Alright, so this isn't a formal suggestion, just something I want your opinion on. From my experiences of being both a mentor and a staff member, I think that mentors willingness and abilty to help people are limited by just having access to !help and OOC cooldown.
I was thinking, that the mentor system should be overhauled to make it slightly stricter to become mentor, and requiring more from mentors, but with bigger rewards and perks. I will split this in 3 sections.
Section 1: More opportunities to help new players and the community in general
So I was thinking that we have a more formal way of introducing new players and to show them around. This could maybe be done by an mentor NPC at town hall or something, where mentors can have like a similar thing of 'going on duty' where they will be given godmode and a basic and recognizable vehicle (so players don't have RP interactions with it, as they know its an OOC mentor tour). There will also have to be several rules surrounding this to ensure that it doesn't get abused, e.g. you cannot take weapons out when on duty, you cannot drive recklessly or do crime e.t.c. Staff should also get notified when a mentor goes on duty for 2 reasons. 1) We can make sure that mentors don't go on duty unnecessarily (e.g. to show it off to their friends, or just for a free car, so we can check that they are actually helping players out), and 2) So that staff can start to see which mentors are active within their roles, and go above and beyond their duties, which can help us to choose potential staff candidates. They could also have a more pivotal role in events, I'm not sure what that could entail, but I have seen great work from mentors such as @Balldrip where they ran their own RP enhancement so maybe we could explore something around this avenue? Not sure what this would entail, but maybe having some way to support mentor's RP enhancements, such as compensating them for renting out places such as the stakehouse or 5 oclock to make it easier for them to run it.
I am welcome to more ideas on ways they can help other players out.
Section 2: Make it harder but also more desirable to be a mentor.
Mentors should be treated as potential staff members, and they should use this role to prove that they have the attributes to help the community, and the responsibility to use their new powers and privileges appropriately. As a result, there should be a more thorough vetting process due to mentors having a bigger impact on the community, similar to the staff vetting procedure, and they should have to apply on the forums, so it is visible to all staff members, so multiple members of the recruitment team can give their input on their opinion of the candidate. No changes will be made to people who are already mentor, it is just for new recruitment.
Section 3: More mentor perks
As a result of us asking more for mentors we could give more perks to mentors, to help boost mentor recruitment and so that it will be seen as a more serious role but also desirable role. Some of these could include:
Like I said before, this isn't a formal suggestion or anything, its just a concept I thought of, so I am looking forward to your opinions on it.
I was thinking, that the mentor system should be overhauled to make it slightly stricter to become mentor, and requiring more from mentors, but with bigger rewards and perks. I will split this in 3 sections.
Section 1: More opportunities to help new players and the community in general
So I was thinking that we have a more formal way of introducing new players and to show them around. This could maybe be done by an mentor NPC at town hall or something, where mentors can have like a similar thing of 'going on duty' where they will be given godmode and a basic and recognizable vehicle (so players don't have RP interactions with it, as they know its an OOC mentor tour). There will also have to be several rules surrounding this to ensure that it doesn't get abused, e.g. you cannot take weapons out when on duty, you cannot drive recklessly or do crime e.t.c. Staff should also get notified when a mentor goes on duty for 2 reasons. 1) We can make sure that mentors don't go on duty unnecessarily (e.g. to show it off to their friends, or just for a free car, so we can check that they are actually helping players out), and 2) So that staff can start to see which mentors are active within their roles, and go above and beyond their duties, which can help us to choose potential staff candidates. They could also have a more pivotal role in events, I'm not sure what that could entail, but I have seen great work from mentors such as @Balldrip where they ran their own RP enhancement so maybe we could explore something around this avenue? Not sure what this would entail, but maybe having some way to support mentor's RP enhancements, such as compensating them for renting out places such as the stakehouse or 5 oclock to make it easier for them to run it.
I am welcome to more ideas on ways they can help other players out.
Section 2: Make it harder but also more desirable to be a mentor.
Mentors should be treated as potential staff members, and they should use this role to prove that they have the attributes to help the community, and the responsibility to use their new powers and privileges appropriately. As a result, there should be a more thorough vetting process due to mentors having a bigger impact on the community, similar to the staff vetting procedure, and they should have to apply on the forums, so it is visible to all staff members, so multiple members of the recruitment team can give their input on their opinion of the candidate. No changes will be made to people who are already mentor, it is just for new recruitment.
Section 3: More mentor perks
As a result of us asking more for mentors we could give more perks to mentors, to help boost mentor recruitment and so that it will be seen as a more serious role but also desirable role. Some of these could include:
- A mentor tag for the forums
- A mentor discord channel (That all staff has access to, so we can make sure that they behave in it. It should mainly be a way for us to staff and mentors to communicate between ourselves, and so that we can get to know mentors a little better, again there's the benefit of looking who's active in their roles and are giving good suggestions and input to us)
- A perk where we as staff members can change the colors or skins of their police cars if they request it (Our policy is that we should only change the bodygroups of player's police cars, and not actual skins or colors of them, so this could be a unique perk that just makes it more desirable.
- Compensation for money they spent on running RP enhancements.
Like I said before, this isn't a formal suggestion or anything, its just a concept I thought of, so I am looking forward to your opinions on it.
