Shattered Kingdoms

Mad props on that idea. That cannot be too difficult to impliment considering the who religion and who cabal code already. I really like the response for those over jman too! And as far as revealing the class/race to the mentored, it would make sense that the trainer reporting the mentors around would mention those important facts. Dig.

Don't like it. It gives away information like class and kingdom. The mentor command works much better than anything we have had in the past. Adding this simply makes the mentor command less useful. I am fairly certain it is easy for a newbie to be in the newbie school (where they start) and type the command mentor (pointed out in most of the newbie schools). Most newbies will get a response. If you are completely new to SK, learning about the who command, then tells, then deciding which person to tell is a lot to learn just to get some help. This train of thought tells us that most likely only low-level characters played by veteran players would likely be using it. These people really don't need the extra help. They already have a way to access these same people without coding it into the who command.

A

Blasted logical thought, who made you an Imm anyway?
ha, I kill myself... no really, all the time... try fighting frolli with nothing on!

When I first started (less than a month ago), I learned the WHO and TELL commands before I ever found out about MENTOR. In all that time, the MENTOR command only worked once for me, and I was waiting around for almost an hour RL. I have always had to use WHO and TELL which was very difficult at the beginning because I couldn't tell from the WHO list who I should call on for help, and I didn't know anyone.

I think you're missing part of the problem. The mentor command only includes mentors from your own country. At off-peak hours, that can cut you off from a mentor, or at least limit you to a mentor with little knowledge of your class.

Also, newbies end up needing help often - especially if they are true MUD novices. They should know where to go to get advice. Ideally, they're forward enough to just send tells to people on the who list. In practice, that doesn't always happen - as this thread shows. If seeing "who mentor" encourages some newbies to ask questions, that's not a bad thing.

I agree that newbies may need help more often than available mentors in their respective kingdoms makes feasible, but I don't think making a "who mentor" command is the right way to go about fixing this. It gives away too much information about characters.

A far better solution to the problem is the one mentioned earlier in the thread: expanding the list of mentors to include those outside the kingdom. First, local (potential) mentors could be notified, then if the lowbie doesn't receive a tell from anyone in a certain amount of time, the message could be resent to those further afield.

By the way, the mentor command has been one of the best modifications put into the SK system in quite some time. Props on that, Dulrik.

I think this would be the best way to handle the problem so far. Mentor's get a mentor flag in the who list that can't be seen by characters over mentor themselves.

This way you can send a tell if the mentor command doesn't work and you'll still get at least a 'Go away I'm busy.'

I agree with Archy in that forming the mentor command into a who mentor would give away IC info that can and should be learned through the course of RP. At the same time I hear that the mentor command isn't perfect. In a perfect SK world any newbie that used this command would get a response and the one that comes calling would be of a suitable class and alignment.

To help the mentor command out I could see some adjustments. For example, when the command was entered the call would be sent out as it is now. But if the one receiving it doesn't answer the call in xyz amount of time (either by a tell or sayto) then their mentor toggle is turned off and stays off for a day. If the mentor doesn't respond then the call goes out again automatically to the next in line, rinse and repeat. I could also see expanding the guidelines for mentor so that players from other kingdoms could be called so long as their alignment is within so much of the callers. Although they wouldn't be called until the available mentors from the current kingdom have turned down the newbie.


Lei Kung

This doesn't work. You often get the character-creation mentor notification just to find the person deletes before you can send him a tell.

Frankly, the best idea seems to be to allow mentors to assist those in another nation, if they sign up to do so for that particular nation. My experience is that there are severely underserved nations when it comes to mentoring. At the same time, my last griffon character couldn't help someone in Krychire even if I had the OOC knowledge to do so.

The MENTOR command only worked once for me, and I was never sent a TELL. Another Newbie needed help that I could give, so I left the school to help them out, then came back, and issued MENTOR again. Then I was waiting around again for quite some time. Even with my leaving in the middle, I was patiently waiting for at least an hour real time. After the third or fourth time of using MENTOR and getting no response after waiting a half hour or longer, I stopped bothering using it and started meeting people instead. I'm still learning as I go.