Mentoring just isn't worth the trouble from what I experienced

[Ignernt]

Last night I decided to mentor my wife's cleric. I play a 37 Illusionist and she is a 21 Templar. I started up the Mentor and got my spells ready and buffs in order. .....then the pain began.I knew that I would be getting bad exp, but you have got to be kidding me on how bad it was. We had a full group chain pulling level 23 to 25 ^^ mobs. We experienced a couple of deaths so I had 1% debt. It took around 50 kills to get rid of that debt on my character. I was getting about .03% exp per kill without debt, but it was difficult to tell because of how slow it was and my UI doesn't calculate the percentage to the hundredths. My wife ended the night with around 55% experience gained. I ended up with under 4% gained. I guess I will just have to level up a character to group with her in the future since mentoring is about as fun as a frontal lobotamy. Friends don't let friends mentor.

[thepriz]

The idea of Mentoring is not that you are getting massive amounts of exp but that you are helping others. I like the idea of mentoring and have done it with my daughters 6th lvl cleric. It was fun running around the Pet Bog again helping her out.

[aeio]

Yeah you don't seem to get the point of mentoring. Gaining uber experience for your much higher level character was never the goal. By mentoring your wife, you not only got to play with her and help her advance, you provided an experience bonus to her that she would not otherwise have...I guess it just depends on how you value things in the game, but since she is your wife, I would think you would be able to see more benefit than your minimal experience. The net effect is it helps her pull closer to you. Is your goal to enjoy the game with your wife when you can both play together, or always simply get as much experience as possible? I was in support of no experience for mentoring... but there is some there and nothing to complain about. I have mentored with my level 39 troubador and gotten a handful of experience, which was a nice throw in for the reward of helping friends in game.How much experience do you think you deserve to advance you in level 37 for killing low 20 mobs?

[Onlinedeck]

I am with you Ignernt.  Mentoring is a joke.  I tried it out last night and when it says your only getting 50% experience you just know it's going to be a long night.  That will probably be the last time I ever do that again. 

SOE got this concept I think from City of Heroes and over there you don't get such lowsy experience like you do in EQ2.  I'm all about helping people but when you are killing hours upon hours of mobs and only getting about 2 yellow bars then that just plain isn't fun.  And that was going from level 37 down to level 35.  I just needed to drop a few levels so another low-level person in the group could get experience.

[Hidohebhi]

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Onlinedecker wrote:

I am with you Ignernt. Mentoring is a joke. I tried it out last night and when it says your only getting 50% experience you just know it's going to be a long night. That will probably be the last time I ever do that again.

SOE got this concept I think from City of Heroes and over there you don't get such lowsy experience like you do in EQ2. I'm all about helping people but when you are killing hours upon hours of mobs and only getting about 2 yellow bars then that just plain isn't fun. And that was going from level 37 down to level 35. I just needed to drop a few levels so another low-level person in the group could get experience.

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Mentoring is to help the lower level member, not the higher level one.

[MaximumCarna]

It is very simple. If you want to gain xp group with people your own level. If you wish to spend time with and or help someone of much lower level without graying everything out or just dominating the group, then you can mentor.

 

If you prime goal to to gain xp, then mentoring is not for you. That doesn't mean its bad or isn't working as intended.

 

If you want to group with people of lower level and not mentor, use one of the extra slots we will be getting and make a new pc just to play with them.

 

[ghosthamm]

i wouldnt care if they took xp away, i just wish they scaled down our spells instead of outright not letting us use them. I have a hotbar full of red spells i have to change just to be effective, and I thought i'd never use kick again........

[BlueKnightLPL]

Mentoring is working out GREAT for us.

 

We did the level 10 guild raid 2 nights ago and was able to mentor down our 2 groups to 25 so the mobs would be non-grey, we would get some drops from the boss mobs, and we actually faced a bit of danger in doing the raid.  Took a bit of time to get spell bars updated (we tried at a couple of different levels until the grey was gone) but was well worth it.

 

Have also mentored some friends in the guild more than 10 levels lower than me.  Was fun going back to varsoons at level 25 only to realize we couldn't even stay in the entrance area for long at that level  (can you say group wipe?)   Forgot how dangerous it was when we first went there.  Am looking to taking that group to the Giants in TS to help them get xp and maybe finish the giant language quest for me.

 

This is the BEST change that they've put into the game since it came out.  I see using it quite often to group with friends and help others out.  Also is good to open up a few quests that i missed out on.

 

[MaximumCarna]

The point is to make you an equal member of the group. Even if your high level arts were scaled down you would still have a lot more of them and ones that did things that a real person of that lower level wouldn't have.

[Ignernt]

I understand the concept of mentoring. I was mostly upset that the debt took a good 50 kills to get rid of. I am not looking to gain massive experience with mentoring. I just figured I would gain something out of it, not the 4% I squeeked out. Like I said, I think that it will be more productive to level up an alt to group instead. I can see this being helpful in raids as was mentioned. There are still plenty that I skipped over in my levelling. You also have to understand that Illusionists are not known for massive damage output and solo-ability. I figured I would have some fun, which I did, but the exp and debt exp were just not worth the trouble of mentoring.I think my little newb will be coming out of the mothballs for future grouping.*EDIT*My exp bar did mention that I would be getting 75% less exp. The math just didn't show that. 4% compared to 55% is not a 75% decrease. She did get an extra 5% from mentor, so it was more like a 90% decrease in exp on my part.

Message Edited by Ignernt on 03-15-2005 12:19 PM

[Death4]

To clarify, your exp is reduced 90% pre 25.  Once you mentor someone level 25 or higher it's reduced to 50% and the bonus to exp is increased.  It scales down as the person you mentor raises.  It's in one of the Moorguard posts, I just don't feel like looking for it.  I do agree though that it sucks that people who mentor me get the same debt they do at their level.  It ought to be reduced to be relative to the experience gain (i.e. pre 25, 90% less exp, 90% less debt)

[thepriz]

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ghosthammer wrote:

i wouldnt care if they took xp away, i just wish they scaled down our spells instead of outright not letting us use them. I have a hotbar full of red spells i have to change just to be effective, and I thought i'd never use kick again........

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I agree that this is a pain to change the hotbars out but I also like it becuase it gives me a reason to continue to find updates to my lower level spells. It was a real bummer to get an Adept I Kick when I was never going to use it again. Now I can and that is great.

[Valy]

So how many of you have received /tells from people you don't know asking if you can mentor them?  Come on now, show those hands! hehe

 

I've personally received two requests so far and just had to laugh.  I hope this isn't the coming trend...

 

 

-Valyn Wyndwalker

 Level 37 Wood Elf Monk

 Grobb Server

[Jan It]

Keep in mind that XP for mentoring is still under evaluation and subject to change. Better than ranting would be some constructive feedback instead.

[CuriousGeorge]

Mentoring is [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] backwards. Look at the City of Heroes sidekick system to an example of how to do things properly.

[ghosthamm]

yeah, but coh doesnt have loot, there is a problem with a lvl 50 allowing a newbie to go to a high tier zone and get good loot

[Havlen]

CoH style mentoring would not work in EQ2. For one, they wouldn't have access to the zones. For another, it makes gaining access to the zones trivial if you allowed them automatic access. Lastly, part of the fun in playing is to get high enough level to see Rivervale or Runnyeye or Permefrost, etc, and it would decrease the fun if you could get there at level 10. Where's the challenge in that?I do think the mentoring system needs to be tweaked. While most of the benefit should go to the lower level, the mentor should still see some significant progress. The idea is to be able to group and have fun with lower level friends -- and to take out the idea of outleveling your friends -- but in the process you shouldn't have to [Removed for Content] your character completely. I'm not saying that leveling should be as fast as when not mentoring, but there should be steady advancement when mentoring.

[sidgb]

Mentoring in EQII rocks IMO.

[CuriousGeorge]

CoH style mentoring would not work in EQ2. For one, they wouldn't have access to the zones. For another, it makes gaining access to the zones trivial if you allowed them automatic access. Lastly, part of the fun in playing is to get high enough level to see Rivervale or Runnyeye or Permefrost, etc, and it would decrease the fun if you could get there at level 10. Where's the challenge in that?

 

Um CoH sidekicks don't get access to zones that they couldn't normally get into either so it makes your entire objection moot. The real problem in SOE doing a CoH style sidekick system is that spells/abilities/ and items would need to be buffed in effect to an approbriate level of usefullness. That I'm afraid is the reason I see them for not doing it the right way, because it would be too much work for these guys to do. Look at PvP not being included...

 

Still they did do some of the work by reducing the effectiveness of items so I kinda have to wonder how much hard it would have been to go the rest of the way...

[Havlen]

The point of mentoring in EQ2 is for high levels to be able to group with low level friends. Given a 40th lvl character and a 20th lvl character and the 20th lvl being turned into a 40th without access to EL/Zek/Etc -- exactly what good is this going to do? They can't hunt in Antonica, Commons, Nek, or TS and there are only the rare mobs in places like Varsoons that aren't going to be gray. Without getting additional access, mentoring would not serve its purpose because there wouldn't be anything for the two to do.

[Tradeskill_Addict]

One INTENDED good  thing about mentoring is also to do quest you have outgrown without having to kill greyed out mobs.

 

I used to delete quests that included killing greys. Now I can still come back later and finish them with some of the appropriate level :smileyhappy: