geatz said:
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.
Hokanu said: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.
I don't know where I said advantage, I said it's a convenience feature for the person who wants to play at a lower level. Although there is an advantage, and that is that the mentor has more experience with his character and possibly the area he is in than the rest of the normal folk. But again, you are arguing the wrong point, I don't care about the mentor, 95-99% of the players are probably not going to be a mentor at any given time (I would hope, although who knows) so what is the benefit for me, the non mentor when I have one in a dungeon or in my group. Why is that a better gaming experience? Why is having someone who might know how to do everything more fun? Why is increasing the possibility that a member has already done it, knows it and can walk me through it, a good experience. To me that sounds like a wasted experience, people are complaining all the time that the internet is making everything easy because you can just look it up and here I see what seems like a large group of fellow gamers inviting a feature that makes it even more likely that we lose that challenge. I think I should have the opportunity to figure this stuff out with my group instead of just increasing the likelihood that someone already knows how to do it, since mentors will be more common than alts and they would probably do it better than he would with an alt as well.
I thought the sole fact you could party with someone you wouldn't meet until month of experience grind, learning more from him and opening a wider range of players was fair enough to be a good experience by itself.
Increased replayability, possibility to aid lower levels withouth sucking all the experience due to level difference, friendship forging, etc...
It seems quite obvious to me, which makes me wonder why for you, it's the all way around.
BamBam said: I am fan of the mentoring system. Even though, yes it can and will be abused to carry a low level through hard content and to level that character faster and easier. I rly don't mind that ppl help a friend out, for me that's exactly what makes these games appealing and fun. And sure sometimes it's annoying that a OP grp camps an area you thought of utilizing aswell. But that's just how the cookie crumble in a game with no instances. Hopefully we will see so much content that these problems and situations is limited and can be fixes by moving into another part of the dungeon that is not being controlled.
I keep seeing people say things like this, not to pick at you BamBam, but when friends or guildies help someone of lower level, the alternative to mentoring is power-levelling and twinking, which is much more of an abuse and annoyance.
You're also assuming VR won't be able to scale the mentor well.
disposalist said:I keep seeing people say things like this, not to pick at you BamBam, but when friends or guildies help someone of lower level, the alternative to mentoring is power-levelling and twinking, which is much more of an abuse and annoyance.
You're also assuming VR won't be able to scale the mentor well.
Mentoring does not displace twinking or power leveling, these things will continue to exist. If the goal is to level a character as fast as possible you are going to power level. Twinking will happen regardless since items are going to be tradeable, all mentoring does is allow higher level characters to play content with lower level characters without the normal xp soak. Everygame I have played with mentoring, the mentoring feature was far more annoying and abused than the random pleveler or twink. Twinks probably wont become much of a problem until later in the games life cycle and power leveling, for how annoying it was to see, it was 10x more annoying to do and won't be a popular option except for your power gamers. Mentoring on the other hand will be readily available and so, in my opinion, far more of an annoyance.
geatz said:disposalist said:I keep seeing people say things like this, not to pick at you BamBam, but when friends or guildies help someone of lower level, the alternative to mentoring is power-levelling and twinking, which is much more of an abuse and annoyance.
You're also assuming VR won't be able to scale the mentor well.
Mentoring does not displace twinking or power leveling, these things will continue to exist. If the goal is to level a character as fast as possible you are going to power level. Twinking will happen regardless since items are going to be tradeable, all mentoring does is allow higher level characters to play content with lower level characters without the normal xp soak. Everygame I have played with mentoring, the mentoring feature was far more annoying and abused than the random pleveler or twink. Twinks probably wont become much of a problem until later in the games life cycle and power leveling, for how annoying it was to see, it was 10x more annoying to do and won't be a popular option except for your power gamers. Mentoring on the other hand will be readily available and so, in my opinion, far more of an annoyance.
But why will it be an annoyance ? For twinks or PL I get it, but mentoring ?
geatz said:disposalist said:I keep seeing people say things like this, not to pick at you BamBam, but when friends or guildies help someone of lower level, the alternative to mentoring is power-levelling and twinking, which is much more of an abuse and annoyance.
You're also assuming VR won't be able to scale the mentor well.
Mentoring does not displace twinking or power leveling, these things will continue to exist. If the goal is to level a character as fast as possible you are going to power level. Twinking will happen regardless since items are going to be tradeable, all mentoring does is allow higher level characters to play content with lower level characters without the normal xp soak. Everygame I have played with mentoring, the mentoring feature was far more annoying and abused than the random pleveler or twink. Twinks probably wont become much of a problem until later in the games life cycle and power leveling, for how annoying it was to see, it was 10x more annoying to do and won't be a popular option except for your power gamers. Mentoring on the other hand will be readily available and so, in my opinion, far more of an annoyance.
Mentoring will hopefully be more popular than powerlevelling and twinking and, so, reduce the numbers of people doing powerlevelling or twinking in order to help their friends/guildmates.
VR could also work on making powerlevelling and twinking more difficult if there is a viable replacement like mentoring. They have talked about scaling the power of items so that a low level character given a high level item doesn't get the full effect from it. They have talked about more sophisticated ways of assigning kill credit that would make powerlevelling impossible.
Either way, to assume that mentoring will somehow be an annoyance is to assume it will be implemented badly. In theory it simply means lower level zones will remain popular even as the population tends to get higher level.
Jazznblues said: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.
I mean, your first week in EverQuest sounds great to me. It reminds me of my own first few terrifying days in Greater Faydark and brings back the warm fuzzies. I would wish that experience upon anyone I care for and would pay dearly to be able to experience it again for the first time myself. Without your struggles, you likely never would have encountered that Ranger. The community (in the form of that ranger) came through for you, as it did for me. A properly implemented mentor system would increase the presence of players (like your ranger heroine) in lower level areas by giving them more options.
Those that worry about their experiences being tainted by grouping with mentor characters always have the option of not grouping with mentor characters, just as some refuse to group with boxed characters.
MauvaisOeil said:geatz said:disposalist said:I keep seeing people say things like this, not to pick at you BamBam, but when friends or guildies help someone of lower level, the alternative to mentoring is power-levelling and twinking, which is much more of an abuse and annoyance.
You're also assuming VR won't be able to scale the mentor well.
Mentoring does not displace twinking or power leveling, these things will continue to exist. If the goal is to level a character as fast as possible you are going to power level. Twinking will happen regardless since items are going to be tradeable, all mentoring does is allow higher level characters to play content with lower level characters without the normal xp soak. Everygame I have played with mentoring, the mentoring feature was far more annoying and abused than the random pleveler or twink. Twinks probably wont become much of a problem until later in the games life cycle and power leveling, for how annoying it was to see, it was 10x more annoying to do and won't be a popular option except for your power gamers. Mentoring on the other hand will be readily available and so, in my opinion, far more of an annoyance.
But why will it be an annoyance ? For twinks or PL I get it, but mentoring ?
For prett much the same or similar reasons why pleveling and twinks are annoying. They take up group spots, camp spots, they are higher level and can break camps or come back and grief more easily, they trivilaze content with more experience in the area and they reduce the number of alts on a server.
Shucklighter said:Jazznblues said: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.
I mean, your first week in EverQuest sounds great to me. It reminds me of my own first few terrifying days in Greater Faydark and brings back the warm fuzzies. I would wish that experience upon anyone I care for and would pay dearly to be able to experience it again for the first time myself. Without your struggles, you likely never would have encountered that Ranger. The community (in the form of that ranger) came through for you, as it did for me. A properly implemented mentor system would increase the presence of players (like your ranger heroine) in lower level areas by giving them more options.
Those that worry about their experiences being tainted by grouping with mentor characters always have the option of not grouping with mentor characters, just as some refuse to group with boxed characters.
EQ didn't have mentors so that experience wouldn't happen the way you remembered with any currently applied mentor system that I have seen in games. You can guarantee I'm not going to willingly group with a mentor but the choice to leave a group because one gets invited in shouldn't be a decision I have to make.
disposalist said:geatz said:disposalist said:I keep seeing people say things like this, not to pick at you BamBam, but when friends or guildies help someone of lower level, the alternative to mentoring is power-levelling and twinking, which is much more of an abuse and annoyance.
You're also assuming VR won't be able to scale the mentor well.
Mentoring does not displace twinking or power leveling, these things will continue to exist. If the goal is to level a character as fast as possible you are going to power level. Twinking will happen regardless since items are going to be tradeable, all mentoring does is allow higher level characters to play content with lower level characters without the normal xp soak. Everygame I have played with mentoring, the mentoring feature was far more annoying and abused than the random pleveler or twink. Twinks probably wont become much of a problem until later in the games life cycle and power leveling, for how annoying it was to see, it was 10x more annoying to do and won't be a popular option except for your power gamers. Mentoring on the other hand will be readily available and so, in my opinion, far more of an annoyance.
Mentoring will hopefully be more popular than powerlevelling and twinking and, so, reduce the numbers of people doing powerlevelling or twinking in order to help their friends/guildmates.
VR could also work on making powerlevelling and twinking more difficult if there is a viable replacement like mentoring. They have talked about scaling the power of items so that a low level character given a high level item doesn't get the full effect from it. They have talked about more sophisticated ways of assigning kill credit that would make powerlevelling impossible.
Either way, to assume that mentoring will somehow be an annoyance is to assume it will be implemented badly. In theory it simply means lower level zones will remain popular even as the population tends to get higher level.
What's a game where it wasn't implemented badly, I'll check it out? Maybe if I had an example where it wasn't implemented so egregiously I could get on board.
geatz said:disposalist said:geatz said:disposalist said:I keep seeing people say things like this, not to pick at you BamBam, but when friends or guildies help someone of lower level, the alternative to mentoring is power-levelling and twinking, which is much more of an abuse and annoyance.
You're also assuming VR won't be able to scale the mentor well.
Mentoring does not displace twinking or power leveling, these things will continue to exist. If the goal is to level a character as fast as possible you are going to power level. Twinking will happen regardless since items are going to be tradeable, all mentoring does is allow higher level characters to play content with lower level characters without the normal xp soak. Everygame I have played with mentoring, the mentoring feature was far more annoying and abused than the random pleveler or twink. Twinks probably wont become much of a problem until later in the games life cycle and power leveling, for how annoying it was to see, it was 10x more annoying to do and won't be a popular option except for your power gamers. Mentoring on the other hand will be readily available and so, in my opinion, far more of an annoyance.
Mentoring will hopefully be more popular than powerlevelling and twinking and, so, reduce the numbers of people doing powerlevelling or twinking in order to help their friends/guildmates.
VR could also work on making powerlevelling and twinking more difficult if there is a viable replacement like mentoring. They have talked about scaling the power of items so that a low level character given a high level item doesn't get the full effect from it. They have talked about more sophisticated ways of assigning kill credit that would make powerlevelling impossible.
Either way, to assume that mentoring will somehow be an annoyance is to assume it will be implemented badly. In theory it simply means lower level zones will remain popular even as the population tends to get higher level.
What's a game where it wasn't implemented badly, I'll check it out? Maybe if I had an example where it wasn't implemented so egregiously I could get on board.
What has other games getting it wrong got to do with it? The reason we're all so excited for Pantheon is no one has done an MMORPG 'right' for a long long time.
Just because others haven't done mentoring right doesn't mean VR can't do it any more than other companies not getting challenge level or character interdependency right means VR can't.
geatz said:They take up group spots, camp spots, they are higher level and can break camps or come back and grief more easily, they trivilaze content with more experience in the area and they reduce the number of alts on a server.
A mentor in a group isn't taking up a spot another player could use. They *are* a player and they are playing. Unless the zone is horribly over-populated because of mentors, which I seriously doubt will happen, this is a non-issue.
Unless mentoring is available at the click of a button, they can't break a camp then start mentoring and why would they grief anyone any more than a non-mentoring high level character?
They trivialise content with their experience? So, they shouldn't be allowed to play alts either then, because they'd have the same player experience.
They reduce the number of alts? See above and anyway, alts are for experiencing a different class/race not covering a different level range. People would still make alts for the same reasons they always did, but wouldn't be forced to maintain several at certain level ranges and only play those ones when certain friends are playing.
I'm sorry, this is probably coming off as combative, but you appear to be totally assuming the worst of any VR mentoring system and of the players who might use it. I can't help but argue with such a negative position.
Mentoring is supposed to help friends play together. It's all very well saying people should make an alt. But people's game times vary greatly - I have an alt to play with my wife, we both then have alts to play with our friends...we then have some more alts to play with our other friends...it becomes a pain, especially when many people don't even like having alts in the first place.
Mentoring lets you keep it all together and allows you to group with friends rather than simply sit outside a group and help power level - which to me is worse than mentoring because you have all the same negatives geatz raises regarding mentoring but worse because everything truly is trivialised.
Alt or mentor, you have the same issue regarding experience - if someone has done the content he doesn't forget it just because he has an alt. It really comes down to the player - me personally, I prefer to just be a back seat player in content I have done, let the players decide what they want to do and go along with it rather than dictate the best way - but this really comes down to individuals, and the reality is alt, mentor or even fresh player who does too much internet research all have the potential to 'ruin a new experience' for others.
My biggest bugbear with mentoring, and the part I totally agree with geatz is the trivialising of content - he is right that based on pretty much every game with a mentor system, it has always been scaled badly making the mentor so crazy strong he may as well be power leveling, for me this is the part that needs to be VR's focus because it ruins mentoring to me (skills that are attained at a higher lvl than the mentoring should be disabled, not just scaled down). I would even consider character lvl 'templates' being used rather than some weird 'nerfing' of gear which either over does it or underdoes it.
asteldian said:My biggest bugbear with mentoring, and the part I totally agree with geatz is the trivialising of content - he is right that based on pretty much every game with a mentor system, it has always been scaled badly making the mentor so crazy strong he may as well be power leveling, for me this is the part that needs to be VR's focus because it ruins mentoring to me (skills that are attained at a higher lvl than the mentoring should be disabled, not just scaled down). I would even consider character lvl 'templates' being used rather than some weird 'nerfing' of gear which either over does it or underdoes it.
A valid issue, but as you said, it can ve solved with either templates, strict gear cap, or downgraded skills.
The valid question beeing : how much powerfull should a geared player be at any level ? Basically a mentor will be like a twink : gear capped, but how much will it be or should it be ?
MauvaisOeil said:asteldian said:My biggest bugbear with mentoring, and the part I totally agree with geatz is the trivialising of content - he is right that based on pretty much every game with a mentor system, it has always been scaled badly making the mentor so crazy strong he may as well be power leveling, for me this is the part that needs to be VR's focus because it ruins mentoring to me (skills that are attained at a higher lvl than the mentoring should be disabled, not just scaled down). I would even consider character lvl 'templates' being used rather than some weird 'nerfing' of gear which either over does it or underdoes it.
A valid issue, but as you said, it can ve solved with either templates, strict gear cap, or downgraded skills.
The valid question beeing : how much powerfull should a geared player be at any level ? Basically a mentor will be like a twink : gear capped, but how much will it be or should it be ?
I'm sure I've heard from devs that twinking won't be as effective - powerful items will not work as well if you are low level - some kind of scaling.
I've also heard there's a possiblity of mentoring being achieved by using a 'save' from when you were that level (like swapping your character with a version from earlier in its history), so no scaling would even be necessary.
We don't know that VR will do it in the same way as others have failed to do it at all.
MauvaisOeil said:A valid issue, but as you said, it can ve solved with either templates, strict gear cap, or downgraded skills.
The valid question beeing : how much powerfull should a geared player be at any level ? Basically a mentor will be like a twink : gear capped, but how much will it be or should it be ?
If they do mentoring right then a mentor will be worse off than a twink, they will be brought down to an untwinked/average character for the level. This leaves level appropriate twinked alts a little better off but mentoring is still entirely viable and not game-breaking or even necessarily advantageous, they just get to play with friends that are lower level.
I'm sure they will do their best to make it balanced, however that opens the door to some questions : How much powerfull will a character be able to attain with gear, before level cap, and at level cap. EQ didn't make much limitation there, thus will every level include some sort of maximum damage attainable, maximum armor, health, pools, etc ?
I'm quite curious, because from this will depend how mentoring will be effective and balanced overall.
The exact nature of mentoring and the balancing of the tool will be a matter of play testing and will most likely need to wait till sometime late alpha or even not till beta. Many of the other parts of the game will need to be finished before you can fine tune mentoring.
I personally still favor unlocking the default mentor of your class/race at a range of level 1 to your level – 5. You need to select mentor mode and the level you want from the character select screen and log back in at the same location that your main logged out at. The mentor mode would not have an inventory and the mentor mode would gain and loose “mentor exp” that had its own rewards separate from your main. Switching back requires logging out and logging back in. I can see needing to be in a specific location to be able to log in as a mentor character as well to prevent abuse.
MauvaisOeil said:I'm sure they will do their best to make it balanced, however that opens the door to some questions : How much powerfull will a character be able to attain with gear, before level cap, and at level cap. EQ didn't make much limitation there, thus will every level include some sort of maximum damage attainable, maximum armor, health, pools, etc ?
I'm quite curious, because from this will depend how mentoring will be effective and balanced overall.
Ive been contemplating this also. They will have to have hard level caps for it to work effectively, and it would have to be across the board on every skill, spell, ability you name it. They have said it before they take the hard road, but the correct road. They wont make a shortcut version of this. We will find out more in testing how fast the caps go up. I am guessing you wont have 20 skillups a level like in EQ. It might be lower like 1-5.
MauvaisOeil said:I'm sure they will do their best to make it balanced, however that opens the door to some questions : How much powerfull will a character be able to attain with gear, before level cap, and at level cap. EQ didn't make much limitation there, thus will every level include some sort of maximum damage attainable, maximum armor, health, pools, etc ?
I'm quite curious, because from this will depend how mentoring will be effective and balanced overall.
I imagine the only potential artificial blockers might be damage caps based on level like EQ had and/or mitigation % cap via AC per level/range. For weapons it sounds like instead of a hard cap they are shooting for the damage being based more off your weaponskill level...so a soft cap of sorts where you will most likely do the minimum damage of a weapon until such a time your weaponskill is at a certain level and presumably AC and how much armor a character gets might be tied to their defense skill as a soft cap. Things like HP/Mana weren't generally a big issue in EQ since having 700 hp (or mana) at level 10 didn't do the twink any favors once their HP was low since healers could only heal them for a small fraction of it and sitting was a flat number regen instead of a percent (same for mana).
geatz said:What's a game where it wasn't implemented badly, I'll check it out? Maybe if I had an example where it wasn't implemented so egregiously I could get on board.
disposalist said:What has other games getting it wrong got to do with it? The reason we're all so excited for Pantheon is no one has done an MMORPG 'right' for a long long time.
Just because others haven't done mentoring right doesn't mean VR can't do it any more than other companies not getting challenge level or character interdependency right means VR can't.
I wanted an example to see when it was done right, we are using examples for everything else, EQ has been a major example for a lot of what Pantheon is doing. I'll agree that I'm excited for that reason and that's because things like instancing and fast travel and I thought mentoring which are these new age quick band-aid convenience features were going to be left out or at least marginalized and instead just make a game world that we could play in. I don't see why mentoring is okay, but fast travel and instancing are not, they are both there for the sake of convenience, the same thing to me. Mentoring is nothing more than a convenience feature at the expense of the game world and I don't want it. I think not wanting it falls perfectly in-line for why I’m excited for this game.
disposalist said:A mentor in a group isn't taking up a spot another player could use. They *are* a player and they are playing. Unless the zone is horribly over-populated because of mentors, which I seriously doubt will happen, this is a non-issue.
They are taking a spot, if there was no mentoring they wouldn't be there. Mentoring takes from the top and inserts in the bottom, I don't understand what you mean here. I guess it doesn't mean that they are necessarily keeping someone from a group, but they might be you can't just say that.
disposalist said:Unless mentoring is available at the click of a button, they can't break a camp then start mentoring and why would they grief anyone any more than a non-mentoring high level character?
I don’t think so, breaking a camp doesn’t need just a click of a button, once a camp is broken it could take 20-40 minutes before you would need to start holding it, who knows I haven’t played yet, but obviously the potential is there. And as far as griefing because they are a high level character, they would certainly have a greater advantage to do that if they wanted to especially in a pvp server and if it weren’t for mentoring, he would likely be somewhere else. Look I don’t know how the system is going to work I just don’t think it’s worth it.
disposalist said:They trivialise content with their experience? So, they shouldn't be allowed to play alts either then, because they'd have the same player experience.
Exactly, I’m glad you see it, shouldn’t be leaps and bounds to see the advantage for mentors if alts already have it. Alts cause enough issues like twinking we don’t need to add more. I’m pretty sure that VR isn’t going to restrict us to one character so I’m not going to advocate for it although I would be okay with one character if that was the case and would probably prefer it just as you said. However, unless they make an alt as the same class, they wouldn't have the same amount of class experience so it wouldn’t be quite the same, twinking would be the real problem.
disposalist said:They reduce the number of alts? See above and anyway, alts are for experiencing a different class/race not covering a different level range. People would still make alts for the same reasons they always did, but wouldn't be forced to maintain several at certain level ranges and only play those ones when certain friends are playing.
Well I don’t agree with that in EQ the "only" reason why I made alts was to play with friends. Now I would say it's possible in Pantheon if there is mentoring I might make an alt even though I won't have to now to play with a friend, but the only reason I had any in EQ was because people came in after me and I used alts to play with them. Maybe if I had maxed leveled my character I might have got bored enough to make an alt, but that didn't happen. So I do believe that mentoring will reduce the number of alts because it would have for me. I can't assume everyone elsees experience but I can give mine and I think it’s reasonable to assume that others might feel the same.
disposalist said:I'm sorry, this is probably coming off as combative, but you appear to be totally assuming the worst of any VR mentoring system and of the players who might use it. I can't help but argue with such a negative position.
Well I don’t think the worst of the players, but I do think that the worst players will abuse what they can, given the tools to do it. But I do think the worst of the system, I think the whole idea of mentoring is just a terrible idea. I don't think it's going to be implemented correctly because I think the whole reason why it’s being put in is toxic to the game world much like fast travel or quest makers or instancing or scaled content or level locked content. That's my feeling, that's what I'm voicing. I don't want these features to be in there or at least not for the reasons of convenience. If there were actually a game world reason why or if it were to increase the validity of the world we are in, ala class interdependency like fast travel on wizards, then I might be for it, but no one is making that argument, they simply want it universally available to make it easier for them to play with their friend.
I agree that alts are for enjoying a different class/race/gender combo. The level equation is what mentoring is hoping to somewhat nullify. Will levels still matter? You bet they will! This is more like a backwards heroic character. Instead of instantly gaining levels to an extent, you delevel to play with your friends. It makes sense to me.
geatz said:if it were to increase the validity of the world we are in, ala class interdependency like fast travel on wizards, then I might be for it, but no one is making that argument, they simply want it universally available to make it easier for them to play with their friend.
It's more than mere convenience to be able to play with your friends. It's fundamental to the game's success. Not everything that was not in EverQuest or that was in other MMOs is bad.
geatz said:They are taking a spot, if there was no mentoring they wouldn't be there
Yes they would, but they would be either an alt (and probably twinked) or would be powerlevelling them to get them up to the level they can play together properly. That is not a better thing.
The alternative to mentoring, powerlevelling or an alt? Not playing with your friend. Awesome.
Even if they were mentoring and 'taking a spot' how is that any different to playing an alt? I would love that explained to me.
geatz said:once a camp is broken it could take 20-40 minutes before you would need to start holding it, who knows I haven’t played yet, but obviously the potential is there
Let's say you could break a camp at high level then mentor down and hold it with your buddy. So what? Would it be better to break it and then powerlevel them because you can't mentor? Or break it then bring in an twinked alt?
geatz said:Alts cause enough issues like twinking we don’t need to add more
Mentoring is not worse than bringing in a twink alt and it doesn't add more issues. The same person that would have brought in a twink or powerlevelled a buddy will just mentor them instead. Even if it were a problem, at worst it's the same problem.
geatz said:Well I don’t agree with that in EQ the "only" reason why I made alts was to play with friends
That's not what I said, I said "alts are for experiencing a different class/race not covering a different level range". Myself (and everyone I know) when they freely make an alt, it's to try a different class-race and try new content.
Of course, forcing people to make other alts because it's the only way to keep in sync with friends means more alts, but why is that good? More alts doesn't mean more players.
geatz said:I do think that the worst players will abuse what they can, given the tools to do it
There is no abuse in mentoring that I can see. What abuse can you see assuming VR don't make a mess of it?
geatz said:I think the whole idea of mentoring is just a terrible idea. I don't think it's going to be implemented correctly because I think the whole reason why it’s being put in is toxic to the game world
Again, please tell me what is toxic and wrong with being able to play with a friend of the same level? Why is mentoring worse than powerlevelling or twinking? Why is any different than playing an alt? Why would playing an alt be better than mentoring?
geatz said:I don't want these features to be in there or at least not for the reasons of convenience
Not all conveniences are bad. People need to get over that. Some things were simply not done in EQ because they were too tricky at the time. Some things simply did not occur to them. Some things were added later and done badly - this also does not make the concept bad.
Again, I don't want to seem combative - I'd happily be persuaded, but I'm not seeing your point.
disposalist said:Not all conveniences are bad. People need to get over that. Some things were simply not done in EQ because they were too tricky at the time. Some things simply did not occur to them. Some things were added later and done badly - this also does not make the concept bad.
I don't always agree with you, Dispo, but this is a great sentiment. I'm willing to bet that, if the functionality and prior years of MMO experience was there, EQ would have had some kind of mentoring system at its inception. It fits with what they were attempting to create. It might have had some negative and adverse effects attached to it, and it might have been punishing in some way, but it would have been there.
Just because other games do it badly, doesn't mean it's inherently bad.