit more briefly than is my wont.
As to gear - simple is probably best. There are just too many different items and combinations of items.
To convert a level 50 into a level 10 give him or her a predetermined armour class and damage rating and "to hit" rating for that class at level 10 and totally ignore what he or she actually was wearing or could do at level 50. Maybe give a temporary ability list appropriate for the level and class entirely unrelated to what abilities the level 50 had selected as he or she progressed.
I agree with the comment above that weaker is better than stronger. Err on the side of making the mentored character too weak so that there is no incentive to mentor down to make the game *easier* and no incentive to look for mentored players rather than people your own level to make the game easier for the lower level.
Sarim said:If you're mentoring down to say lvl 20, should you be able to get exp like a lvl 20 and "virtually" level up to lvl 21, lvl 22 and so on by playing with your lower level friend(s)?
The alternative would be having to leave mentor mode once your friend(s) level up, then mentor down to the new level again. But that would feel artifical and immersion breaking IMO (if you're not arguing against the whole mentoring from an immersion point of view already :)
I would prefer the first way. And I assume it would not be too difficult to implement, after all when you mentor down you gain a virtual level anyway, so why not work with that and allow regular exp gain for that virtual level?
Also, how would death work in that situation? Would you lose exp from your "real" exp pool, or your "virtual" exp pool (this would obviously be a big boon compared to you friend(s))? Could you virtually "de-level" while mentoring?
Questions, questions.. :)
I can only imagine in those and all situations a mentoring character should behave just like they were a 'real' character.
In the FAQ VR talk(ed) about scaling or a 'stored' version of your character. I imagine a combo of the two would be best and easiest. You would store a version of yourself (or perhaps the game would automatically every few levels or every level depending on mechanics and/or storage limitations or whatever) and from that level to the level of the person you are mentoring, the game scales you up. If that person levels up, you level up.
What happens to the XP and gear you gain while mentoring can be decided when you go back to your 'real' character. Maybe it gets converted to 'mentoring points' or something people would call a 'currency'. Maybe gear is just kept - that would make sense - it will still be worth something. Maybe XP will be carried over, but not 1 to 1 *shrug*. All TBD, but the mentoring method is easy enough.
Some ideas to motivate mentoring:
Counterfleche said:Some ideas to motivate mentoring:
- Have high level characters' xp loss on death only be recoverable when mentoring.
- Require it as part of leveling up. To level to 45 from 44, you need to earn one level as a mentor (in addition to the regular xp requirement). Level 46 requires 2 mentor levels, and so on.
- A raid / boss with a de-leveling debuff / death penalty. If hit by it, when you log in the next RL day, you're unable to gain xp until you earn a level as a mentor. This could be in a chronos-themed raid
- Karma points can only be earned this way (it could be used to unlock modifications to existing spells / abilities or it could simply be a resource used by crafters).
I think *requiring* it would be a problem to some, but the idea of mentoring XP working better to recover soul memory is interesting. It would still be 'accelerated' leveling, but people wouldn't intentionally kill themselves in order to make mentoring the most efficient method, so it wouldn't be exploitable.
Some kind of mentoring points (Karma as you call it) would be good, but would really need to be exchanged for something not directly 'power' or 'progress' related.
Perhaps Karma could be 'spent' on things that would otherwise be a game sink, like repairs or indeed, like soul memory.
Though, now I think about it, it would lead to those who regularly mentor having a greatly reduced fear of death on their main, since they could perhaps always have a store of Karma and, every time they die, just instantly pay off the soul memory and repairs. Hmm. I suppose, if there were a Temporal Trainer that handled the Karma exchange, it would still mean you have to go to town to do it.
Two things discussed above where I may be missing the basic points. Not how can it be made to work well but why we should have it in the first place.
1. Virtual levels. I assume this has nothing to do with how your character operates while mentoring. That you operate as if you are the level of the character being mentored. If they go up you mentor at their new level.
In terms of what benefits you get from being a mentor, the normal mechanism is to give your character experience just as if it was killing mobs and doing quests at its real level. How much experience you get varies game by game. If the game chooses to give you full experience, and a level 56 kill is normally worth 2,000 xp, when you are mentored to level 11 and kill a level 11 mob you get 2,000 xp. Nothing "virtual" here. You get the xp. You may even gain a real level while mentoring. But this has no effect whatsoever on the mentoring process since you *always* play at the level of the person being mentored.
This mechanism is simple and easy for players to understand. The game needs to keep track of nothing it wouldn't already be keeping track of if you weren't mentoring - to wit how much xp you have earned from all sources. Why not simply use this traditional system?
2. Ideas to motivate mentoring. Seems unnecessary to me. If someone wants to play with a friend or guildmate isn't it enough to give them a way to do so? In three years if there are not enough low level characters to keep the game active (new players or old players with alts) it seem trivially easy to provide motivation for higher levels to mentor down. Give e.g. 50% bonus xp for mentoring or 50% better drops than drops would be at the character's real level for example. Or give mentoring points and every 100 points lets you get a cosmetic item or even something useful. But why build incentives into the system right now? Since if we do *not* need more mentors to help new characters all we are doing is incenting people to skip over the content at their own level to endlessly replay content they have already gone though.
Direct answer: Absolutely.
I know there is an intent to have some kind of mentoring system in PRotF, but something that I think could incentivize mentoring could be (not exclusively):
-Achievements that grant skill points (for upgrading/evolving abilities). I specifically say "achievments" because you can only do each once.
---i.e. Defeat "xyz boss" while mentoring another player at least "x" levels lower.
---i.e. Gain "x" amount of XP while mentoring etc etc.
---i.e. Raise/Lower standing with "xyz faction" by "x" amount while mentoring etc etc.
-Experience gained while mentoring counts towards soul memory (loss exp from death), and can even generate "soul portent" (which could be a kind of buffer to prevent exp loss upon death) by an actual direct numerical value. What I mean by direct numerical value is 100% of the exp you earn while mentoring goes into a direct exp bar (could even look like a transparent shield over your actual exp bar)... with a maximum soul portent of 1/5 the max xp bar has available.
---So if a max xp bar at level 50 requires 1million xp, the max "soul portent" (soul memory buffer) could be 200,000 xp (which would be enough buffer to prevent exp loss upon death twice (if maxed out).
---This would likely promote hardcore raiders to mentor while they're not raiding... because that crowd typically only plays to raid once at max level.
I'm not a propenent of gainig experience for leveling while mentoring (because there is 0 incentive for players once at max level and likely would dissuade some players from adventuring/exploring if they can gain levels simply mentoring in the same dungeon forever), but I think that being able to unlock skill points and build an exp loss prevention buffer would be beneficial, without having an imbalance on progression.
Add: I think it is important to promote a system like mentoring because it really gives an alternative to late game play that players otherwise would never even try if there is no "benefit" to it. Otherwise, the only people that will do the mentoring system will be those that are playing with newly joined "friends"... (compared to the majority of the max level raiding community vying to help/mentor "strangers" and new players - perhaps making new "friends", but likely impacting new player experiences in a very positive way).