The idea I was initially responding to implicitly implied the goal would be to move more and more of character progression into a mentor system. Following that logic, eventually, the most efficient way to progress would be through mentoring others and at that point problems will occur. As I said in response to @tchefi#6735, so long as nobody feels like in order to progress their character, they have to mentor others, I am ambivalent towards the system, but the way the idea I was responding to was structured it was heavily implied this is not the case.
And I was able to understand this :P. Your "I don't care" was though a poor choice of words @thefabricant (especially because, as you don't care, you don't try to extract what is the intersting essence of the idea, which is understanble, I don't care too much about spreadsheet, and i won't really comment about how important it is to get the most efficient tools to reach the perfet meta), what i quote is a bit better . And I think both as the one who write and the one who read and reply should take a step back to really think about that.
Choice of words is important to try not to trigger passion/edges on people (especially as when replying with quote, each one of us directly point one specific people), but @modestmouse75 being able to understand that sometime someone (anyone) WILL badly choose his words, and focus yourself more on the substance than the form is what we should all do in a debate to stay constructive (though i love taunting too :P). For exemple : i think the red police bold color was really unnecessary and an agressive way. I may have been more triggered than @thefabricant with that, and less neutral than him :P.
Who care about roleplay here ? :P (just asking :P). I was, way back in the past, a Neverwinter Night DM on a quite popular french module. What do you think about our "rule" : reach the level 16 is possible by your own means (farming, questing, mobbashing). But only a DM could give you XP to reach the level 20 (max) : you play the game out of RP, you don't participate to RP events/campaigns lead by the DM Team, you don't create yourself RP situations-interactions with the other rolists, ok fine, be a happy level 16 :P. Obviously, constraint like that just throw away part of what our audience/public would have been without. And i feel like that was what thefabricant was concerned about. NwN modules were free fan-creations for the most part, no DM was payed, so no business to keep in mind (ans so we didn't care about the amount of population). For what it's worth, that was the way to only have rolists on our module, kind of an extreme decision we had to take because we started to be "polluted" with people having the solo gamer mindset, or the powergamer-munchkin one, rather than the social-roleplay approach we wanted to be the roots of our module. The angle may have not be the one we should have chosen : maybe a more "incentive" and "optional" approach to get people involved in roleplaying would have been a better way... but i kind of lost this old past debate with the other DMs ^^
Except its not, as you have put it, above my paygrade. Here is chris, explicitly asking us to constructively challenge other players posts.
Your quote about phase 2 would be fine, except that you've been doing this since page 4 .. before phase 2. That was at the time above your paygrade, and continues to be largely non-useful. Not just to me, but to a range of people that have continued to push back on your patronizing responses to people's various ideas.
That undermines the achievement of the people who beat ToMM and is strictly going against the idea of a good progression system. Not everyone needs to have every item and if they want the item, they should have to put in the work for it.
This is neither constructive nor 'in a valuable way', it adds nothing but negation based on your opinion of what you feel 'everyone needs' and what 'they should have to' in this instance.
I don't mind criticism, it certainly can help build ideas up when done constructively. That is different than pure negation.. phrases like "this can not be" or "will make neverwinter cease to be neverwinter", and "People need to learn to accept that" that you phrase as an unqualified statement do not add value to an idea or even present an alternative.
So ive not been following this suggestion into all of the details but I get the idea. However im unsure into how you will get progression from helping another, and if you can only progress by mentoring, or that mentoring increases progression at a faster rate.
"Forced" progression Issues: Some people dont want to be taught information and like to learn things as they go along. There are already guides online for various other things in the game, and some people prefer to learn at their own pace. Would this mean less people learning = less people teaching = less people progressing? Then regarding that, we will now need a 1:1 teacher:student. If this is not balanced evenly that it cannot work to begin with. And some might say, that it doesnt need to be 1:1, however that means more or less work for the mentor, and then also more or less progression per "student".
Some people are not good at learning. If you are matched with those people, then because they cannot understand a principle whereas another "student" can understand it easier, mentors would get an unfair progression, on something that it outside of their control.
Some people are not good at teaching. For example, myself. I am really bad with words, and I have a small amount of patience. I dont try to be offensive, but sometimes I can be seen that way. This might turn new people away from playing. Some people might be out to troll the students, and the students wouldnt know any better (example using coal wards for every upgrade, even at 90%). Finally some mentors might just not have the right information, and unknowingly teach them wrong information that would hurt the newer player, which is the opposite of what this mentoring system is trying to do.
Some people have anxiety and are anxious around people, especially strangers. Some people dont like being around other people, and prefer to be alone, they use video games as an escape from the world. Forcing people to interact with others could have a serious mental reaction depending on the person.
The person who you are partnered up with could speak a different language.
Other personal issues. My partner might never log in again, so can I never progress? What if they play 1hour a week, and I play 100h, or the other way around. 1 person could make 100s of bot accounts and get them partnered with other people then slow the progression of many players.
These are just a few issues you would have if this was introduced with forced helping of random players.
"Non-forced" progression issues: Depending on the increased rate of progression, then people might not bother with it to begin with, and then it becomes a waste of time and resources to add an idea, that could have been spent working on other things (new class please Chris). If it becomes too good of a way to progress, then it would be manipulated.
How would this thing even work? Help a player beat X dungeon for the first time? There is only a limit amount of people this would work on until everyone has achieved it.
The best way how I can give an example. You go into work, and your boss asks you to walk with them outside, and when you do they point and pick the first random person they see. Your boss then says to you "You have to teach this person to do your job, otherwise you will not get paid / pay increase". The chances are you dont want to teach them, the stranger doesnt want to be taught, so then why would you be forced into a situation where this could happen?
These are just some ideas I thought of in the past hour, there probably are a lot more issues if I would spend more time into thinking about it.
6
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
I truly do not understand why you seem to feel that anywhere in there you saw that he was MAKING YOU do this and that if would affect YOUR progress? Also, nowhere in there do I see you being forced to interact in helping another person. Sadly, this tells a lot about you as a person and your character. Why should my progress depend on the progress of someone else. Different players play at different rates. There would also be the option of the person choosing to have the help or not in my suggestions.
The implication exists here that in order to be functional at endgame, you need to teach others. I don't know what you do for a living, but you sure as hell do not teach. I know teachers and I know the HAMSTER they get from students. I have comforted them on rough days when they have an absolute HAMSTER day dealing with people who do not want to be taught. They teach despite this, because they genuinely care.
Not everyone is cut out to be a teacher. Not everyone should have to deal with that. I am not, that is for sure and this is not a game built around a teacher student relationship. There are many different player groups that exist here and most of the people in those groups would not make good teachers. Some also won't make good pupils. What you do not want, is for the people who are not good teachers to feel that they need to teach.
I understand your frustration but you forget the part where I suggested that they have the option in beginning to opt out of taking the mentor. Side note: I have raised many children, not that I need to explain myself, so I do know what it is like to deal with teaching ones who do not want to be taught, only I didn't have someone to comfort me as I was a single mom.
I am not sure what part of this is hard to understand. If opting into being a mentor, is more efficient than opting out, there are people who would feel "forced" to opt into it and would do so, even though they do not want to mentor people. They would hate every moment they were doing it and would probably chafe with the people they are supposed to be mentoring, but they would still do it regardless. The people they were mentoring would probably hate it as well.
@krzrsms So it is a minimum pay even with down vote, yes? Voting adds extra or a total score per month. And do I get to down vote the new player too? It seems fair. Just keep the vote secret so it will not be a retaliation effect. .
I would think so.. yes it seems that some amount of reward for both the mentor AND mentee should be available. Certainly this was just written in a few minutes and not put down as a full implementation. I just put down the details I thought of as I came to them.
Secret vote.. yes. I had assumed that. Generally using the same voting system that we already have for queues and events like marauders.
Minimum pay? Definitely. We would get a lot out of 'partial credit' I feel. Care has to be taken to have minimum participation though.. like x amount of damage dealt, all characters moved, y amount of time. Cant have people just pop in, stand at the fire and expect to get paid.
0
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
Except its not, as you have put it, above my paygrade. Here is chris, explicitly asking us to constructively challenge other players posts.
Your quote about phase 2 would be fine, except that you've been doing this since page 4 .. before phase 2. That was at the time above your paygrade, and continues to be largely non-useful. Not just to me, but to a range of people that have continued to push back on your patronizing responses to people's various ideas.
That undermines the achievement of the people who beat ToMM and is strictly going against the idea of a good progression system. Not everyone needs to have every item and if they want the item, they should have to put in the work for it.
This is neither constructive nor 'in a valuable way', it adds nothing but negation based on your opinion of what you feel 'everyone needs' and what 'they should have to' in this instance.
I don't mind criticism, it certainly can help build ideas up when done constructively. That is different than pure negation.. phrases like "this can not be" or "will make neverwinter cease to be neverwinter", and "People need to learn to accept that" that you phrase as an unqualified statement do not add value to an idea or even present an alternative.
It is not my job to fix other people's ideas. It also isn't my job to criticize them, but I am choosing to do so anyhow. In that particular quote, I identify a problem (undermining the achievement of other players). I don't need to be the one who solves that problem, but the problem does exist. Is it an opinion that not everyone needs every item? Not really, that is a statement of a fact and I can prove that quite easily. I don't need every item in the game, there are some items I do not have and I am playing the game just fine. There are also players who do not have the tomm weapons (or weapons like them) and are enjoying the game without them. Everyone is inclusive of every single player in the game, so I have already satisfied the objective of proving not everyone needs them.
Was my criticism based on:
The person.
Something offtopic to the discussion.
No, it was criticism of the idea. I could have tried to fix the idea and that would have been more valuable feedback sure, but the exclusion of doing so does not make the feedback useless, it is just placing the onus of fixing it onto the person who proposed it in the first place. Furthermore, the feedback is actionable. It isn't just, "this idea sucks." It is, "this is wrong with this idea." Clearly, it is possible to act on that statement by trying to go and fix it.
I am not sure what part of this is hard to understand. If opting into being a mentor, is more efficient than opting out, there are people who would feel "forced" to opt into it and would do so, even though they do not want to mentor people. They would hate every moment they were doing it and would probably chafe with the people they are supposed to be mentoring, but they would still do it regardless. The people they were mentoring would probably hate it as well.
This is the situation you are trying to avoid.
hmm I think I might know where the gap is here. "I am not sure what part of this is hard to understand." You're presuming that it is 'more efficient'. Both (I think theres 2 major mentor ideas going on here) aren't presuming that at all. My posts spent quite a bit of text describing ways that make sure its not the 'most efficient' way to gain rewards, just that it pays something desirable.
That something could be transmute changes or titles that dont affect game play or income, but are still desirable to some people. ..of course some RAD would be necessary too IMO just to have a base to start from. Also the more 'horizontal progression' we have the more opportunities there are for rewards that don't have to focus on AD or BIS. But for now we have to start where we are, not where we wish we were.
In the short term mentoring is quite 'inefficient'. Its only in the long term, after bringing up new generations of friends, guildies, and former 'students' that one starts to see 'efficiency'. At that point you've build up a larger pool of knowledgeable qualified players that can play with you in higher content. But one has to have incentives to get there and influence good behaviour that leads us to a more healthy game population.
Theres a lot that we do already that isn't efficient. Pretty much anything other than doing the queue and perhaps do a speed run of the top content flavor of the month is inefficient. We need to bring some life back to those who like to go back and play/teach the old stuff without that being either 0 benefit or actively costing them depending on whether you want to think of opportunity cost.
0
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
Who care about roleplay here ? :P (just asking :P). I was, way back in the past, a Neverwinter Night DM on a quite popular french module. What do you think about our "rule" : reach the level 16 is possible by your own means (farming, questing, mobbashing). But only a DM could give you XP to reach the level 20 (max) : you play the game out of RP, you don't participate to RP events/campaigns lead by the DM Team, you don't create yourself RP situations-interactions with the other rolists, ok fine, be a happy level 16 :P. Obviously, constraint like that just throw away part of what our audience/public would have been without. And i feel like that was what thefabricant was concerned about. NwN modules were free fan-creations for the most part, no DM was payed, so no business to keep in mind (ans so we didn't care about the amount of population). For what it's worth, that was the way to only have rolists on our module, kind of an extreme decision we had to take because we started to be "polluted" with people having the solo gamer mindset, or the powergamer-munchkin one, rather than the social-roleplay approach we wanted to be the roots of our module. The angle may have not be the one we should have chosen : maybe a more "incentive" and "optional" approach to get people involved in roleplaying would have been a better way... but i kind of lost this old past debate with the other DMs ^^
There is a difference though. In the right context this is fine. If you created a server with this idea at the onset or added these rules fairly near the inception, it is fine, because players are joining to play on that server, knowing that this is the case. There aren't people already heavily invested timewise into it. It is fine for different games to appeal to different player types, but the window in which you can change the game to fit a particular player type is very small.
I will give an example of what I mean. Say tomorrow, @noworries#8859 decided that neverwinter would be better off as a racing game and the dev team all agreed, gave him to go ahead and then somehow (through magic) he gets the game turned into a car game by next week thursday. The patch was released and suddenly, when everyone tries to log in, instead of being met with the character selection, they are met with a paint shop and options to customize their car for an online racing game.
You could imagine what the player response would be like. However, if cryptic studios started making another game which was a car game and released it separately, nobody would mind.
This is what I mean when I say that an idea, "would change the game neverwinter is." Neverwinter already has an audience, that has developed a certain expectation for how the game is going to be. If you deviate too much from that expectation, you will get heavy player backlash. In the ideal MMO I would like to play, there are actually many things I would want different from NW, but I do not propose them because I know they would fundamentally change the game. An easy example, in my personal, "ideal mmo," players would not be able to solo, at all. When you went out into the open world, you would be automatically grouped up into groups of 5 or more and content would be balanced around that. This however, does not fit into the context of neverwinter at all and its fairly obvious that players who like having the ability to solo would rebel against it. Hence, this is not something that I propose. For this to work, it would have to be implemented into a game at its inception so that it is a determining factor for whether or not someone wants to pick up the game and not a determining factor in whether or not the leave.
I haven't seen any followup to my mentor-mentee post, so I assume I didn't explain the essence and the implications well enough.
Hypothesis: Neverwinter MMO would receive significant benefits from redesigning its core gameplay around (experience-wise unequal) 2-player teams. Some of the longstanding problems would be alleviated or outright solved. Unwanted negative effects of this change can be mitigated (to a certain degree).
Currently, gameplay is in essence solipsistic (in the "extreme egocentrism" sense). There are a few exceptions (upgrading Stronghold structures to improve boons for all guild members, collaborating while gearing up and training for the hardest queued content, etc.), but the majority of the gameplay and rewards is self-centered. The best strategy to maximize efficiency is to avoid (relatively) undergeared or low-skilled players and try to run with (relatively) overgeared and high-skilled players. Ignoring this strategy results in loss of time (longer time-to-completion or outright failing and needing to restart with different group), as well as loss of resources (health stone charges, scrolls of life, food/potion buffs) with no change in rewards.
In other words, trying to be helpful is punitive, unless the player you're trying to help is already almost at the same level as yourself (a peer instead of a junior). This type of demotivator works against the better nature of MMO players, leads to accusations of elitism, and general alienation and distrust between different progression tiers of players. It undermines collaborative social interaction, which I would argue is one of the strongest player retention mechanics available to an MMO.
I propose a change where more and more of character progression towards "endgame" becomes dependent on gainfully assisting a newer player. Not by completing content instead of them (like we had in leveling dungeons), but explicitly by teaching and assisting (mentoring) them to better play their class and role. Mentoring success should be determined by mentee performance only. The rewards for successful mentoring (let us call them Mentoring Points) should become the most effective method for further progressing one's own character. Not the only method (we still want to let hardcore loners and professions/market mavens live), but the most effective by a significant margin.
This requires scaling to be implemented correctly. While it's okay for the mentor to be "more powerful" than the mentee, the difference should be relatively small (say up to 20%). Otherwise, contribution from mentee cannot remain significant in the outcome of the challenge.
A special consideration should be given to disparity between current role trinity (tank-healer-dps) and a 2-person mentor-mentee pair. I think that this disparity is actually useful (choosing a role becomes a meaningful choice for mentoring player). The slack could be covered by better implementation of companions. For example, when mentoring a newbie healer, mentor can choose to run tank and summon a dps companion OR run dps and summon a tank companion. My gut feeling says that summoned companions performing at 40-50% efficiency of the player character would do the trick.
In content with more than 2 players, role trinity will naturally function as before - player characters would still be the best healers, tanks and dps after all. However, summoned companions might become a viable alternative to augments. Queuing system should be modified to explicit mentor-mentee pairs (in addition to role requirements). This would mean changing dungeons from 5-man content to either 4-man or 6-man.
I am staunchly against this proposal.
Why should my progress depend on the progress of someone else. Different players play at different rates.
Not everyone is good at teaching, not everyone is good at learning.
Some people don't like teaching and will lash back at this system, possibly (probably, who am I kidding here) taking it out on the person they are supposed to teach.
Some people don't want to have people helping them out.
This would fundamentally change the game NW is.
Don't force people to play together if they don't want to. If players want to interact with each other, it should be organic, they should be choosing to interact with each other. If players feel their progress is locked behind teaching someone else, I guarantee you within 1 day of this system being implemented there will be at least 5 threads of people complaining that their mentor treated them like HAMSTER and another 5 threads of people complaining they don't want to have to mentor people in order to progress. Exactly the same way random queues backfired.
He didn't say to "force people", he says "...should become the most effective method for further progressing one's own character. Not the only method (we still want to let hardcore loners and professions/market mavens live), but the most effective by a significant margin."
Ignoring the proposal for a mentor/mentee system, he's pretty spot on when he describes the type of behavior and interactions between players the current state of the game promotes. It's not good, it's very alienating to a lot of people, and there's a lot of xenophobia in the game in the sense that "pug" [1] is a bad word , when it really shouldn't be. I was thinking about this earlier today, and it may be that the guild/alliance system exacerbates this issue to a certain extent.
I would like to see more systems in the game that promote healthy player interaction with the wider population, than just someone's own clique, for example, a solo queue for dungeons that has really good rewards in it. While this might not appeal to someone who has more than they can ever want, if the rewards were good enough, I could see a lot of people doing it, just like a lot of people do random queues because it's the most efficient way to get your daily rad. It could for example award a token that allows you to purchase items like they have in the PvP seasonal store and the Legacy campaign store.
I disagree with this as well. It can be an alternative method to progress, but it should not be the most effective. There is a portion of the game that cares about efficiency. If this is the most effective method, they will feel forced to do it and the chances are that particular portion of the game is also not exactly the best type of player to be a mentor.
While I think it might be difficult to design and implement a system that progresses your character based how much you help someone, I really do want to see more incentives promoting healthy player interaction. I see what you're trying to say here, however not being more efficient kind of defeats the purpose of an "incentive", making it more of a "compensation", so I would think that it should be slightly to moderately more effective. More effective than what? Idk, maybe say than running daily randoms in regards to time vs gain.
As for phase 3 of Rewards and Progression, I'll provide a high level overview of my favorite topics while not pointing to anyone's ideas individually, for now.
1) Horizontal progression with some vertical steps here and there (like once per year). This includes SHs, gear, boons, and a way to upgrade old gear to "catch up" to the new game. I think unique bonuses should have a good amount of longevity, if not forever (this helps maintain relevance of old content).
2) New MW recipes. MW rework.
3) Rewards for promoting healthy player interactions, expanding social networks, and getting out of one's own shell (so to speak).
4
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
hmm I think I might know where the gap is here. "I am not sure what part of this is hard to understand." You're presuming that it is 'more efficient'. Both (I think theres 2 major mentor ideas going on here) aren't presuming that at all. My posts spent quite a bit of text describing ways that make sure its not the 'most efficient' way to gain rewards, just that it pays something desirable.
That something could be transmute changes or titles that dont affect game play or income, but are still desirable to some people. ..of course some RAD would be necessary too IMO just to have a base to start from. Also the more 'horizontal progression' we have the more opportunities there are for rewards that don't have to focus on AD or BIS. But for now we have to start where we are, not where we wish we were.
In the short term mentoring is quite 'inefficient'. Its only in the long term, after bringing up new generations of friends, guildies, and former 'students' that one starts to see 'efficiency'. At that point you've build up a larger pool of knowledgeable qualified players that can play with you in higher content. But one has to have incentives to get there and influence good behaviour that leads us to a more healthy game population.
Theres a lot that we do already that isn't efficient. Pretty much anything other than doing the queue and perhaps do a speed run of the top content flavor of the month is inefficient. We need to bring some life back to those who like to go back and play/teach the old stuff without that being either 0 benefit or actively costing them depending on whether you want to think of opportunity cost.
I propose a change where more and more of character progression towards "endgame" becomes dependent on gainfully assisting a newer player. Not by completing content instead of them (like we had in leveling dungeons), but explicitly by teaching and assisting (mentoring) them to better play their class and role. Mentoring success should be determined by mentee performance only. The rewards for successful mentoring (let us call them Mentoring Points) should become the most effective method for further progressing one's own character. Not the only method (we still want to let hardcore loners and professions/market mavens live), but the most effective by a significant margin.
Emphasis mine. I am not against a mentor system at all, provided that particular condition is not enforced. It could be a good system, so long as the people who are involved in it are the people who want to be involved in it. As a suggestion for such an idea though, on character creation, a popup would appear asking a new player if they want a mentor or not, so that players who want to play alone and not be mentored, have the option of doing so. Furthermore, if a player does not like their mentor for whatever reason, they should have the option to end their mentorship early, or request another mentor. Likewise, if the mentor does not like their student for whatever reason, they should also have such an option.
Not all people are compatible, choices like this should exist. There is also the "risk and concern" that an experienced player makes new accounts to benefit their main by "mentoring" it, which probably needs to be addressed.
It doesn't HAVE to be rewards in terms of AD/Mops/Items in any way. What I am against is a ranking, but perhaps consider a form of Kudos a new player can leave on the Profile of another players. Only let us leave 10 kudos a month / five a week / 1 per day or some other restriction that doesn't let us spam our besties with it. There are several other options to go about this.
I do think this (or some sort of) acknowledgement would be enough. Often people that helped out / went out of their way do not get anything, no "ok thx" or ":)"
I propose a change where more and more of character progression towards "endgame" becomes dependent on gainfully assisting a newer player. Not by completing content instead of them (like we had in leveling dungeons), but explicitly by teaching and assisting (mentoring) them to better play their class and role. Mentoring success should be determined by mentee performance only. The rewards for successful mentoring (let us call them Mentoring Points) should become the most effective method for further progressing one's own character. Not the only method (we still want to let hardcore loners and professions/market mavens live), but the most effective by a significant margin. ------------------------------------------------ Ok thats understandable. Heres the emphasis I saw. So here we have the basis of our conflict here. Definitely it depends on how widely this 'progression' is taken to be I suppose. And yea there will be adjustments needed over time to curb abuses as people learn to use it, but thats pretty much always the case when creating new systems.
Apparently I'm tag deficient this morning.. Ill just to it manually. --^
There is a difference though. In the right context this is fine. If you created a server with this idea at the onset or added these rules fairly near the inception, it is fine, because players are joining to play on that server, knowing that this is the case. There aren't people already heavily invested timewise into it. It is fine for different games to appeal to different player types, but the window in which you can change the game to fit a particular player type is very small.
I will give an example of what I mean. Say tomorrow, @noworries#8859 decided that neverwinter would be better off as a racing game and the dev team all agreed, gave him to go ahead and then somehow (through magic) he gets the game turned into a car game by next week thursday. The patch was released and suddenly, when everyone tries to log in, instead of being met with the character selection, they are met with a paint shop and options to customize their car for an online racing game.
You could imagine what the player response would be like. However, if cryptic studios started making another game which was a car game and released it separately, nobody would mind.
Though i more or less agree (as i veiw more NWO as a H&S subcategory than a classic MMORPG) : Neverwinter will never be a car game. But it is a MMORPG. so roleplay is right in the name genre :P
The few first words on wikipedia (though not my own personnal definition xD) (social word is the most important word :P) :
Role-playing is the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role. While the Oxford English Dictionary offers a definition of role-playing as "the changing of one's behaviour to fulfill a social role",[1] in the field of psychology, the term is used more loosely in four senses:
To refer to the playing of roles generally such as in a theatre, or educational setting To refer to taking a role of an existing character or person and acting it out with a partner taking someone else's role, often involving different genres of practice; To refer to a wide range of games including role-playing video game (RPG), play-by-mail games and more; To refer specifically to role-playing games.[2]
[...]
A role-playing game is a game in which the participants assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create stories. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterisation, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, they may improvise freely; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the games.
What is the story of your wizard ? :P (edit : 10 MS Word pages, 12pt arial font, you have 4h for this exam xD)
re-reddit : would you be able to play a half-orc barbarian with 6 in intell and 4 in wisdom as it should be played according to his characterization ? [hope my edits are before you read my post ^^)
There is a difference though. In the right context this is fine. If you created a server with this idea at the onset or added these rules fairly near the inception, it is fine, because players are joining to play on that server, knowing that this is the case. There aren't people already heavily invested timewise into it. It is fine for different games to appeal to different player types, but the window in which you can change the game to fit a particular player type is very small.
I will give an example of what I mean. Say tomorrow, @noworries#8859 decided that neverwinter would be better off as a racing game and the dev team all agreed, gave him to go ahead and then somehow (through magic) he gets the game turned into a car game by next week thursday. The patch was released and suddenly, when everyone tries to log in, instead of being met with the character selection, they are met with a paint shop and options to customize their car for an online racing game.
You could imagine what the player response would be like. However, if cryptic studios started making another game which was a car game and released it separately, nobody would mind.
Though i more or less agree (as i veiw more NWO as a H&S subcategory than a classic MMORPG) : Neverwinter will never be a car game. But it is a MMORPG. so roleplay is right in the name genre :P
The few first words on wikipedia (though not my own personnal definition xD) (social word is the most important word :P) :
Role-playing is the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role. While the Oxford English Dictionary offers a definition of role-playing as "the changing of one's behaviour to fulfill a social role",[1] in the field of psychology, the term is used more loosely in four senses:
To refer to the playing of roles generally such as in a theatre, or educational setting
[...]
A role-playing game is a game in which the participants assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create stories. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterisation, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, they may improvise freely; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the games.
Just because a game is an RPG, doesn't mean that all RPGs are the same, or that all RPGs have the same audience. As an easy example, lets look at Skyrim. Skyrim sold 30 million copies. It was fairly successful with a particular audience. Then as another example, we can look at Pathfinder: Kingmaker. I am not sure how many copies it sold, although I am fairly sure it is somewhere between 1 and 2 million. I personally (and this is a matter of taste) consider skyrim to be a shallow, poor RPG and Pathfinder to be a very good one. They are both games classified as, "RPGs" but their audience probably doesn't have much overlap. They play very differently from each other.
This means within the genre of RPG, you still have ways of defining games so that players may like one game and dislike another. People who play RPGs have heated arguments over whether games should be real time or turn based, whether they should have lots of reactivity and meaningful choices with harsh consequences, or shallow choices that don't really matter. There is a very diverse range of games and audiences which can possibly exist within the term RPG.
There are also different methods in which you can interpret the term. I read role playing game to mean, "A game in which your character's attributes determine their success as opposed to the player's personal skill." For you, I imagine it has more to do with player interaction.
First of all, I'd like to thank @thefabricant for responding to my post, getting the discussion going.
I've read all the responses up to now. I won't be arguing for or against anyone, as I feel that my point has already been proven. Disregarding the "how would it be implemented?", the "why Neverwinter needs it?" should be readily apparent.
Let me talk for a moment about the difference between "how?" and "why?". "How?" hones in on the specifics, on the implementation. CDP is *NOT* about the "how?" part. Chris specifically asked us to not focus on providing "how?" when contributing ideas.
In contrast, "why?" deals with underlying reasons and goals for something. The most useful contributions in CDP deal with "why?" - why something is good, bad, or ugly. Why taking a different approach might be a better solution. The "how?" part in a contribution only serves as an illustration, a quick proof that we're not talking about unattainable mechanics.
5
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
First of all, I'd like to thank @thefabricant for responding to my post, getting the discussion going.
I've read all the responses up to now. I won't be arguing for or against anyone, as I feel that my point has already been proven. Disregarding the "how would it be implemented?", the "why Neverwinter needs it?" should be readily apparent.
Let me talk for a moment about the difference between "how?" and "why?". "How?" hones in on the specifics, on the implementation. CDP is *NOT* about the "how?" part. Chris specifically asked us to not focus on providing "how?" when contributing ideas.
In contrast, "why?" deals with underlying reasons and goals for something. The most useful contributions in CDP deal with "why?" - why something is good, bad, or ugly. Why taking a different approach might be a better solution. The "how?" part in a contribution only serves as an illustration, a quick proof that we're not talking about unattainable mechanics.
Both the how and the why are important. "Feedback functionality," deals with how and (in my opinion), it is important to discuss the how because not all implementations are equal and 2 people who agree that a specific issue exists, may not agree on how to go about solving it. An easy example of that is the problem of crafted gear in contrast to dropped gear. Most, if not everyone here agrees that there is a problem, but we have seen numerous different proposed solutions to it, depending on how different people feel it should be solved and not everyone agrees with everyone elses solution.
Sometimes, a proposed solution may cause more problems than the problems it is trying to solve and it is important to discuss that aspect of it, to try and iron out all potential problems that do exist.
Mod 16 and mod 6, are both examples of changes you don't want to be making (or feel you have to make), because of how much they change the game.
Agree and disagree at the same time. Devs can change the way a game heart beats within some boundaries (the genre, some engine restriction, or the own philosophy you have of the game as a dev, etc), even in some core systems or mechanisms (or whatever else) to drive it toward what, as a dev, you think it would be more successfull on the longterm, or based on how you dicern your audience like/dislike/want/doesn't want, or with the goal to attract also another kind of population currently not so appealed by your game (or whatever any other reason).
You have the timid choice to do that tiny step by tiny step (probably the very point of the CDP), with multiple little changes over time which can be a very long and infinite process (especially when you feel emergencies, or business pressure). Or radical, big brutal changes, which immediately put into question a lot of what was done, doable, how, before that by "resident" players, and taking a risky gamble (can be a success in the longrun, but most of the time, because players are kind of conservative, it's at least a temporary disaster on your current community, no matter how well handled your communication is). Rate and range of the changes is a tricky cursor to adjust.
I think what was changed in mod16 would have been more successful if taken more step by step. Today, with some hindsight, the game is still very enjoyable.
No matter what, as in any industry, if you don't evolve, invest, and try to continuously improve your production/products (or diversify, or reduce your costs), though you may survive, chances are big you will be out of business at the end.
Mod 16 and mod 6, are both examples of changes you don't want to be making (or feel you have to make), because of how much they change the game.
Agree and disagree at the same time. Devs can change the way a game heart beats within some boundaries (the genre, some engine restriction, or the own philosophy you have of the game as a dev, etc), even in some core systems or mechanisms (or whatever else) to drive it toward what, as a dev, you think it would be more successfull on the longterm, or based on how you dicern your audience like/dislike/want/doesn't want, or with the goal to attract also another kind of population currently not so appealed by your game (or whatever any other reason).
You have the timid choice to do that tiny step by tiny step (probably the very point of the CDP), with multiple little changes over time which can be a very long and infinite process (especially when you feel emergencies, or business pressure). Or radical, big brutal changes, which immediately put into question a lot of what was done, doable, how, before that by "resident" players, and taking a risky gamble (can be a success in the longrun, but most of the time, because players are kind of conservative, it's at least a temporary disaster on your current community, no matter how well handled your communication is). Rate and range of the changes is a tricky cursor to adjust.
I think what was changed in mod16 would have been more successful if taken more step by step. Today, with some hindsight, the game is still very enjoyable.
No matter what, as in any industry, if you don't evolve, invest, and try to continuously improve your production/products (or diversify, or reduce your costs), though you may survive, chances are big you will be out of business at the end.
You can, but its not the type of decision you want to make often. If you do make it, it must be because you feel it is absolutely necessary. Thats why I said its an example of a change you don't want to be making, not an example of a change that shouldn't be made. There is a fine line between the 2 though.
Something about mmos that I personally feel, is they are rather bad at how they handle updates in general, because of the fact that the world is persistent. If something goes wrong and they need to undo a change they made, they can't just, "throw away the thing that went wrong," because that violates the world persistence. Other genres do not have this issue.
Quick reminder that the CDP is an initiative in which we work together to better the game for everyone. Personal agendas are fine but no matter how much they are pushed they won’t receive extra attention. Holistic thought that takes in account all player types and the business is key to our success as collaborative developers in Neverwinter.
I hope you all have a good weekend and again it takes time to bed in as a working group. The output has been very good and we will all get better at working together over time.
Just to chip in here about the mentoring thing being proposed.
Mentoring actually already is a thing and people who like to mentor / get mentoring do it already on a 1:1 or 1:n scale. You see it when someone joins a guild and gets plenty of help or, for example, on youtube where I and many other fellow youtubers do our contributions with plenty of guides on the game. Also if people have questions there are plenty of people available to answer those questions in various places (ingame, on discord, in streams etc). I know I answer a shitton of questions behind the scenes so I do see myself as a "mentor". If people don't make use of either of those options, that means that they highly likely want to (learn to) play this game alone and at their own pace.
I don't see any reason to add a layer of forced mentoring on top of what we already have. The current system is organic and works just fine.
Alright, I took some time to think of a better way to help new players who are trying to 'find the way'. Imo it's much better to make use of what we already have - and encourage it further - than to come up with a new system.
Feedback Goal.
Provide help to struggling people who don't know what to do.
Link those people to the guides already available everywhere.
Feedback Functionality.
What I would propose is making a guides section in the game. Let people who want to be a mentor link guides in that section. Make sure to:
1) explicitly mention this section to new players from very early on
2) make quick links to this section in many locations (like the queue manager for example)
This way people can easily find these guides which they before maybe did not know existed.
Imo this section should give room to video guides as well as written guides. Guides can be about anything (builds, dungeons/trials, game mechanics etc).
An additional benefit is that content creators who do write guides are encouraged to make more guides for many different topics that now don't get attention. Let the content creators work for you! I know I'd make even more guides if this would come into play
Risks and Concerns.
There is a (big) risk that the guides section becomes a total mess of spam if left unmoderated. To start off I would propose a ranking system to get the guides which are not spam (and are the most helpful?) to the top. For video guides - I would make it such that an account can be linked to a (Youtube) channel - so you can only link your own content.
Other means of moderating:
Let people report guides if they are not correct (remove reporting rights if abused)
Make it such that you have to have x amount of play time / bound companions and/or mounts before you can upload guides
Uploading 'spam' results in the removal of linking rights
Make it so that only partners (*ahum*) can link guides
Add the means that you deem necessary.
Edit: By the way - no currency needed for mentors. Helping people is by choice - not by the game forcing you to.
When I was new and was lost in PE, someone who no longer plays helped me. He invited me to his guild, he gave me advice on status, equipment and other things. But I was also a player who tried to understand the game, I wanted to know how the class worked. I always remember when I met Lazalia (I chose my main class because of their videos on YouTube) I questioned him about something, I also did it when I met Wicked and Unforgiven who created guides at the time. This is the perspective of someone who is a voracious player, but there are casual players, who play because they liked the story (I also liked the story) who just want to kill their free time.
As the rainer rightly said, nothing forced is nice. There is already content available on sites like https://nw.mmominds.com, https://guides.jannenw.info/category/general/ or on youtube as the excellent rainer channel. Everything will depend on how the player wants to play the game, whether in a casual or voracious way is what will make him seek knowledge.
In January alone, I must have trained some 3 new players who approached me, something I did not intend to do any more. My GF has a nickname that makes it clear where I am from, and that makes it easy to approach me. But I have already taught the basics to many other players. But looking at the friend list and seeing that many of them don't even play anymore and that my time with them was somehow a waste of time, it disappointed me and makes me not want to do that anymore.
What about the language problems that are likely to happen, problems for new players who have been tricked into making mistakes because of tips from unprepared tutors, etc.
Alright, I took some time to think of a better way to help new players who are trying to 'find the way'. Imo it's much better to make use of what we already have - and encourage it further - than to come up with a new system.
Feedback Goal.
Provide help to struggling people who don't know what to do.
Link those people to the guides already available everywhere.
Feedback Functionality.
What I would propose is making a guides section in the game. Let people who want to be a mentor link guides in that section. Make sure to:
1) explicitly mention this section to new players from very early on
2) make quick links to this section in many locations (like the queue manager for example)
This way people can easily find these guides which they before maybe did not know existed.
Imo this section should give room to video guides as well as written guides. Guides can be about anything (builds, dungeons/trials, game mechanics etc).
An additional benefit is that content creators who do write guides are encouraged to make more guides for many different topics that now don't get attention. Let the content creators work for you! I know I'd make even more guides if this would come into play
Risks and Concerns.
There is a (big) risk that the guides section becomes a total mess of spam if left unmoderated. To start off I would propose a ranking system to get the guides which are not spam (and are the most helpful?) to the top. For video guides - I would make it such that an account can be linked to a (Youtube) channel - so you can only link your own content.
Other means of moderating:
Let people report guides if they are not correct (remove reporting rights if abused)
Make it such that you have to have x amount of play time / bound companions and/or mounts before you can upload guides
Uploading 'spam' results in the removal of linking rights
Add the means that you deem necessary.
Edit: By the way - no currency needed for mentors. Helping people is by choice - not by the game forcing you to.
In my opinion this is the best thing suggested on this topic. Have links inside of the game, linking to discord and from there linking to guides. This way the community is more linked. On the guides part, they could be verified by a team, for example the same people who mod for reddit. And the builds could be upvoted / downvoted same as reddit with the better guides getting more attention. This way nobody is forced to do anything, and the new players have the super simple option of being able to view discord whenever they want. To either ask a general question, or to read an informative guide.
Comments
And I think both as the one who write and the one who read and reply should take a step back to really think about that.
Choice of words is important to try not to trigger passion/edges on people (especially as when replying with quote, each one of us directly point one specific people), but @modestmouse75 being able to understand that sometime someone (anyone) WILL badly choose his words, and focus yourself more on the substance than the form is what we should all do in a debate to stay constructive (though i love taunting too :P). For exemple : i think the red police bold color was really unnecessary and an agressive way. I may have been more triggered than @thefabricant with that, and less neutral than him :P.
Who care about roleplay here ? :P (just asking :P). I was, way back in the past, a Neverwinter Night DM on a quite popular french module. What do you think about our "rule" : reach the level 16 is possible by your own means (farming, questing, mobbashing). But only a DM could give you XP to reach the level 20 (max) : you play the game out of RP, you don't participate to RP events/campaigns lead by the DM Team, you don't create yourself RP situations-interactions with the other rolists, ok fine, be a happy level 16 :P. Obviously, constraint like that just throw away part of what our audience/public would have been without. And i feel like that was what thefabricant was concerned about.
NwN modules were free fan-creations for the most part, no DM was payed, so no business to keep in mind (ans so we didn't care about the amount of population). For what it's worth, that was the way to only have rolists on our module, kind of an extreme decision we had to take because we started to be "polluted" with people having the solo gamer mindset, or the powergamer-munchkin one, rather than the social-roleplay approach we wanted to be the roots of our module. The angle may have not be the one we should have chosen : maybe a more "incentive" and "optional" approach to get people involved in roleplaying would have been a better way... but i kind of lost this old past debate with the other DMs ^^
Your quote about phase 2 would be fine, except that you've been doing this since page 4 .. before phase 2. That was at the time above your paygrade, and continues to be largely non-useful. Not just to me, but to a range of people that have continued to push back on your patronizing responses to people's various ideas. This is neither constructive nor 'in a valuable way', it adds nothing but negation based on your opinion of what you feel 'everyone needs' and what 'they should have to' in this instance.
I don't mind criticism, it certainly can help build ideas up when done constructively. That is different than pure negation.. phrases like "this can not be" or "will make neverwinter cease to be neverwinter", and "People need to learn to accept that" that you phrase as an unqualified statement do not add value to an idea or even present an alternative.
"Forced" progression Issues:
Some people dont want to be taught information and like to learn things as they go along. There are already guides online for various other things in the game, and some people prefer to learn at their own pace. Would this mean less people learning = less people teaching = less people progressing? Then regarding that, we will now need a 1:1 teacher:student. If this is not balanced evenly that it cannot work to begin with. And some might say, that it doesnt need to be 1:1, however that means more or less work for the mentor, and then also more or less progression per "student".
Some people are not good at learning. If you are matched with those people, then because they cannot understand a principle whereas another "student" can understand it easier, mentors would get an unfair progression, on something that it outside of their control.
Some people are not good at teaching. For example, myself. I am really bad with words, and I have a small amount of patience. I dont try to be offensive, but sometimes I can be seen that way. This might turn new people away from playing.
Some people might be out to troll the students, and the students wouldnt know any better (example using coal wards for every upgrade, even at 90%). Finally some mentors might just not have the right information, and unknowingly teach them wrong information that would hurt the newer player, which is the opposite of what this mentoring system is trying to do.
Some people have anxiety and are anxious around people, especially strangers. Some people dont like being around other people, and prefer to be alone, they use video games as an escape from the world. Forcing people to interact with others could have a serious mental reaction depending on the person.
The person who you are partnered up with could speak a different language.
Other personal issues. My partner might never log in again, so can I never progress? What if they play 1hour a week, and I play 100h, or the other way around. 1 person could make 100s of bot accounts and get them partnered with other people then slow the progression of many players.
These are just a few issues you would have if this was introduced with forced helping of random players.
"Non-forced" progression issues:
Depending on the increased rate of progression, then people might not bother with it to begin with, and then it becomes a waste of time and resources to add an idea, that could have been spent working on other things (new class please Chris). If it becomes too good of a way to progress, then it would be manipulated.
How would this thing even work? Help a player beat X dungeon for the first time? There is only a limit amount of people this would work on until everyone has achieved it.
The best way how I can give an example. You go into work, and your boss asks you to walk with them outside, and when you do they point and pick the first random person they see. Your boss then says to you "You have to teach this person to do your job, otherwise you will not get paid / pay increase". The chances are you dont want to teach them, the stranger doesnt want to be taught, so then why would you be forced into a situation where this could happen?
These are just some ideas I thought of in the past hour, there probably are a lot more issues if I would spend more time into thinking about it.
This is the situation you are trying to avoid.
Secret vote.. yes. I had assumed that. Generally using the same voting system that we already have for queues and events like marauders.
Minimum pay? Definitely. We would get a lot out of 'partial credit' I feel. Care has to be taken to have minimum participation though.. like x amount of damage dealt, all characters moved, y amount of time. Cant have people just pop in, stand at the fire and expect to get paid.
Was my criticism based on:
- The person.
- Something offtopic to the discussion.
No, it was criticism of the idea. I could have tried to fix the idea and that would have been more valuable feedback sure, but the exclusion of doing so does not make the feedback useless, it is just placing the onus of fixing it onto the person who proposed it in the first place. Furthermore, the feedback is actionable. It isn't just, "this idea sucks." It is, "this is wrong with this idea." Clearly, it is possible to act on that statement by trying to go and fix it.That something could be transmute changes or titles that dont affect game play or income, but are still desirable to some people. ..of course some RAD would be necessary too IMO just to have a base to start from. Also the more 'horizontal progression' we have the more opportunities there are for rewards that don't have to focus on AD or BIS. But for now we have to start where we are, not where we wish we were.
In the short term mentoring is quite 'inefficient'. Its only in the long term, after bringing up new generations of friends, guildies, and former 'students' that one starts to see 'efficiency'. At that point you've build up a larger pool of knowledgeable qualified players that can play with you in higher content. But one has to have incentives to get there and influence good behaviour that leads us to a more healthy game population.
Theres a lot that we do already that isn't efficient. Pretty much anything other than doing the queue and perhaps do a speed run of the top content flavor of the month is inefficient. We need to bring some life back to those who like to go back and play/teach the old stuff without that being either 0 benefit or actively costing them depending on whether you want to think of opportunity cost.
I will give an example of what I mean. Say tomorrow, @noworries#8859 decided that neverwinter would be better off as a racing game and the dev team all agreed, gave him to go ahead and then somehow (through magic) he gets the game turned into a car game by next week thursday. The patch was released and suddenly, when everyone tries to log in, instead of being met with the character selection, they are met with a paint shop and options to customize their car for an online racing game.
You could imagine what the player response would be like. However, if cryptic studios started making another game which was a car game and released it separately, nobody would mind.
This is what I mean when I say that an idea, "would change the game neverwinter is." Neverwinter already has an audience, that has developed a certain expectation for how the game is going to be. If you deviate too much from that expectation, you will get heavy player backlash. In the ideal MMO I would like to play, there are actually many things I would want different from NW, but I do not propose them because I know they would fundamentally change the game. An easy example, in my personal, "ideal mmo," players would not be able to solo, at all. When you went out into the open world, you would be automatically grouped up into groups of 5 or more and content would be balanced around that. This however, does not fit into the context of neverwinter at all and its fairly obvious that players who like having the ability to solo would rebel against it. Hence, this is not something that I propose. For this to work, it would have to be implemented into a game at its inception so that it is a determining factor for whether or not someone wants to pick up the game and not a determining factor in whether or not the leave.
As for phase 3 of Rewards and Progression, I'll provide a high level overview of my favorite topics while not pointing to anyone's ideas individually, for now.
1) Horizontal progression with some vertical steps here and there (like once per year). This includes SHs, gear, boons, and a way to upgrade old gear to "catch up" to the new game. I think unique bonuses should have a good amount of longevity, if not forever (this helps maintain relevance of old content).
2) New MW recipes. MW rework.
3) Rewards for promoting healthy player interactions, expanding social networks, and getting out of one's own shell (so to speak).
Not all people are compatible, choices like this should exist. There is also the "risk and concern" that an experienced player makes new accounts to benefit their main by "mentoring" it, which probably needs to be addressed.
What I am against is a ranking, but perhaps consider a form of Kudos a new player can leave on the Profile of another players. Only let us leave 10 kudos a month / five a week / 1 per day or some other restriction that doesn't let us spam our besties with it.
There are several other options to go about this.
I do think this (or some sort of) acknowledgement would be enough. Often people that helped out / went out of their way do not get anything, no "ok thx" or ":)"
------------------------------------------------
Ok thats understandable. Heres the emphasis I saw. So here we have the basis of our conflict here. Definitely it depends on how widely this 'progression' is taken to be I suppose. And yea there will be adjustments needed over time to curb abuses as people learn to use it, but thats pretty much always the case when creating new systems.
Apparently I'm tag deficient this morning.. Ill just to it manually. --^
The few first words on wikipedia (though not my own personnal definition xD) (social word is the most important word :P) : What is the story of your wizard ? :P (edit : 10 MS Word pages, 12pt arial font, you have 4h for this exam xD)
re-reddit : would you be able to play a half-orc barbarian with 6 in intell and 4 in wisdom as it should be played according to his characterization ? [hope my edits are before you read my post ^^)
This means within the genre of RPG, you still have ways of defining games so that players may like one game and dislike another. People who play RPGs have heated arguments over whether games should be real time or turn based, whether they should have lots of reactivity and meaningful choices with harsh consequences, or shallow choices that don't really matter. There is a very diverse range of games and audiences which can possibly exist within the term RPG.
There are also different methods in which you can interpret the term. I read role playing game to mean, "A game in which your character's attributes determine their success as opposed to the player's personal skill." For you, I imagine it has more to do with player interaction.
SW:Mouse
OP:MisfitMouse
I've read all the responses up to now. I won't be arguing for or against anyone, as I feel that my point has already been proven. Disregarding the "how would it be implemented?", the "why Neverwinter needs it?" should be readily apparent.
Let me talk for a moment about the difference between "how?" and "why?". "How?" hones in on the specifics, on the implementation. CDP is *NOT* about the "how?" part. Chris specifically asked us to not focus on providing "how?" when contributing ideas.
In contrast, "why?" deals with underlying reasons and goals for something. The most useful contributions in CDP deal with "why?" - why something is good, bad, or ugly. Why taking a different approach might be a better solution. The "how?" part in a contribution only serves as an illustration, a quick proof that we're not talking about unattainable mechanics.
Sometimes, a proposed solution may cause more problems than the problems it is trying to solve and it is important to discuss that aspect of it, to try and iron out all potential problems that do exist.
You have the timid choice to do that tiny step by tiny step (probably the very point of the CDP), with multiple little changes over time which can be a very long and infinite process (especially when you feel emergencies, or business pressure). Or radical, big brutal changes, which immediately put into question a lot of what was done, doable, how, before that by "resident" players, and taking a risky gamble (can be a success in the longrun, but most of the time, because players are kind of conservative, it's at least a temporary disaster on your current community, no matter how well handled your communication is).
Rate and range of the changes is a tricky cursor to adjust.
I think what was changed in mod16 would have been more successful if taken more step by step. Today, with some hindsight, the game is still very enjoyable.
No matter what, as in any industry, if you don't evolve, invest, and try to continuously improve your production/products (or diversify, or reduce your costs), though you may survive, chances are big you will be out of business at the end.
Something about mmos that I personally feel, is they are rather bad at how they handle updates in general, because of the fact that the world is persistent. If something goes wrong and they need to undo a change they made, they can't just, "throw away the thing that went wrong," because that violates the world persistence. Other genres do not have this issue.
I hope you all have a good weekend and again it takes time to bed in as a working group. The output has been very good and we will all get better at working together over time.
Chris
Mentoring actually already is a thing and people who like to mentor / get mentoring do it already on a 1:1 or 1:n scale. You see it when someone joins a guild and gets plenty of help or, for example, on youtube where I and many other fellow youtubers do our contributions with plenty of guides on the game. Also if people have questions there are plenty of people available to answer those questions in various places (ingame, on discord, in streams etc). I know I answer a shitton of questions behind the scenes so I do see myself as a "mentor". If people don't make use of either of those options, that means that they highly likely want to (learn to) play this game alone and at their own pace.
I don't see any reason to add a layer of forced mentoring on top of what we already have. The current system is organic and works just fine.
Twitch
Patreon
Alright, I took some time to think of a better way to help new players who are trying to 'find the way'. Imo it's much better to make use of what we already have - and encourage it further - than to come up with a new system.
Feedback Goal.
- Provide help to struggling people who don't know what to do.
- Link those people to the guides already available everywhere.
Feedback Functionality.What I would propose is making a guides section in the game. Let people who want to be a mentor link guides in that section. Make sure to:
- 1) explicitly mention this section to new players from very early on
- 2) make quick links to this section in many locations (like the queue manager for example)
This way people can easily find these guides which they before maybe did not know existed.Imo this section should give room to video guides as well as written guides. Guides can be about anything (builds, dungeons/trials, game mechanics etc).
An additional benefit is that content creators who do write guides are encouraged to make more guides for many different topics that now don't get attention. Let the content creators work for you! I know I'd make even more guides if this would come into play
Risks and Concerns.
There is a (big) risk that the guides section becomes a total mess of spam if left unmoderated. To start off I would propose a ranking system to get the guides which are not spam (and are the most helpful?) to the top. For video guides - I would make it such that an account can be linked to a (Youtube) channel - so you can only link your own content.
Other means of moderating:
- Let people report guides if they are not correct (remove reporting rights if abused)
- Make it such that you have to have x amount of play time / bound companions and/or mounts before you can upload guides
- Uploading 'spam' results in the removal of linking rights
- Make it so that only partners (*ahum*) can link guides
Add the means that you deem necessary.Edit: By the way - no currency needed for mentors. Helping people is by choice - not by the game forcing you to.
Twitch
Patreon
As the rainer rightly said, nothing forced is nice. There is already content available on sites like https://nw.mmominds.com, https://guides.jannenw.info/category/general/ or on youtube as the excellent rainer channel. Everything will depend on how the player wants to play the game, whether in a casual or voracious way is what will make him seek knowledge.
In January alone, I must have trained some 3 new players who approached me, something I did not intend to do any more. My GF has a nickname that makes it clear where I am from, and that makes it easy to approach me. But I have already taught the basics to many other players. But looking at the friend list and seeing that many of them don't even play anymore and that my time with them was somehow a waste of time, it disappointed me and makes me not want to do that anymore.
What about the language problems that are likely to happen, problems for new players who have been tricked into making mistakes because of tips from unprepared tutors, etc.