Mentor Bonus

At the behest of BP support, I will start this thread. o7

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Mentor bonus, as some of you may well know, was added a while back. (If you don't know what mentor bonus is, here you go: http://en.bigpoint.com/drasaonline/board/threads/basics.1918/#post-3880 )

Now, let me describe a situation I have been aware of for a while:
Some individuals have created at least 2 characters on their account. They then proceed to do a daily or pvp on character #1 until it gets ahead. The mentor bonus is now applied to character #2, where they now proceed to do their daily or pvp, until character #2 is ahead of #1. The mentor bonus now applies to character #1. And so the cycle continues.

Using this method of bouncing mentor bonus between two characters belonging to the same account, individuals have been able to obtain wisdom for their knowledge tree far faster than someone with only one character. I am unsure of how things stand exactly with regards to pvp honor, but I think it might be the same situation.

And so the questions that I'd like to use to guide the discussion are as follows:
What do you think of people who use the mentor bonus like this? Does it seem to contravene the spirit of what the mentor bonus was created for (whatever that is)? Does this seem like an exploitation? If yes, do you have any suggestions for what should otherwise be done?

 

As soon as one char overtakes the other, no more mentor.

 

I don't think this is what BP intended when they created the mentor bonus. I think it was pretty obvious they did it so that veteran players could level up their new Steam Mechanicus characters faster. It doesn't surprise me that BP's devs/execs didn't have the foresight to see this coming. When have they ever gotten anything correct on the first try? Or the second or third tries, for that matter (e.g. the Mortis frag debacle).

Those I direct these comments toward may become irritated by their stinging nature. The reason for this is that they cannot deny the veracity of what I write.

 

Why negative criticism about the Mentor bonus. Apart from Premium benefit Mentor bonus is the best thing Dev gave to the Player( at lease you don't have to pay for it )
Seems like you guys are those marshals and grand marshal who use to dominate PVP slaughtering the recruits and centurions in battle and now are seeing more challenges because the same recruits and centurions are leveling up faster . Is it slowing down your progresses?


I don't know if honor points accumulated has any impact on PVP skills after you reach fame 40 but hey don't you want to fight the players your own level and ranking.

People complain about how unbalance the PVP is. Why complain when those players are using mentor bonus to reach fame 40 and try to balance the PVP!!

 

Well, the mentor bonus can be used that way by all players. I'm not sure that it is very effective, though. Lets try to do some math. Skip to yellow text below if you don't want to get bored.

Lets say both characters gain the same knowledge and fame in the same amount of time.
They both start at 0.

Character 1 gains 250 knowledge and 2k Fame. (day 1)
Character 2 gains 750 knowledge and 4k Fame. (day 1)
Character 1 gains 750 knowledge and 4k Fame. (day 2)
Character 2 gains 750 knowledge and 4k Fame. (day 2)

Now lets assume that this was all done to benefit Character 2; Character 1 was just for the bonus switching. Character 2 has gained 1500 knowledge and 8k Fame in 2 days.

----Without Mentor Bonus switching---
2 characters playing but Character 1 is very far ahead and does not get surpassed. Target is Character 2.

Character 1 gains 250 Knowledge and 2k Fame, (day 1)
Character 2 gains 750 Knowledge and 4k Fame. (day 1) Character 1 gains 250 Knowledge and 2k Fame. (day 2)
Character 2 gains 750 Knowledge and 4k Fame. (day 2)

Character 2 gained 1500 Knowledge and 8K Fame in 2 days.

But this is IF a player has a character that is already quite advanced in both knowledge and fame.

Say for example a player just joined the game and does not do any bonus switching or anything, he gets minimum. Which would be 500 knowledge and 4K (for our example) in 2 days.

This means that someone using mentor bonus switching gains 3x as much Knowledge on target character as someone who doesn't have mentor bonus, which is just how much they should be getting (+200%). But from doing mentor bonus switching, 2 characters benefit from the bonus, and I am not sure it was meant to function that way. An easy way to counter this would be to set a threshold. For example: Said character gets Mentor Bonus only if another character has (this much) more Knowledge or (this much) Fame. Maybe 2k Knowledge and 50k Fame, which wouldn't allow a player to swap the mentor bonus from one character to the other every day.

 

Wrong. I'm SKotO, level 37 fame even though I've been playing since the beginning of open beta. I believe that the original post is describing an exploit and I said as much. This is a forum for opinions, is it not?

LoL. Any half-competent player can see without even trying that your statement is nonsensical and 100% incorrect. Using this exploit does nothing to solve the imbalances in PvP. It makes those imbalances worse. This exploit allows the "twinks" in the game to twink much harder and faster than they could have without the mentor bonus and this exploit of it. This exploit allows there to be (PvE) level 20 KotO's running around even faster than there would have been without it.

 

Thank you @silverseas for bringing up this point. I'll see what the developers can do about this loophole.

 

This seems like a fair way to handle it. 2k knowledge and 50k fame isn't much to make up once you catch up to the highest character on your account, and prevents people from switching out characters every day.

Heck, you could even lower the knowledge down to 1k, that would still make it not worth it to switch up the characters getting the bonus, and would only make people be 4 days behind their main for knowledge.

 

My opinion is that the Mentor bonus shouldnt be implemented in the game at all!!! All players must have equal chance to level up the glory tree. The mentor bonus was a mistake and now many Marshalls get glory 3 times faster...

 

Mentor still means switching around characters and you do have to train them both. This means you gotta spend time (and potentially money) on both accounts. For people who are already marshals, BP probably doesn't want them to quit and instead they want to earn more money. Therefore, the implemented a mentor bonus which would provide the player a new enjoyment while making more money. Most likely, mentor will not get removed.

 

Mentor is awesome. \m/
If anything it helps catch up after being exhausted in battle over and over...