Mentor Team Application

[alch]

Greetings Planetarion Community,

We are pleased to announce that starting next round; a new team (initially on a trial basis) will work within the ranks of the Planetarion community:

The Mentor Team

The mentor team’s goals will be to train existing or new alliance HCs and officers as well as individual players.
This team will aim to fortify the fragile alliances and give a better base for new players to fight within the universe and discover the fun aspects of the game, by giving them the assistance they need.
Weekly Lessons, Mentors to players/alliance, Columns, Support and many more new and exciting concepts are being planned for the future as we speak, but the team is still in its design aspect.
In order for this initiative to work the team needs a large variety of members with different skills. Because of the nature of the work, a lot of its members will however need to be allianceless so they can be neutral – however there is room for those people who wish to help but stay in their alliances.
Specification and requirements varies from one individual to another which is the main reason why they won’t be disclosed in this post as they are too many of them.

To apply to the team - send an email to [email protected] with the subject "application"; an application form and requirements will then be sent to you and a Head Mentor(s) will contact you to continue the recruitment process.
Contact can be made also on Netgamers by joining our Official channel #Mentors.


Note: As stated above the team is currently on a trial basis, and we will attempt to improve its services as the team grows.

Note2: Mentors will not automatically recieve free accounts, this is something that has yet to be considered or discussed with jolt

Note3: The Mentors Team is not a replacement for #support or the support team, they are not there to resolve problems. but take assist those who need help over a longer period.


Any Question - Please ask in here or redirect them in #mentors

Thanks you
The Mentor Team

[mist]

congratulations

i believe phrases involving mouths and money are in order

-mist

[Zh|l]

I still don't understand the allianceless thing. In theory it might work, but in practice it simply isn't true. Even if I left my alliance this round I doubt it would suddenly change my frame of mind with regards to the current alliance atmosphere of the game.

Honestly, just because someone leaves their alliance - you expect them to suddenly be totally neutral? They could do that remaining in their alliance.

Also, who is the Mentor team currently? I see alch posting this but he is FAnG.

[Kal]

The team is for next round, so alch and I will both be leaving FAnG to head up the team for next round. One of the reasons the people doing mentoring for the alliances is that they may need to join thoose alliances in game, which means they have a problem if they are in another alliance. As the post says, there are positions for thoose who still want to remain in alliances, as obviously there is a fair amount of help that can be given while still in an alliance.

[wakey]

And which ever small alliance gets Kal helping them is going to be so priviledged, after all hes already proven to have such a grasp on what its like to be in a small alliance

The fact it appears that someone who has shown such a complete lack of understanding of the lower reaches of this game (Kal) seems to be one of the 'Head Mentor' really doesnt bode well for the idea.

And ive said on the posts on this in the past, a person in an alliance CAN give just as much help as one whose allianceless. Like alot of players i've been doing this unofficially for rounds and not once have I needed to have access to their site. Why would you your there to guide them not run the alliance for them, only reasons you need site access is to either a) collect information (ie member locatiosn ect) which a mentor shouldnt be doing anyway or b) to basically run the alliance for them which isnt helping the alliance as the key is to make them more self sufficient. And as Zhil quite rightly pointed out just cos you leave an alliance doesnt mean you stop 'caring' and if these people are going to abuse their position they will do so even if they arent in an alliance

[JC]

I've just read the first few posts in the Mentor thread on the suggestions forum, sorry if the basic ideas of it all have changed through the 3 page thread but i dont have time to read it all now. Anyways my comments.

Overall it seems like a nice idea, its just come 5 rounds too late.

New players?

They most certainly dont exist in any kind of vast numbers that demand an entire 'team' to be dedicated to them. I'm sure someone will reply saying that this will help bring in new players to PA, blah blah blah, but lets stop kidding ourselves.

PA in itself is a very simplistic game. It doesnt take that much to be able to play it to a decent level, all you have to do is be able to read the manual and then be pretty damn active. A mentor team cant teach people to be active. In my experience the 'problems' in lower alliances isnt there lack of understanding of the game dynamics, or inability to organise defence/attacks, its simply that they dont have enough active members. No kind of mentoring is going to change that, especially seeing as you will have no alliance connections and so cant link them up to a larger alliance.

[Kal]

u don;t need to be active to do well in this game, u simply need a brain. I have been pretty inacitve this round, I have never stayed up for an attack - yet I am easily inside the top 100 with about 2k roids. In my opinion anyone can do that providing they have a gal and an alliance behind them - but there are some little tricks to make playing inactivly easier.

I also seriosuly doubt the team will be very big initially, and certainly probably not that many allianceless people.

I think this can help, if I didn't then I wouldn't be doing it.

and you are all welcome to apply, as I have said previosuly, you don't NEED to leave your alliances.

[wakey]

And here goes Kal again with his stupid ill informed comments.

Contray to popular believe small players are not clueless and on the whole know how to play this game to a fairly good level. Their single biggest problem is their alliances. You see the fact a big alliance are big allows their members a little less activity to do well than it does for a small alliance member. These small alliances are just sitting ducks as they dont have the members or the ships to defend an attack from a big alliance, and because of this to get anywhere close to the top alliances small alliances have to be highly active. And this is where the problem comes in, finding active players is hard enough, keeping them is even harder. An active player gets bashed a few times and they jump at the first offer from a big alliance and hence it lowers the overall activity of the whole alliance making them easier to hit and ultimatly pushes more active players out of the door.

Now this is something a mentor cant really help with, infact a mentors main job is something which is basically over in the first week of helping and thats simply helping a newly formed alliance get their structure in order (ie getting the command posts filled, getting channels regged ect ect) after that the help a mentor can really give is a little limited basically restricted to helping attack and defence stratergies and giving some insight into the political situation. You may also need to be their to keep the HC motivated because it can be very demotivating seeing members leave from greener fields and incoming after incoming. However the one thing you cant really teach and which is what the alliances need is activity

[Zh|l]

Originally Posted by Kal

u don;t need to be active to do well in this game, u simply need a brain. I have been pretty inacitve this round, I have never stayed up for an attack - yet I am easily inside the top 100 with about 2k roids. In my opinion anyone can do that providing they have a gal and an alliance behind them - but there are some little tricks to make playing inactivly easier..

You are in a winning block that has had no competition for the round, that is hardly transferable to newbies. In addition, it's the big alliances that will bash them, its the big alliances that will block and thus be unable to be hit by the newbies. You can all very well teach them the game (like I tried to do with Hellboy this round), but it wont stop the constant annoying incomings. I had to use my name to get Hellboy moved to a new galaxy (he was part of the deal to get me) plus I spoke to Barrow on his behalf for an application to ND. Indeed he had an interview with Barrow afterwards, but it still required some hands on help from me.

Originally Posted by Kal

I also seriosuly doubt the team will be very big initially, and certainly probably not that many allianceless people.

I think this can help, if I didn't then I wouldn't be doing it.

and you are all welcome to apply, as I have said previosuly, you don't NEED to leave your alliances.

Then what is the difference between an unallied mentor and a mentor within an alliance? (The difference in how the mentor programme will work)

[Vasquez]

Originally Posted by Zh|l

I had to use my name to get Hellboy moved to a new galaxy (he was part of the deal to get me) plus I spoke to Barrow on his behalf for an application to ND. Indeed he had an interview with Barrow afterwards, but it still required some hands on help from me.

Hey, that makes us sound like bad guys, we have all done our bit to help hellboy and yes it was u mainly but he is now turning into a good player, but even with the teaching we gave him nothing cud be done without an alliance, many thanks to nd for being welcoming but with the game as it is he cudnt even get friends to help def because of lack of eta.

btw we actually wanted hellboy in and not u but u came as part of the deal

sorry i cant use this quote feature, am retarded

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Zh|l

Then what is the difference between an unallied mentor and a mentor within an alliance? (The difference in how the mentor programme will work)

apply and find out?

this is really just an inital announcement, there will be a more detailed one when we know what we ahve to work with - i realise its annoying to have to fill in a form when you don;t know if you will want the job, but thats how it is for now, and the form really isn;t that hard now i have corrected alch's typos

[Nadar]

Originally Posted by Kal

and the form really isn;t that hard now i have corrected alch's typos

err... "ok" I mean.. LOL

[newt]

Why don't all the semi active 'retired' experienced players just get together, start up an alliance for just themselves + as many new players as possible. Make it kind of official, like on message of the day have summat instructing the new players to some channel if they want an alliance.

This will throw them straight into the "elite" world of PA with a set of HC/officers who couldn't give a rat's ass about spies (would be extremely sad if someone did join to spy though :\). The moment any new players show sign of promise, start giving them positions and stuff.

Something like that, or them joining "newb wings" of the top alliances is really the only way that new players will join the game - stand a chance of not getting bashed - and continue playing in future rounds.

[Judge]

I hate to be sceptical, but all I can see from this is one of 2 outcomes:

1, Feeder wings for the main alliances
2, Abuse of power by those with a vested interest in their own or previous alliance, Accompany Fleets ahoy, suicide runs, and annoying attacks on enemies of those with an interest.

The idea has merit, but it wont work, and it wont work because of human nature.

[newt]

Get someone from PA-team overlooking it all would be the best way of making sure human nature doesnt get in the way.

I vote for A2

[Kal]

which is why we didn't do what newt said...

[newt]

what I said is the only way the newbies will flourish

your idea is just pure stupidity. re: JC's post for the main reasons.

[Kal]

there are actually new players, we see them in #support all the time - and there are even more who don't come on irc.

[JC]

My main point wasnt really that there arent any newbies. What you seem to be suggesting though is that every newbie is so dense they cant grasp the simple workings of an online war game. All a player really needs to learn can be learnt in a matter of weeks simply by using your galaxy forums and asking for a bit of advice there (assuming its a random round so you will actually have active people in your gal).

From then on in the only thing that makes a newbie good is whether they are active or not. They cant get into a big alliance because they are new, so dont have mates to watch there back when they are offline, and so the only way of ensuring that their planet will maintain a decent score is to watch it as often as possible and run when you have incoming. The mentor team cant team them anything thats going to be able to help. They dont need to be able to run an attack bot for 40 people, they dont need to be able to run simultaneous battle calcs to organise defence for their whole alliance, all they need is to be damn active and to know when to run their fleet. As i said above, you cant teach activity.

The rest has pretty much been covered by Wakey. Any decent new player will end up being grabbed by a bigger alliance and will learn the ropes from them.

[newt]

I know, I was in valhalla for a good few weeks. Looked at how they set up attacks and so forth. "decent" enough organisation till the actual attack. The limitting factor was that the players on the whole weren't active enough and willing to come online jsut to launch an attack / see if people need defense for a game they don't know all too well. So attacks had dismal turnouts, defense was shite --> demoralising factor

I'm not sure you can change that attitude of a newbie to the game. Now plonk them in an alliance with a good proportion of unselfish 'experienced' players who would be willing to send them defense whenever possible; get attacks covered outside the alliance if activity was low and so forth ... constant nice IRC atmosphere. Not only that but the effect on a newbie of being put straight into an "elite" atmosphere (so long as he didn't feel left out) would boost his overall attitude to the game.

However judge is right, there are too many weirdos out there who care about past alliances and so forth :\ I don't understand it personally. There are enough ppl out there with no connections to any alliance at all though, not that anyone should be sad enough to absue a chance at making PA a decent game again for whatever small reason there would be.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by JC

My main point wasnt really that there arent any newbies. What you seem to be suggesting though is that every newbie is so dense they cant grasp the simple workings of an online war game. All a player really needs to learn can be learnt in a matter of weeks simply by using your galaxy forums and asking for a bit of advice there (assuming its a random round so you will actually have active people in your gal).

From then on in the only thing that makes a newbie good is whether they are active or not. They cant get into a big alliance because they are new, so dont have mates to watch there back when they are offline, and so the only way of ensuring that their planet will maintain a decent score is to watch it as often as possible and run when you have incoming. The mentor team cant team them anything thats going to be able to help. They dont need to be able to run an attack bot for 40 people, they dont need to be able to run simultaneous battle calcs to organise defence for their whole alliance, all they need is to be damn active and to know when to run their fleet. As i said above, you cant teach activity.

The rest has pretty much been covered by Wakey. Any decent new player will end up being grabbed by a bigger alliance and will learn the ropes from them.

gals arn't allways that helpful, what if all of the people in your gal are new players as well, that is easily possible, certinaly in a round like this with private gals. The point is not that they couldn;t learn, but more that they can learn faster.

Its also the same for alliances, i'm sure many of the more established alliances haven;t heard of certain tactics, or have a less than optimum recruitment policy etc. I'm sure not everyone will come and ask for help, which is where the lessons fit in - hopefully we will be able to get experts in all fields to apply for positions on the team - and giving lessons is certianly a job that could be done without leaving an alliance. The idea is to spread the knowledge around rather than keeping it in an elitest central core - after all assuming pa lives forever one say the current so called experts will not be here.

[newt]

i could give lessons on how to be cool on IRC

or maybe not, wouldn't be able to cope with the huge demand

[Zh|l]

Originally Posted by Vasquez

Hey, that makes us sound like bad guys, we have all done our bit to help hellboy and yes it was u mainly but he is now turning into a good player, but even with the teaching we gave him nothing cud be done without an alliance, many thanks to nd for being welcoming but with the game as it is he cudnt even get friends to help def because of lack of eta.

btw we actually wanted hellboy in and not u but u came as part of the deal

sorry i cant use this quote feature, am retarded

My apologies if my post seemed so skewed to you, it was not intentional. I don't see how it made you look like bad guys at all so I cant see what you are reading into.

Once we got into the galaxy, you guys helped him as much as you could which was great. But the fact came down to he needed an alliance.

You, Dinaz, Tir, Stravi, Cameron etc have all been cool. Definately not the bad guys whatsoever (even fi some of you are fpm :P)

[alch]

About the Team. The team will be small and dedicated.
Some of them will be allianceless some wont be, i can ensure you that :
1.A PA team will be overlooking our team which is on trial basis right now.
2.I myself will quit FAnG and i can ensure you the full neutrality you all been looking for (in fact im helping an alliance this round and i never linked them to FAnG attack or used them or anything - tho they kindly offered their few ships to help us attack - i dont think they really understood what would it mean for them)
3. There is people outside who need help - its a fact and i know there isnt lot (JC - i know this for fact because i know at least 20 people who does need help and people who are HC/DC/BC and so on and also players)
4. I can ensure you that, I will personally overlooking all our Senior mentors who will happen to be the one helping the HC setting up their alliances (The people who knows me, know 2 facts, im fair and neutral and if you dont trust me there is nothing i will change which mean our arguments in here will be useless, but everyone who is sceptic in the Team will be able to find me on #mentors and have a chat with me hoping it would clearify a lot more to yourself.)

So basically. We aiming to do lot in round11, but so far we accomplished nothing, We are in a difficult position too as this team can be very unbiased and i am sure in the future we will be flamed many more timesf for what we are doing and for the biased views (as im sure it will take some rounds for people to untie me propertly from FAnG).
I do have respect to anyone here. Give us the shot the Team deserve it, you will be able to judge in end of round11, the work we've done, the outcome and i will be highly gratefull for any based and constructive crtiticism, in fact you can email yours ideas to [email protected], i will read them and answer to them too.
If after few weeks or months, this team wont be running propertly, or will have major problem in his daily function which will cause to a trial ending and out closure, i will take full responsability on it.
About my tie. I know people will associate me to FanG for a while, cutting my tie however wont mean, i wont be known around the HC and some day day direct conversation will ensure the Head mentors will be kept into the Politics loop, and give accurate information to our players/HC/DC/BC we will be monitoring/tutoring.

Vaguely we will attempt to regroup few columnist for later rounds, for our 'future' columns, we will also write HOW-TO and FAQ files, to all the aspects needed (IRC,FORUMS, Arbiter, Politics and more...).
We will contact many ex-HC and old timer, to write us few words about their old alliances and their history, maybe write how they found it (this will bring the nostalgia and also will add some interesting view to the game making it more dynamic, as im sure everyone will enjoy to read a good old story about FURY or Legion or some other Famous Battle), We will give long term support and tutoring, Assist in DC/BC and HCing, but more in how to do it and show it rather than do it ourselves (as it wont help the alliance and they still can make their own mistakes and that the fun in the game), we will probably push 2 small alliances or more than that, eventually organize raid on each other, to show the fun aspect of a war with the fun in it.
We will push the new players to reg a nick on the forums and post with us to enrish the community and mix them with us. We will try to get as many as players we can to connect the IRC and use com-unit for communication. WE will try to push the more new player to upgrade their accounts as the begining. in fact there is many ways i can think about right and can cite in here (most of them are still in development) which will maybe make the game more accessible to the players, lets say it, PA is a regular Web based game, which can in few days be learnt from A to Z by just reading the manual, but the fun in it, is all the additional 'junk' you get with it, the community, the adrenaline, the wars, the organization, the take over, the revolt, the process of doing your own alliance, the people you meet, the channel you register, the 20 hours you take to download IRC and install it and finally join a channel (im sure its amazing 10 fame minutes when you join your first channel and you finally talk to the guy from the forum you been talking for ages).
All this aspect hopefully will make the player who is inactive at the begining to be more active and push him to be addicted to this wonderful game, i know the activity is the key, but from experience and from the alliance i've been helping now and in the past, (small one), they keep going either after they get bashed or something else and they actually enjoy to play even if they are not the best players or something (for them to cap roids is something amazing and cover a defense call and make a 'BIG' guy run is another battle they won).

We will try to ensure that the little guy in the other side of the computer will have 3 fun month and will be a happy customer and will come back later on to buy another round, it will be a more-than-one-round process, but we are here and we wont go nowhere.

thanks,
alch

[A2]

Originally Posted by Newt

Get someone from PA-team overlooking it all would be the best way of making sure human nature doesnt get in the way.

I vote for A2

That would be why myself and Karmulian are overseeing it all then - thanks for clearing that up Newt

[Vasquez]

Originally Posted by Zh|l

My apologies if my post seemed so skewed to you, it was not intentional. I don't see how it made you look like bad guys at all so I cant see what you are reading into.

Once we got into the galaxy, you guys helped him as much as you could which was great. But the fact came down to he needed an alliance.

You, Dinaz, Tir, Stravi, Cameron etc have all been cool. Definately not the bad guys whatsoever (even fi some of you are fpm :P)

yeh reading back i did miss read your bit, my bad.

Using the hellboy situation again, i believe he was active even b4 he had joined our galaxy and had an alliance but he simply did not understand how to play the game, once he was in a galaxy he was much better off and then even more so when he joined NewDawn. But i still believe that the fundamental thing that new players need is to have a decent galaxy. Being in a decent galaxy can get u into an alliance, it means people will be online to report incoming and to help with attacking, an alliance is important for def but as for teaching people the ropes i think that is up to the galaxy.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Vasquez

yeh reading back i did miss read your bit, my bad.

Using the hellboy situation again, i believe he was active even b4 he had joined our galaxy and had an alliance but he simply did not understand how to play the game, once he was in a galaxy he was much better off and then even more so when he joined NewDawn. But i still believe that the fundamental thing that new players need is to have a decent galaxy. Being in a decent galaxy can get u into an alliance, it means people will be online to report incoming and to help with attacking, an alliance is important for def but as for teaching people the ropes i think that is up to the galaxy.

not all galaxies are nice, and what if everyone in the galaxy is a new player. As to getting people into alliance, I just had a random thought - once I have discussed it with Karm/A2/alch i'll stick it on the suggestions forum if they think its worth looking into

[alch]

Reminder: Application for the Mentor Team is still opened.
If you think you have the skills to teach new players and the dedication for Planetarion, Please send an application Request to [email protected]

P.S: The application process will be closed soon. Hurry up.

alch

[Edge]

I like this idea alot, I think not just the new players as well as some of the old lazy players like me will like this