Helping Achaea grow

Trevize

What if the Kudos system paid out say, at the end of every achaean year - or even once an RL month, to avoid making it super clear who has given you kudos and when?

Sarapis

Vansittart said:

Tecton said:

Kez said:

People may be less inclined to help newbies now that mentors don't really get any motivation outside of it being something they want to do. Mentors used to get 15% of their protege's first few purchases. Now they get 5% in theory, which is actually nothing because promotions and packages (like buying lessons or globes) count as purchases in that total but give the mentor nothing, and are most likely to be the first several purchases (I think).

I've had lots of proteges because I like helping newbies, but have very rarely received any mentor credits even with proteges buying left and right. I had one protege who bought some promotion and asked me if I got anything when he did. When I said no, he got upset and issued himself to find out it wasn't a bug.

There are so many safeguards in place to prevent abuse of the mentor system that it leaves little to no incentive for people to help newbies if they wouldn't already.

When I've made new characters, I've found that sometimes people are not just uninterested in newbies, but are actually mean to them. As a regular player, more than half of my character attempts have logged off permanently because of the way they were treated by older characters. One was given a filthy nickname by one of their house secretaries, and no, I hadn't done anything to earn it. I would like to see people be more welcoming of newbies, but I think they like their world and don't want anyone to come in and possibly influence it.

That's definitely something that I've been pondering recently, and I think we're going to tweak mentor bonuses so you will get 5% on no-brainer packages (both lessons and credits) from your proteges.

This is a really interesting discussion.  For what it's worth, I don't think that the formal mentoring thing is, actually, that worthwhile - although I completely understand why you would think of it first, because it's something you can actually affect whereas the social/old players helping new players aspect of things is not really an admin issue as such.  Even back in, what I think of as the golden age of newbie training, the formal mentoring was usually just a way of people hoovering up free credits.  Often, when I tried an alt, I'd get "mentored" pretty quick, but my "mentor" would then do nothing, and other people would actually do the work of mentoring.

Without getting into the old guilds/houses/autoclass/player power abuse vs reward debate (which is fascinating, but tends to derail things pretty quick), one thing that I think is seriously worth considering is a system that rewards the work of mentoring rather than the title.  Every house has a secretary in charge of training with aides - and those people are absolutely key to newbie retention.  Way back in the mists of time, when I first started that was, far and away above everything else, what made me stay.  The fact that a stranger, not knowing me, was willing to spend an hour with me and introduce me to the game, my guild, my city, my class and show me some gentle roleplay which also introduced me to the wider political/theological parts of Achaea blew my mind.  I thought that if people were willing to put this kind of care and attention into a game which was obviously fairly free-form, and player-driven then parts of it, at least, would be completely amazing.  Which they were.

My experience is that that doesn't really happen any more.  Or, at least, happens much much less than it used to.  I think it would pay huge dividends to try and set up a system that gave rewards for that kind of behavior.  Maybe it's the Novice Secretary's job to log (based on reports from their aides) the quantity of hours spent formally newbie training.  The admin have access to that log, and rewards trigger off it (a small credit reward maybe, or something else groovy - you guys have plenty of things in your toolbox to incentivize experienced players).  Yes, the system is open to abuse (as all systems are), but I'd imagine the threat of shrubbing for false reporting would act as a substantial deterrent.  (Especially if it's made clear that only one-on-one training of actual newbies counts - no group hunting, no hanging around with an experienced character who is new to the House etc).

The rewards could be small but meaningful so it wouldn't massively skew things, but I think that kind of thing could make a massive difference.  It's a bit more paperwork for one of the House secretaries (though, to be honest, not much - and the secretaries themselves could get a small periodic reward for doing the job).

Yeah, I'd agree that the mentor system is mainly abused by people just looking to get free credits, and is why the mentor rewards were brought down substantially.

Unfortunately, there is absolutely no way that we have the bandwidth to individually monitor and reward players for that kind of behavior. We could never just trust the reports of the Novice Secretary's (way too easily abused with alts and kickbacks, etc) and in the end the system would just be abused by people to hoover up the rewards. 

Deladan

I honestly like the idea of a flyer. A good eye catching flyer for a business can bring in hundreds of walk-in customers in any given area. When I was a promoter, it was nothing to see 250-500 people show up to an event with the flyer in hand because that's how they found out about the event. 

Aktillum

Could just fly around in a helicopter raining down QR code business cards.

Exelethril

Whatever you do, don't advertise on CoD and LoL forums. Thank you.

Greys

May be interesting if the reward was say 50-100 lessons if they retain someone till the person is 20?

Vansittart

Sarapis said:

Vansittart said:

Tecton said:

Kez said:

People may be less inclined to help newbies now that mentors don't really get any motivation outside of it being something they want to do. Mentors used to get 15% of their protege's first few purchases. Now they get 5% in theory, which is actually nothing because promotions and packages (like buying lessons or globes) count as purchases in that total but give the mentor nothing, and are most likely to be the first several purchases (I think).

I've had lots of proteges because I like helping newbies, but have very rarely received any mentor credits even with proteges buying left and right. I had one protege who bought some promotion and asked me if I got anything when he did. When I said no, he got upset and issued himself to find out it wasn't a bug.

There are so many safeguards in place to prevent abuse of the mentor system that it leaves little to no incentive for people to help newbies if they wouldn't already.

When I've made new characters, I've found that sometimes people are not just uninterested in newbies, but are actually mean to them. As a regular player, more than half of my character attempts have logged off permanently because of the way they were treated by older characters. One was given a filthy nickname by one of their house secretaries, and no, I hadn't done anything to earn it. I would like to see people be more welcoming of newbies, but I think they like their world and don't want anyone to come in and possibly influence it.

That's definitely something that I've been pondering recently, and I think we're going to tweak mentor bonuses so you will get 5% on no-brainer packages (both lessons and credits) from your proteges.

This is a really interesting discussion.  For what it's worth, I don't think that the formal mentoring thing is, actually, that worthwhile - although I completely understand why you would think of it first, because it's something you can actually affect whereas the social/old players helping new players aspect of things is not really an admin issue as such.  Even back in, what I think of as the golden age of newbie training, the formal mentoring was usually just a way of people hoovering up free credits.  Often, when I tried an alt, I'd get "mentored" pretty quick, but my "mentor" would then do nothing, and other people would actually do the work of mentoring.

Without getting into the old guilds/houses/autoclass/player power abuse vs reward debate (which is fascinating, but tends to derail things pretty quick), one thing that I think is seriously worth considering is a system that rewards the work of mentoring rather than the title.  Every house has a secretary in charge of training with aides - and those people are absolutely key to newbie retention.  Way back in the mists of time, when I first started that was, far and away above everything else, what made me stay.  The fact that a stranger, not knowing me, was willing to spend an hour with me and introduce me to the game, my guild, my city, my class and show me some gentle roleplay which also introduced me to the wider political/theological parts of Achaea blew my mind.  I thought that if people were willing to put this kind of care and attention into a game which was obviously fairly free-form, and player-driven then parts of it, at least, would be completely amazing.  Which they were.

My experience is that that doesn't really happen any more.  Or, at least, happens much much less than it used to.  I think it would pay huge dividends to try and set up a system that gave rewards for that kind of behavior.  Maybe it's the Novice Secretary's job to log (based on reports from their aides) the quantity of hours spent formally newbie training.  The admin have access to that log, and rewards trigger off it (a small credit reward maybe, or something else groovy - you guys have plenty of things in your toolbox to incentivize experienced players).  Yes, the system is open to abuse (as all systems are), but I'd imagine the threat of shrubbing for false reporting would act as a substantial deterrent.  (Especially if it's made clear that only one-on-one training of actual newbies counts - no group hunting, no hanging around with an experienced character who is new to the House etc).

The rewards could be small but meaningful so it wouldn't massively skew things, but I think that kind of thing could make a massive difference.  It's a bit more paperwork for one of the House secretaries (though, to be honest, not much - and the secretaries themselves could get a small periodic reward for doing the job).

Yeah, I'd agree that the mentor system is mainly abused by people just looking to get free credits, and is why the mentor rewards were brought down substantially.

Unfortunately, there is absolutely no way that we have the bandwidth to individually monitor and reward players for that kind of behavior. We could never just trust the reports of the Novice Secretary's (way too easily abused with alts and kickbacks, etc) and in the end the system would just be abused by people to hoover up the rewards. 

I get that, but it's possible you're underestimating the playerbase here.  There is a massive desire, I think, to help with newbie retention and the vast majority of people who are working on the novice schemes in Achaean orgs are good people doing God's work.  It might be worth a trial scheme that you can then get some feed back in a few months to see if there's a widespread view that it's being abused or what have you.  I think there'd be a good chance of the community (in this one case!) policing itself.

Alternatively, I think almost all of the abuse potential comes from alts of existing players.  You could have some kind of system where a novice aide submits a report that they've done a lengthy introduction, which then prompts a message to the newbie to confirm it.  Then once both reports are submitted, you could check to see if it's an alt and, if not, it logs it as a +1 for that person.  And you get a reward after a few reports?  Is that workable from a bandwidth perspective?  I don't think that entirely cuts out the potential for abuse but it might be worth having a couple of bad hats abusing the system for (fairly small, incremental) rewards in return for the potential benefits?

Jhaeli

First of all, I just want to say that this thread (and related) has been mature and brilliant, and it has been a pleasure to read. There's something very affirming about seeing the community rally around the game like this in a very positive manner.

I do like the idea of a kudos system vs. a mentor system, but one thing to remember is that whatever is put in place needs to be a closed, low-oversight kind of deal. Monitoring for alts or abuse just adds more to the administrative plate, which I imagine is already full enough as it is and takes away from updates, crafting, etc. So it needs to be something that has built-in counters to issues like favouritism and alt-abuse.

One idea off the top of my head is that everyone has a kudos "point" that they can give away once per year to whomever they want, with the caveat that they have to have played X number of hours to qualify, forcing a bit of investment first. When a person accumulates X number of kudos points - say, 50 - they automatically receive 100 lessons or whatever. Something small enough that it isn't worth abusing for, but nevertheless, a worthy thanks for being a helpful person. (Feel free to rip this idea apart, just wanted to try and add to the conversation!)

Silvarien

My mentor, Telendrieth, continued to help me even after I switched from my first character onto Silvy, so none of those formal rewards mattered to him. He was never after credits, and I am very grateful to him for all his patience and hours spent explaining things to me. I think regarding the mentoring system, mentoring as it is now could be kept largely intact if the hard-credit rewards were all changed to tangible game-related rewards that only come to matter if the protege stays around and becomes a veteran player. For example, the mentor system has an experience bonus that applies when protege and mentor hunt together. If the mentor is a lvl 102 dragon and the protege is lvl 23, this bonus won't mean much, but if the protege becomes dragon him or herself, it'll be another story. If all credit-related rewards were removed, and a number of new incentives such as this were implemented, the mentorship would decisively pay off only if the mentor actually took the role of mentor seriously and had a big role to play in making the new player into an established player. That would still result in actual game-related reasons to mentor -- but to get a new player to that point, the mentor would need to do a ton of work and a ton of teaching, which in my opinion is the point of being mentor in the first place. The problem with this variant is all alt characters would mentor with their friends to reap the mentor system incentives, but with stuff like the exp bonus in the old system I think this could have been done in the old system anyway. I am not sure there are any mentor-related rewards/incentives that could be implemented without having this side-effect.

Kyrra

I never had a mentor when I started playing, so I really don't see the point of the system. If I had questions about something, I'd go to the people that I thought could best help me, and now I help everyone regardless of some formal status.

Even with House and Ordee reqs where you have to have a mentor, the majority of these are informal and not real mentor-protege relationships because a lot of people don't want to lose what few perks they have with their first mentor like the increased experience from hunting together. 

It'd be nice if there was something in effect regardless of whether someone in your first or third mentor, but would it really matter?

I think what you get out of mentoring someone is only as much as you put in, and people inevitably burn out if they are helping folks all the time. People go dormant, they change Houses or cities. I felt gutted when one of my only two novices just up and bailed on the House without even letting me know first, and while I recognise that people have to go where they are going to enjoy themselves most, that just felt like a waste of time for me and it stripped my protege of any real future perks with another mentor for their House requirements.

Kasya

When I first started playing, as pretty much a true newbie, I didn't get a mentor until after the time period was up. Because Achaea can be addictive from the start, and honestly, the player who mentored me deserved all the credits he would have earned. As it was, I think I gave him some anyway later on, but yeah. There are some really good mentors out there. And 50 hours can be too short of a time to determine who's around at the same time as you, and who's actually invested in you.

Szanthax

Some more testing on seeing how many votes I could garner on the way to school, and I learned some things:

Apparently, when I connect to the random CoxWifi hotspots throughout town, it's all one network, so it doesn't register as different votes  

I wasn't able to connect to more than one starbucks wifi hotspot, however, so I wasn't able to test if they registered as independent votes. My school, home, work, and the laundromat next door each counted as single votes however.

More tidbits: It's hard to connect while riding the bus... it either doesn't stop long enough to connect or once you connect the bus leaves the wifi zone. Oi.

There are a few bars by my house now so i'm going to see if many of them have wifi and see if i can just do a loop around the block and get some votes in.

Wish... I could vote like this for real. ... not that i'm against texas or anything...

Sarapis

How are you telling whether a single vote counts or not? (Keeping in mind TMS only updates every 15 minutes or so.)

Kayeil

I don't know how that works if not logged into the game, but if you're logged in Achaea sends back: Thank you for voting! However, multiple votes in a 12 hour span are only counted once.

Tahquil

That 'thank you for voting!' Pops up every time you visit Achaea.cm/vote... Not when you actually vote

Sarapis

Tahquil is correct. This post explains in detail what you have to do to vote and make sure it counts. http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/4242/voting-for-achaea-a-must-read

Cynlael

Clicky clicky!

Y'all got no excuse, now! Go sticky that, @Sarapis :pleased: 

Szanthax

Sarapis said:

How are you telling whether a single vote counts or not? (Keeping in mind TMS only updates every 15 minutes or so.)

oh good to know. I thought it was instant because i went from like 750, switched wifi, 751.

Rip

Just cross reference this to the Bacon and RP thread.  Nice work all.

I voted twice today...probably won't be a habit but...Cheers!

Gamden

The vote button shortcut on my Andriod works like a charm..pop in/vote/go on with the day

Gamden

Stupid Question, but on Top MudSites, what exactly is the IN and Out?people logging in?Votes?

Antonius

I'd assume IN is the number of people who have voted for the game, and OUT is the number of people who have clicked the link that redirects back to the game's website.

Trevize

Antonius said:

I'd assume IN is the number of people who have voted for the game, and OUT is the number of people who have clicked the link that redirects back to the game's website.

Yes. As a traffic exchange, they measure traffic in how many people the game sends to their site and how many the site is sending to the game, hence in/out.

Gamden

Ah ok makes sense thanx!

Medi

I know this has been talked about, but what're thoughts these days on banning OOC clans? (I'd suggest keeping clans that deal with things like mudlet/svo)

Ainly

Medi said:

I know this has been talked about, but what're thoughts these days on banning OOC clans? (I'd suggest keeping clans that deal with things like mudlet/svo)

I sometimes wonder if they contribute to people just "mindlessly" standing around while they chat oocly instead of actually roleplaying.

As for player retention, the best solution really is for us as players to actively engage newbies.  Obviously, we can't be forced to do this, but ultimately if we want a wider player base this is what we need to do.  Not because we're required to, but because it is in our best interest to support the population of the game.

Silvarien

Medi said:

I know this has been talked about, but what're thoughts these days on banning OOC clans? (I'd suggest keeping clans that deal with things like mudlet/svo)

@Medi : I would argue against banning OOC clans. There is a very distinct line between IC and OOC, though some people (me included) don't always see it. But I've never seen any sort of prohibition on the game against players associating with each other on an OOC basis. I am in a couple of OOC clans but personally am not active in any -- but I do see people enjoying them, and I think it would be a good thing for the game to keep such enjoyment on the game, even if it is of a sort that needs to be "tightly contained" in the clans themselves. Literally the only thing that would happen from banning OOC clans would be a movement by their participants into an off-site medium, such as Facebook groups or Skype. That would make the distance between players and the game grow, not diminish, and people would be mindless anyway, but now even further away from IC activity should the need for it arise. Many players want to talk to each other as people, and they are going to do what they want, if you ban Achaea-based OOC communication, they'll just take it elsewhere. Since everybody already uses OOC distinction in stuff like Tells ( the // or () ) I don't really see the need to single out OOC clans when such communication is going to continue with or without them, anyway.

Sarapis

OOC clans generally aren't the problem. It's a handful of clans that are, and they probably know who they are.

Sybilla

So I went on the Mud Connector and made an account to vote. Apparently Achaea's rank 92 (was 95 yesterday) with only 4 votes. Aardwolf has 266 votes cast and is rank #2.

I don't know how popular or reliable those listings are, but 92 is way down regardless. I'm going to load myself up with sinus-clearing medicine and mill about their forums to see about giving us more of a presence, too.

Austere

Sarapis said:

OOC clans generally aren't the problem. It's a handful of clans that are, and they probably know who they are.

Initially, I opposed this idea because it will limit communication between factions that do result in a better playing experience. Upon closer inspection and the realization that 97% of people in the clans can't do anything or don't care, I vote delete em.  I dunno what rule you can create for a fair review of clans and that won't result in them being deleted if they exceed a character count, but I'm all for it.