/tg/Station 13

Given this was a topic discussed last term's elections and at least one candidate so far has expressed wanting to implement them, given that any of you could be paired up with them, what's your opinion on Mentors and how would you react if this suggestion was pushed forward?

I don't really have any strong opinions about Mentors, I've seen them work on other servers but its not something I'm super enthusiastic towards bringing into tg. I'm not sure I would outright block the concept but I wouldn't actively push for it. Its an idea that has potential but a lot of pitfalls like "why dont we just make them an admin instead", I'm also not sure if this is even something head admins have any control over bringing into the game or not. I'm just generally apathetic to the concept.

we don't need them. people who would make outstanding mentors already apply for admin, and the amount of extra oversight and rules around them would add layers of bureaucracy that would need created and maintained in order to facilitate. for every good mentor we'd have, we'd have five people only taking the role for clout/an express ticket to becoming an admin down the road anyway. i'd also rather have the players who have passions for teaching newbies to actually play the game and offer helping hands to newbies ingame, as opposed to forcing Cool Person Who Knows The Game Well to sit out of rounds entirely to offer assistance.

I'm basically chatting with Kieth about it now in his candidate thread, since he's had the strongest support for it and he's had a term where me and Hugs have said no to it.

I don't think having an additional layer of staff-not-staff to manage is the answer.

I'd sooner promote an environment where players help eachother out IC and players help out newbies in need. It's how I learned SS13 and it's what got me addicted.

Id rather follow the steps timber's laid out in establishing admins as a valid stand-in for mentors, and to encourage rewarding good behaviour in helping new players out with positive notes.
I've played a lot of servers with mentors, and a lot of the time theyre not very helpful or active when I need them.

i'm once again basically aligned fully with timber on this one.

to me the story of someone helping you out in a round getting your bearings is a lot more memorable and personal than someone with a mentor nametag stepping down from heaven to teach you how to press buttons.

it feels disjointed and unnecessary.

however we should reward community members who consistently make the server a good place to play and who spend their time selflessly trying to teach new players and get them involved. positive notes, tokens, gold stars, a fancy hat, whatever it may be.

I agree with the above; it's a lot more fun when it's someone IC helping you. Like an older sibling or an in-game mentor. We do have the ability to give out commendations to everyone (the little in OOC) via their player panel, which I like to use often but don't know if other people realize it exists. I'm all for more positive reinforcement.

I don't even know what kind of code solutions exist for this. Haven't been on servers which use them, but the way I understand that implementation of mentors is something which does not sound like it's worth the hassle. Maybe if the permissions given were practically zero, we accepted people to be mentors easily and a complaint would automagically mean removing the role, permaban and blacklist? At least a permaban? Pretty please?

Sudden gameplay or mechanics related questions don't happen THAT often, and when they do, they tend to be the kind where even experienced players have to code dive or check the wiki and it ends up just being outsourcing the searching to whoever's answering. On the other hand if someone desperately needs to know how something works when they're actively playing an antagonist, that's when being able to outsource the work is pretty useful. Not useful enough to warrant managing a whole lot of new people, though. On top of that sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty and try something out in thunderdome because it's something really obscure, and that takes admin perms. A classic mentor might simply not be able to help.

Learning a role, or the game in general, that's where some sort of mentor system could shine. One fairly simple option there would be to allow a little bit of metacomms, have a discord channel where people can ask for someone to teach them in a future round. Being able to highlight the need for help in game before a round starts would be cool. Of course this doesn't make fancy staff roles absolutely necessary. And there's the issue of actually getting the in-game role/job a person asked to be helped with. We quite quickly get into the territory of code solutions and I'm imagining drop podding teachers in to help interns, using available ghosts.

As I said before in the thread, encouraging IC help via OOC rewards, (Tokens, Positive notes) is something I would be all for. Im not adamantly opposed to mentors, but I would hesitate to introduce such a big change that would need a chunk more administration.

But where IC questions fail or a simply not viable, I think theres a few notes for mentors.
-Mentors I would entirely expect to be a more passive than active role, something you do while playing.
-This might lead to Metagaming via knowledge gained in mentorhelps. EG: A nukie asking how to reload their bullpup, or a revhead asking if different flashes work. (Some of this could be avoided by making the mentorhelps anonymous, but still.)
-For questions of a specific nature, (EG: How much damage does X do?) Admins are more equipped to test/code-dive for answers as they more than likely wont actually be in the round, and have access to VV