Mentoring system

For those who are new to the MMO scene, the standard is that when you have someone in your party with a significantly higher level than you, the game starts drastically cutting (and/or halting) any experience you gain to prevent them from shepherding you through tough areas for better experience, rewards, etc. than you should be obtaining for your level.

What I'm worried about is that friends of different levels (or even higher leveled/more experienced strangers wanting to help you with a difficult quest) wanting to play together. Without a mentoring system, what we would see quite often is friends unable to play together since one out-leveled the other.

What I propose is fairly simple. If someone is in your group, they can right-click your name or character and have the option for "Mentor [character name here]". The lower character can then deny or accept the mentorship. When accepted, the stronger character gets scaled down to the weaker character's level to keep experience gain normal for the weaker character.

Basically, it's just the reverse process of their PvP scale up feature they have in place for Cyrodiil.

Is there anything you would personally want in a mentoring system for the game? Or do you simply not want one? Discuss it here!

I agree with your idea, scaling up is easy enough, so why not reverse it, only issue I can think of is scaling back might be harder to achieve based on differing levels, since scaling up is straight to the max level.

But sounds good to me. Might even allow players who missed lower level content to go back and experience it properly instead of steam rolling it.

ESO will be my first MMO so far, and I like the idea. Seems quite reasonable to make that option.

That's a good idea and shouldn't be too hard because what you would be taking away is Stamina, magica, and health, set them back to what they were at that lvl.
Although I don't think it may be needed, first off you have to participate in a fight to get exp and the more you help the more exp you get so although your with strong people you have a high chance of dying or they can make it that exp gain in areas where mobs are 10+ lvls higher than the player and he wont get any exp. There are things they can do to keep this from happening but its a very good point.

They had a mentoring system in Everquest 2, and honestly I wasn't a big fan. Mentoring systems always seemed to push people away from cooperation with each other and instead always looked for the people massively higher level to mentor them. Instead I want to see low level people cooperate with each other to a accomplish tasks without having to rely on lvl 50's to power them through an area. While mentoring is a good idea, I feel it detracts from community and gameplay in the long run.

With the instanced loot and xp, it's possible that such a problem may already be solved. It's a good idea to be sure, but possibly not needed. Cause if me and my friend go kill a monster, we both gain loot, xp and finesse independent of one another. It's possible party xp sharing will work similarly. Or at least, there will be no change as to how much xp is distributed just cause a higher level is in the party. Rather than having all xp scaled down, why not just doll out the same amount of xp as they would have if the higher level was the same as the others in his group. Everyone would get xp, but he would not be getting enough to grind up, so maybe it balances?

(July 12th 2013, 03:25 AM)Ferroc Wrote: With the instanced loot and xp, it's possible that such a problem may already be solved. It's a good idea to be sure, but possibly not needed. Cause if me and my friend go kill a monster, we both gain loot, xp and finesse independent of one another. It's possible party xp sharing will work similarly. Or at least, there will be no change as to how much xp is distributed just cause a higher level is in the party. Rather than having all xp scaled down, why not just doll out the same amount of xp as they would have if the higher level was the same as the others in his group. Everyone would get xp, but he would not be getting enough to grind up, so maybe it balances?

But then what if the lower level players goes with a higher level player into a high level area, will the low level player get the same exp as the higher level player? thus enabling power leveling.

Ah see that's where things would get weird. I doubt that they would scale you up in an area outside of cyrodiil just cause that removes the whole levelling system really. If a mentoring program allowed you the scale up to match the level of the highest party member, we would have tons of people running around scamming the system by abusing this. No one would really ever "level" per say. You'd get extra talent points and abilities, but you wouldn't grow in stats at all.

Personally I'm ok with the battle levelling in cyrodiil, but I would prefer not seeing mentor scaling up in PVE areas, just cause then we might get people abusing that system. Scaling down makes perfect sense, cause you're walking a friend through an area he MIT be having trouble with. But think also: why would a mentor talk his pupil to higher levelled areas? The point is to teach and help the lower levelled player to get through the game, not to just instantly level him up so he can just blast through. That doesn't teach him anything. There's no learning done

I played Rift with the mentoring system and liked it, but I preferred the way Guild Wars 2 did it. If you entered and area that was below your level it simply scaled you back to the zone. You're stronger then you would be at that actual level due to gear and skills, but it kept the whole world open to you even once you out leveled a zone.

(July 12th 2013, 03:20 AM)DoRakk Wrote: They had a mentoring system in Everquest 2, and honestly I wasn't a big fan. Mentoring systems always seemed to push people away from cooperation with each other and instead always looked for the people massively higher level to mentor them. Instead I want to see low level people cooperate with each other to a accomplish tasks without having to rely on lvl 50's to power them through an area. While mentoring is a good idea, I feel it detracts from community and gameplay in the long run.

I agree, a mentor system is lame, because it fosters nepotism. It makes it harder for people coming into the game without friends playing and therefore hinders the player base. It also causes there to be high level people without the skill/experience learned from going through things cold. Instead of lower level people levelling and completing quests simultaeneously, the people who know somebody get to end game first.

I've participated in mentor systems previously on other games, I think they are excellent especially when you are running a guild with new members coming in and needing that extra help. A great idea for ESO as well that could be used for faster acceleration for PvP or even PvE.

I'm not a big fan of mentoring system, if only because it takes away the need to socialize and group up with people in your level range. Also if you ask for help from a much higher level char, there has to be consequences, the loss of exp is the price you'd have to play to storm through a place or quest and still get the gear reward.

I think the very idea of mentoring comes from the games being dumbed down since the release of WoW, many people want the reward without dealing with the hardship of fighting their way through it. (I mean no offense to anyone, it's just my honest opinion on the subject ^^)

The mentoring system in ESO is also the marriage system, sort of. In game, you can partake in a 'friendship ritual' in which players buy rings, and wear them. And whenever those players play together they get bonus XP and stuff. Now if people want to make it like a marriage system and consider that other play their 'in-game spouse' that is a player decision. It has been stated that players can have multiple friendship rings with many people but it would be very expensive. So it also could work as a mentoring program where you get rings and play through with a friend, and if one is higher levelled than the other it's just a player choice