12 replies to this topic

[withadancenumber]

Hey TF2C, just a thought I had while driving home today from work. What do you guys think of lobbies with a slot for a mentor?

 

Seeing as a lot of newer players have come to tf2center to get their feet wet with competitive I think it would make a lot of sense. 

 

How I imagine it would be a lobby with 14 slots (for a 6v6 game) could have a slot on each team for a mentor. Now, one thing that would make this a touch difficult is you would have to have people willing to be mentors, as well as the added problem of waiting for the game to start. Obviously the player pool of people who could mentor would be fairly small but i think 1 season of esea, or 1 season of UGC gold+ or 1 season of div 3+ etf2l would be a minimum requirement for a mentor. Mentors would have to admin approved (shouldn't take much to verify qualifications). 

 

You could even go as far as to have a mentor game night (have one of the little chat bubbles at the top left from one of the mercs advertise it occasionally) and just pick a day.  What this would work out to be is very similar to the newbie mixes that get run occasionally but a bit more automated.

[TheMattgician]

Similar ideas have been suggested before, but mostly as a forum or chat room thing.

 

I think this is very promising. As you said, the mentors should be handpicked, as we don't want any idiot trolling through this.

On question is: should the mentor be in-game (which is more difficult for HL games given that most people don't have extra spots), or should they follow an STV (which is also complicated given that not all servers have it).

 

The way I see it, if a new player joined, he'd have the option to ask for a mentor, then all approved members would get a pop up in the corner indicating that someone is asking for mentoring. Another requirement, depending on how mentoring is implemented, would be to be in the same zone.

People should be punished for abusing the mentor button of course.

[Dreamboat]

I feel like the mentors should be able to drop feedback on the mentee as a person, like if i mentored a guy and he was an asshole to me about it, i should be able to essentially downfrag the guy, similar to how mumbility works. enough bad reviews and he gets a month cooldown or something?

[RTC]

If a complete package could be formed, it's an excellent idea, but as a mere skeleton, it leaves a lot of questions to be answered. Firstly, as Matt has stated, will they simply be a spectator or viewing the match via SourceTV? Both exhibit issues with mentors using it for ghosting purposes (even if the intention is not malevolent in nature), and both propose separate issues of their own also. Secondly, while the prospect of disruptive mentors is possible, the potential for disruptive mentees is also likely, with higher level users using it as a joke, which won't entice users to apply to become a mentor.

 

To make a long post short, there are a lot of things that need to be thought out about the system at hand, those two being the two pressing my mind currently. It's an idea that has a lot of potential to do good for the community and with the right implementation have very little drawbacks, but I imagine it won't be high on the developer's priority list at this moment in time.

[ManSkirtDude101]

Can we do something like an official tf2c mentor forum where players can be asked to be the mentee or the mentor I would be happy to mentor new demos.

[bake]

Sorry if this has been said before, but I think it would be a nice little convenience if there was a total shown for red and blue, in lobby, for the total number of hours played in tf2. And maybe in tf2center?

 

Also, as a secondary idea, would it be possible for there to be a feature for experienced players to have a "let me coach you", "ask me for help about comp" (along those lines) by their name in lobby.

 

- Thanks

Edited by Mother Tereza, 06 January 2015 - 12:12 PM.
Topic merged with original thread

[Motomaster654]

Hey there, I am fairly new to tf2center, and I just want to tell you guys what it is like for someone with 720 hours, and 3 matches here.

      

     I started up my first match, I decided to go soldier (my most played class, so I don't see a reason not to pick it) I knew going into this I wasn't going to be anywhere near the top of the leaderboard, but I figured I would be of some kind of use. Well, somewhat long story short, I wasn't, I was a useless variable to the team, but hey, it was only my first lobby, and I was only against a soldier who had 3000+ hours, and most of the enemy team having 1500+ (If I remember correctly).  After the match I apologized and asked my team what I could have done better, just so I don't ruin future lobbies. I had 3 people tell me (course not all at the same time but they all seemed to think the same thing), "Get better". "Get better", I pondered on that for a while, when I was just on a tf2 jump map.  I know what it means to "Get better", but, how can you get better? When the crowd that you want to play with is thousands of hours ahead of you? (yes, time should come, but it would take a substantial amount of time to do so, more than 2 years I would believe, as that is the amount of time I have been playing tf2).

 

 

     Alright, thats my story, thats what I am sticking with, not looking for soldier tips (well, indirectly I am, but not from replies). Rather, I am looking for a faster way to "get better" a more efficient and longer lasting way. In the lobby selection, some lobbies will have a small indicator (could be a whistle like tf2 has).  This indicator means that there is a Coach, in that lobby, willing to teach all of the spectators why the soldier went here, or why the sniper took this loadout, or how that demoman could have been more effective at trapping last.  There could be another voice chat system in mumble as well, that the coach hosts (or the students, whatever).  

 

     But there is a few more problems, one being, how exactly could we get a large amount of players to coach?  The answer?  Requesting them specifically from strong players, as well as maybe some bribery (not sure about this, but a last ditch effort if no one coaches, with keys or scrap, or hats or something). Also have a 'request to be admitted as a coach button somewhere in the site (preferably lobby selection, where most people are), where people could volunteer, after a background check if they have so many hours on tf2, so many games, so many wins, so much reliability, etc...  

 

     After a match, and the coach is done, the students may upvote or downvote (or not vote) based on how good they thought the coach was, if they provided a lot of useful info, then they get upvoted and it could add more to their reliability (even if it is at 100%, it could boost them up past that, even to 200%, giving them priority to reserve themselves a class in the next lobby they go in, if the lobby they go in has those places full, it takes the player who has a higher ranking than the enemy class, and puts them back into lobby selection, making people want to be coaches, so they can have priority).  

 

     Now, Hopefully you guys implement this, and help payers "get better".  And if you don't want to implement this that is fine I totally understand (I'll just go play and be worthless for 2+ years before I can play here and not be a nuisance thats fine, jkjk I love you guys, even though I suck) please add any thoughts you have here, as I would be glad to check them out too.

 

 

Best Wishes

     

     -Moto

Edited by Mother Tereza, 22 January 2015 - 05:39 AM.
Merged with original thread

[Kengur]

Seeing as you guys pursue the "pub to competitive" ideology, may be this feature is in order.

 

"Request mentor" or "Request assistance". So how does it work? You get to the lobbies and join a class, and get this button. You press it, and somewhere on the main page there should be notification area where it says "<name> requested a mentor for <class>" and a link. So as a mentor you click the link and get STV for that lobby and get to join mumble so you can give your mentoring for that particular player.

 

You can also run this as a opt-in program and add whatever mentoring points etc.

Edited by Mother Tereza, 16 February 2015 - 01:03 PM.
Merged with original thread

[TheMattgician]

As I've said before, mentors should be picked in some way to prevent trolling. I'm sure we can come up with some incentives for mentors.

[kKaltUu]

This is a good idea and it will cost us a lot of time and effort in implementing it. 

It can't be done half-assed for obvious reasons. 

 

Biggest problem regarding this is that quality control regarding mentoring and mentees will be a huge undertaking that could validate setting up an entire PR entity for TF2Center. 

 

Before starting on an implementation of this system, can we see if we can combine this with the advanced or elite tier on the staff forum? 

[rio de janeiro]

[Deft]

Does anyone have ideas on how the mentors will be selected?

[jmomo]

I really like this idea for individual mentors.

 

But what about another game mode focused around this?

 

Imagine a highlander game where there is an extra player on each team: a Game Master. This person is in spec only, and when each round starts, all players except the GM on each team is muted. The GM is like main-caller in comp but it's hard-enforced.

 

That might be cool.

 

One issue might be the need to hide spies when they are cloaked.