Apprentice System for new player rentention

[Ametrine]

I’ve seen a few posts here on helping new players and the general response is (1) I do a round of quests on Korthos with them, (2) not my responsibility, and (3) no, not unless I get paid.

Well it occurred to me well why not get paid for helping out new players and in DDO what does everyone like more than cold hard XP.

So my proposal is an apprentice system.

For the first year of a new players DDO career their account is marked as an Apprentice. Player accounts after the one year are marked as Master.

A new player can apprentice his account to a Master ‘s account.

Here is where the payoff would come in: when a character from the Master’s account runs quests with his apprentice he gets a stacking 30% XP bonus and the Apprentice gets a stacking 5% bonus to XP.


Some options that could be put in:

(1) On the second life of the apprentice the Master gets a 35% xp bonus when running quests with his apprentice and the Apprentice gets 10%. On the third life this would cap at 40% and 15%.
(2) Grouping bonus: if the Master is running a quest with two of his apprentices then he gets a 5% bonus, 3 a 10% bonus, 4 a 15% bonus, and 5 a 20% bonus on top of the 30% to 40% grouping with your Apprentice bonus.
(3) A limit on how many Apprentices a Master could have (for example 10)
(4) A limit on how many Masters an Apprentice could have (for example 3)

[Rofaust]

Cool idea. I like the concept. I just see one flaw... "But Master I don't want to wait at the door!"
"Quiet apprentice! You're learning how to get a zero deaths bonus! You can watch." lol Getting stuck with that kind of master would be a nightmare. In all seriousness though I think more should determine a master than playing for one year and wanting more xp. Love of teaching has to trump other compensation or the quality of teaching may do more harm than good. A work around might be to have the relationships be short term and varied - maybe have master-seeking-students lfms where the master is only master for a couple of quests so the student can find a new master if they don't like the old. But then you want to have a master around to give long term advice... it's tricky. There's an answer somewhere but I'd be cautious of quick simple solutions and quid pro quo set ups. Maybe players should have to apply for Mastery and demonstrate their teaching ability to a mod or authority before they are acknowledged with a title. This would cost money. But it would also build up the game's infrastructure. Whether or not it would be worth the money could be debated

[General_Gronker]

There's a kernal of a good, if not great idea here, but your specifics are terrible. I'll have to ponder this one a while.

[arkonas]

I’ve seen a few posts here on helping new players and the general response is (1) I do a round of quests on Korthos with them, (2) not my responsibility, and (3) no, not unless I get paid.

Well it occurred to me well why not get paid for helping out new players and in DDO what does everyone like more than cold hard XP.

So my proposal is an apprentice system.

For the first year of a new players DDO career their account is marked as an Apprentice. Player accounts after the one year are marked as Master.

A new player can apprentice his account to a Master ‘s account.

Here is where the payoff would come in: when a character from the Master’s account runs quests with his apprentice he gets a stacking 30% XP bonus and the Apprentice gets a stacking 5% bonus to XP.


Some options that could be put in:

(1) On the second life of the apprentice the Master gets a 35% xp bonus when running quests with his apprentice and the Apprentice gets 10%. On the third life this would cap at 40% and 15%.
(2) Grouping bonus: if the Master is running a quest with two of his apprentices then he gets a 5% bonus, 3 a 10% bonus, 4 a 15% bonus, and 5 a 20% bonus on top of the 30% to 40% grouping with your Apprentice bonus.
(3) A limit on how many Apprentices a Master could have (for example 10)
(4) A limit on how many Masters an Apprentice could have (for example 3)

i like the apprentice idea just not how you worded it. im sure you can modify it to be worth it for both players. Some of us like to go out and help returning or new players when we see them.

[shieldmate]

what if we were to implement a reward system similar to the patron favor for running quests in a mentoring mode. Not sure how much coding it would take but enable an option to run your character as if it was lower level as in temporarily revert your character from lvl 10 to lvl 6 all feats, enhancments, and stats adjusted accordingly so a vet could run with a new player without xp penalties to the mentored and instead of xp for the mentor award points in a new reward system