Hey, have any of you Next Islanders tried mentoring newlanders? How are you finding the mentoring system? (Note: Mentoring is a Mindark system, not an Next Island one. This question is out of my personal curiosity, not a development question.)
My sixth disciple since the re-implementation graduated last night. I think it is better than the pre-vu10 system but could still be better. (cant everything? :P ) The requirements for a team hunt, and a successful craft/mining attempt are both great additions. The rewards for the disciples are good I think and a motivator for them, the rewards I have seen so far for mentoring are not great, but they are still nice and there is always the chance and hope for something better with the next disciple. The time frame towards graduation is fairly fair I think. Someone cycling alot of ped fast will graduate pretty quickly, but I dont think there is really a fair way to change that without punishing those who play harder. (which imo would be a bad idea) It is good that the mentor automatically gets added to the disciples friendlist when the mentor-discicple status becomes official. I wish that the disciple got added to the mentors list as well. Actually I wish there was a separate friendlist just for Society Mates, and another for Disciples/Mentors as well. Even being able to add a current disciple to my friendlist from the disciple list would be a big step in the right direction. (but adding all the same abilities to the disciple list that are currently in the friendlist would be better) So far I have 2 Hunter Face Guards ME, 2 Hunter Gloves ME, and 2 Hunter Thighs ME. I am not sure what I think about that. I like the idea of random gifts, but at the same time I would like to be able to get a full set myself without trading/buying/selling. (I think its current method is probably the fairest though, if it was a linear list of gifts, then mentors would abuse it even more to get to the gifts they really want. In summery, I think it is a pretty good system as it is. (could be better, but is definitely better than the pre-vu10 version) narfi
I got 10 disciples on NI and put them through training class to get them each their 3 awards in their first hours in game. One of them stayed on and graduated and is active players now the rest seem to lost interest due to no one to buy their loots on NI and no more missions to do.
The Mentor system is ok..... needs a little work, I also have 2 face masks. duplicate rewards, and not having the auto friends list option, would be 2 things that need to be fixed. As for Disciples on NI.... sad to say, i have not had any stay that were allowed to stay on NI. Once they were brought to a better planet <more people, more missions, more people, more places to sell, more people, more opportunity. did i mention more people? NI needs a better player base, and its unfair to have new players suffer due to a failing planet.... its almost as bad as when i was "born" in serpentine.... I had a friend playing this game, and wanted to join... so i made a avatar, and was spawned at serpentine... i was immediately killed. I spent over 4 hours trying to run to an invisible TP pad, which i only had to believe was there.... finally i was rescued. As soon as i could, I was rescuing others, or at least guiding them to the right spot... So nowadays i still rescue people.... I take them to a better start. NI is not Viable, and is not an approved starting location for anyone in Uber Noobs. I wish it were not the case, NI has potential. But with newer planets more successful, and the same old problems on NI.... choices must be made, and the players will not take brunt of bad business..... there are too many other opportunities out there... Back to topic, and the reason for the rant... new players are ALONE on NI.... and its not fair to them. its unfair to let them sink or swim, that's too many good players discouraged by an always unfinished product. A true mentor would see that...
Sadly I have to agree with Chuck. I really want NI to have an active player base but expecting newbies to provide that is unrealistic, for reasons that we all know about. Its not quite so bad for depositors, especially not if they have a friend (eg me) who's willing to fetch them important items (such as a sleip, with which you can escape those notorious revives)from Caly, but for the newbie who wants to try the game out before depositing (as they're encouraged to do) there's nothing there. What I do now, if i sign up a n NI disciple , is offer them a free quad-ride to Ark so they can get a better start. Hopefully, they come back to NI later, cos it does have a way of capturing peoples hearts :) At present, I have one disciple who returned to NI, and another waiting for space to be fixed so i can get her off-planet! Also I initially wanted to focus on NI disciples, because they badly need mentoring if anybody does, but once Ark had some really interesting updates, I find I'm spending most of my time on Ark , and very little time on NI so I can't be there for them as much as I would wish... unles they take up the quad-ride . And , really . isn't it the same for nearly all of us? THat might well change with recent developments ofc, but there still tremains the problem that Ark is not at all newbie-friendly. They beed revive terminals that they can escape from! They mobs they can sweat, apart from monkeys monkeys monkeys (which are not that food for sweating, anyway. I tried it!) and older players who want to buy their sweat, Amongst other things. It's a bit off-topic, bit i'd also like to suggest letting a few players rent retail premises on NI, and creating many more such premises and making them more visible and accessible, Yes rent! Nobody wants to invest large sums in NI real-estate, but we all badly need shops here: shops that will sell the kind of everyday things like mining amps and (L) weapons that you can get on auction everywhere else. It will take forever for auction to become viable here, because you need a much bigger player-base for that; but without auction, or a realistic alternative, people are not going to stick around, so we have a vicious circle. Nobody responded to my market-stall idea but i think that would be best of all, because, if it's done right, even the lowliest of players should be able to use them to market their loot. If people disagree could ypu at least tell me what's wrong with that idea? Anyways, almost every time I've offerered to mentor an NI newbie, i've found that they already had a mentor. which is good, i hope? (unless it means there's an rampant disciple farmer round here) jay :)
