Kyle Polulak, on 13 October 2014 - 01:18 AM, said:
As such, any ideas which are readily achieved through tools already at our disposal such as the forums, account manager, and in-game with the present features would be equally if not more valuable here!
How about a "Live Tutorial" program? It could be a multi-tiered approach to identifying inexperienced players, and then providing them with the tools to help themselves. A built-in player feedback system could help in rewarding and policing would-be mentors. I don't come here on the forums to the new player section much at all, but if there was an entirely in-game system for it, I'd participate if I was able. I've always enjoyed teaching new players in various games, and I'm pretty good at it. Maybe it's true what they say, because I'm not an outstanding player: "Those who can't do, teach."
Here's my idea:
1) Allow team mates in spectator view in the regular solo queue to add a "point" to a player they're spectating. Call it a newbie point maybe. Disable this in group queue and faction play.
2) Allow anyone with enough points(maybe 12 or 24 points; this is arbitrary, and need not be published) to enroll themselves in the live tutorial program. This would be completely voluntary, and any given player would not necessarily be permitted to see their point tally. Rather they would simply have access once the threshold was reached. Points would not be removed from players at any point, because there would be no need to have them expended or deducted.
3) Live tutorial program would allow players to join a tutorial queue as a student, and students could be paired(randomly) with eligible and willing mentors in private matches automatically. No premium time would be needed for anyone. This would probably be best as one-on-one matches, where the players can target each other, and damage each other, but do not appear as "Red" to each other. They would also have voice comms. It might even be beneficial to disable actual damage and instead add a target damage popup reminiscent of the way the turrets have one in the Academy. This could include details about what component was damaged, and how much damage each took, over 5 seconds.
4) Students would have simple up/down feedback on their mentor, and each student could add one "mentor" point if they felt their received lesson was beneficial. Alternatively, just make each match automatically reward one mentor point, but make it so that if a mentor gets too many down feedback votes they get suspended/banned as a mentor. Punitive actions could range from a 1 hour temporary ban, all the way up to a permanent revocation of mentor status for enough repeat offenses.
I would wager to say that this should be made available to any players in Tier 4 or 5 as students, and any players from Tiers 1 and 2 as mentors. You could also just select a few potential mentors from the get go, and then let the program for mentors be by invitation only. Consider including Tier 3 in one set or the other, but Tier 3 players kind of represent the average anyway, and may represent a good "cutoff" for people to no longer have access as students(no matter how many "newbie" points they have/had), but still not allow them to sign up as mentors...
Note that I would be ineligible as of now if Tier 3 were excluded, and I'm ok with that!
Mentors with enough "mentor" points could be rewarded with whatever seems appropriate to PGI. Obviously this would be an incentive for players to be good mentors.
Able to be abused, probably, but with random matchmaking for students/mentors, and a mutually exclusive cutoff by Pilot Skill Tier, it would be difficult to abuse, and probably not really worth the time(depending on actual rewards).
Edited by Throe, 20 June 2016 - 02:19 PM.
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