Mentors and Academy Outfits

[basti]

The basic ideas for this comes from dorgo and hippieschuh. I am just combining them and adding a proper design. Add your ideas and opinions, so we can help make the life of new players better, or last longer on the battlefield.


Mentoring

Planetside, and for that matter a lot of other games, have one big issue: They are not easy to pickup. At the very beginning of each MMO, you just have no goddamn clue what to do. Common MMOs challenges new players with questions like "How to play? What mobs to kill? What quests to do? When do i need a new weapon and armor? where can i get that stuff? Where do i get new skills?", and the list goes on. Planetside challenges new players with similar questions, and without help, starting the game could be very frustrating.
An always easy solution was knowing someone, or asking someone, who knew what to do. And because of that, we could really use a mentoring system.

Becoming a mentor:

Everyone can become a mentor. It is your choise if you want to sacrifice time and efford for the new guys. All you have to do is go to a menu and click a little checkbox. Bang, you are now listed as a mentor, and new players can find you, see if you are online, and just ask you if you want to teach them the basics.

Being a newbie:

As a new player, the very first thing you will, and propably even hear, is a question window if you want to find a mentor. If you klick no, you are not going to be listed as a new player that requires assistance, and you are not shown the mentor list. The window simply closes, and is never forced on you again. But you always have the option to go throu the menu and open the mentor list again, and set yourself as new player that requires help. That is only possible up to a certain battlerank. Once you reached that rank, you are unable to list yourself as a newbie, simply to avoid the list being filled with random people. On top of that, only newbies that are currently online are show on the list, to avoid filling the list with inactive characters.


Mentor and Newbie, a story of true love:

Once a newbie found a mentor and have chatted with him, or once a mentor found a newbie, both can invite each other to become a mentor - newbie couple. They can always break the connection, and gain certain abilitys to help each other out. They could always see on what continent the other guy is and in what territory, could see what class the other guy currently is, and the mentor could also see the newbies skill tree, to advide him what he should train next. They could also use ingame voice to alwasy communicate with each other, no matter where they are. They wont gain any direct benefits from being a couple, its purley about helping the newbie, not gaining XP faster or training skills faster.
The mentor could also issue small missions to the newbie, to show him the ropes of the mission system. It would be very basic stuff, nothing special, not as detailed and complex as the mission system might be.

The newbie is not a newbie anymore:

Once the newbie reached a certain Battlerank, the two automaticly part ways. Its not mentor and Newbie anymore, it would be just two soilders that know each other and helped each other.
Now, as the newbie parted ways from the mentor, he gets the opportunity to rate his mentor. Was he good? was he just wasting his time? Was he never online? He could write that in a text box, and also rate the mentor from 1 to 5 or something like that (this will become important below). Other newbies can see the rating and comments when they search for a mentor. This way they know who to avoid and who to pick.



Integrated to all that, academy outfits:

Once a certain number of officers from an outfit helped a certain amout of newbies and have a good enough rating, the Outfit leader could change his outfit to become an academy outfit. The differences are:

Skill tree: instead of choosing a specialisation for the outfit, an academy outfits skill tree has basic skills in all areas. This way new players can try out everything, before they head off into the big open world of war. They can figure out what they enjoy doing, and join an outfit that is doing that mostly.

Once a faction got an academy outfit, new players will get a notification about it in the mentor list menu. They could still choose a mentor, but can now also decide to join the outfit and get help that way. Once the newbie is no newbie anymore, means certain BR, he will automaticly switch division within the outfit, and get a notification that he should consider looking for an outfit that fits his playstyle.



Ideas, comments, opinions? keep them coming. Once we are done and happy with it, it goes into the Idea vault, with full credit to those who added stuff.