Should Anet introduce a reward system for mentors ?

While i was map completing Queensdale today i saw a mentor standing and posting that he is offering help to new players, honestly i didnt see this before and was thinking hey thats cool. Then i had an idea if Anet would introduce rewards for people (because lets face it not alot of people would waste their game play time helping absolute newbies), for example if a mentor could get 100 gems per helped newbie i could see much more people willing to help out new players with a reward system in place.

You didn't think this through.

What's stopping me from just tagging up and helping my friend to score some quick gems? I could trade that with him.When everyone is a mentor, no one is a mentor.What happens to the market when everyone scores easy gems for being "helpful" and how does that affect ArenaNet gem sales? Do we see an increase in gem store prices?What constitutes "help?" Do I have to escort them all over the map, answer a question, send them items, complete events and hearts with them, etc?

Mentors help people because they want to help people. We don't need to be incentivized. The point is to help foster growth in the community by assisting new players. When I tag up in new zones I specifically seek people with few achievement points (confirmed with friend list) and when I'm done helping I send them some 15 slot bags and low-level food to get them started with the promise they'd pass it on when they have money and an understanding of the game. That's all it takes... is to be helpful and to pass it on. We don't need rewards. You're describing the cop that joins law enforcement just so they can one day "be the hero."

This stuff fails already in FF14. No need to import DOA ideas.

Excelsior.

One of the best things about Mentoring or Gifting is that you do it selflessly.I would leave this to the community.

And out of all things to reward the mentors with you chose GEMS?

No, especially not for a gem reward.

Why? Are we suddenly short of enough people who like mentoring?

lets face it not alot of people would waste their game play time helping absolute newbiesSure, what's wrong with people choosing to do their own thing?

We pay teachers in RL because there's a public benefit to having good teachers and most couldn't afford to do so without getting paid. In contrast, in this game, there's plenty of people happy to answer questions, run events, offer to show people around, etc.

If GW2 gets to a point that there aren't enough such people, I'm pretty sure that this game will have far bigger problems than trying to find a few mentors.

I think in itself its a great idea, but i foresee a level of abuse you cant imagine

No! This would be a terrible thing to do, and the system would be so open to abuse. I've often spent time helping new players and never asked, wanted, or felt like I've needed a reward for doing so. Sometimes a player will send me a reward for helping, and even then I'll send it back to them.

Its far better to have people offering help to new players because it's something they want to, and enjoy doing, rather than to have a system that would see half the map tag up offering help because they know they'll get a reward out of it. (and they'd offer the bare minimum help that they could get away with). In addition the people offering help not expecting anything in return will probably be more likely to provide quality help and advice, where as those doing it for a reward might not even know much about the area people need help with, but will just be saying anything to try and get a reward.

well it was just an initial idea, anet could ofc refine it an put in restrictions on it.

The reward should be a little less, maybe a couple of laurels, or something like that. I do think there should be rewards for teaching people how to be better players, but it's hard to make rewards worth it enough to do it, but not so great to cause tons of abuse. I am for it, if it's done right.

@MarkoNS.3261 said:well it was just an initial idea, anet could ofc refine it an put in restrictions on it.

You still haven't established why it would be good for the game. Nor why this idea is more important for ANet to divert resources towards, as opposed to the other hundreds of ideas being discussed/implemented, the thousands of good ideas suggested by players/staff.

No. Helping others is your reward.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@MarkoNS.3261 said:well it was just an initial idea, anet could ofc refine it an put in restrictions on it.

yeah can you name me 10 of those thousands good ideas ? , also i only offered up a suggestion its not my job to refine it, deliver it completed to anet, that is their job if they like it.

I often get sent a few silver when I portal people around, I think it is better left up to the community. You'd have to create a whole new "was helped by X" system for people to report into and frankly it could destroy any economy the reward was attached to. Help people because you want to, if they send you a reward gift be gracious and thankful.

If it will give any even low valuable reward - it will be abused af

Maybe. I don't know how Guild Wars 2 would do it, since stuff like experience and gear are really easy to get, but FFXIV has a mentor system that gives bonuses to both mentor and mentee. Guild Wars 2 doesn't have a new player or mentor system like that though.

Helping people is and should remain its own reward.

Seeing I can't afford a commander tag, I'm already helping people by leading them to certain things by /mentor-ing up and saying things like let's say

"Anyone saw insert Guild Bounty target""He was right by the tower. I'm following him with my tag until you get here."

Or something like that.Then I've seen people with ports use it too and so on and so on.Not everyone can afford the commander tag so I'm not for this. Like yes, I would be one of the ones benefitting from the mentor tag as that's what I use, but I don't think I need to be rewarded like a dumb dog for doing a good deed.I'm a weird one though, I usually don't like getting gifts or even being thanked as it usually makes my helping feeling a bit meaningless as I'm just helping because I want to and not for any kind of reaction or gratitude for it.

It's a nice idea, but I'm not sure how it could work in practice. The biggest problem IMO is that it would have to be automated because Anet can't possibly keep track of every time someone is helpful. But how do you automatically track helpful behaviour? How could an automated system track players answering questions for example?

Like when I type out instructions for Silverwastes in map chat - explaining the stages of the meta-event, what we need to do at each stage and any key mechanics, and then repeat the relevant bits at each stage. How many people does that help? Most will already know what to do, but the reason I started just typing it out is I found new players (or even ones just new to that map) are reluctant to 'out' themselves as new by saying they don't know what to do. Every single time I do the event I get at least one person whispering me to ask additional questions and it often sparks discussion in map chat too which leads to some people learning things (even things I thought 'everyone' knew by now, like it's ok to CC the Thrasher because it will teleport no matter what).

But how would the game know who I've helped? (Even I'm not always sure.) The obvious answer is to make it something players can activate, like the 'helpful' button on the forum - they can say when someone has helped them and send that person a reward (free to them of course, the reward would be generated by the game).

But then that's open to abuse. What's stopping me logging into my main account on one PC and my free account on another, finding a quiet corner of the map and typing "questions" and answers back and forth to farm the rewards? Limit it to 1 reward per person helped and I'll just created another 10+ free accounts and take turns "helping" each of them. Exclude free accounts and you exclude the majority of people who need help. Restrict how many rewards a player can receive and some people may not bother helping after that point because they won't get anything out of it.

However it's done it would be a lot of work for Anet to design and build this system and the end result would be something that already happens in-game on a regular basis.

Besides as other people have said helping other people can already be rewarding. Take my Silverwastes example - by explaining what to do I'm helping myself as much as anyone else. How? Because it's a big group event. I can do any part of it, but I cannot do all of them. Making sure everyone else knows what to do ensures the event runs smoothly and then I get my rewards from that. As an added bonus everyone talking in map chat makes it clear to new arrivals they're on an active map and it's worth sticking around, which makes it easier to progress, and I find people are more tolerant when they've already been talking and less likely to resort to yelling abuse if anything goes wrong, which makes doing the event much more pleasant for me.

I often do LFG in mentoring section and also post that I can help with questions etc whenever I have free time and don't feel like doing anything serious. It would be nice to get appreciation or recognition for it but not in some sort of actual concrete material rewards or gain. Also how do you even track that you've been helpful? How does the person being helped provide an endorsement? That would have to be a whole system in itself but that formal system would make it rigid and kind of defeat the purpose of helping someone or the positive community building too. That said, it would be nice to have some sort of appreciation if helping often enough, especially as some people being helped actually were kind of ungrateful, but I can't see any real effective way of doing this. It would be similar to like... Idk pressing a button to send a heart haha, something so useless but still a token of gratefulness... That's the most it can be. Anyway all in all, that's kind of a whole different system and really a waste of resources to implement

Robin hood is not amused.Bad idea giving gems that way.

If you don't want to mentor for free, don't bother at all. If they reward them, every noob with 5 minutes would want to mentor, despite not having any idea about the game. That would be really bad for community. We all like loot and stuff, but I wouldn't be able to call myself a commander or mentor if I'd expect payment for it.

@Shirlias.8104 said:Robin hood is not amused.Bad idea giving gems that way.

this Robin Hood ?

Any kind of mentor reward would simply lead to an absurb amount of abuse for obvious reasons.Add to that.. I can see mini maps filled with all those little mentor tags.. wont be able to see the Elder Wood for Tags.

Poorly thought through imo no matter what kind of reward you think they should offer.. especially not GEMS... lol I can picture the ANET bean counter sitting in his/her office reading this and spiting coffee everywhere whilst trying to keep a straight face :)