A while ago i threw this idea out on the boards and i'll do it again, mostly to get feedback from NC and the Players.
This level of support would be between the first and second tier. The duties of the CH would be to give more of a personal level of support for the player. The CH would be hand picked by HGMSpam from the player base and would report back to Spam and Mistryl.
They wouldn't have any form of GM powers, but they would fill the current void the support system has.
Having a formal and quick way to reach someone who is signed "willing to answer question" would be nice indeed.
Just having working in game boards, which are already coded and could certainly be easily modified to contain a Help! section, however, might be darn nice.
In the meantime, if you feel like providing global help to newbies with questions, you might as well abuse the party matching feature.
There may be some issue with them doing this. Awhile back several games had this sort of thing. Volunteers who did this kind of job. What ended up happening was a group of people got together and tried to sue them saying they were really employees and therefore should get paid.
I don't know the outcome of the lawsuit, but because of it I know the guide program in Sony's games was discontinued.
Was that the point of your question. Implying i should have known?
Yes. Or more like trying to look good while trying to make you look bad. It's pretty lame sarcasm. I covered this kind of idiocy in the GM for hire thread (asking that you could fly for at least 8 seconds...)
Anyways, I'm sure some people would enjoy this kind of thing, but I doubt it will ever happen. There were community moderators on these boards before, and then one day they were all removed.
Somehow, they dissociate as much as possible the company and the players.
I suggest this. BUT these people cannot play as regular characters or they have to play on different servers than they are as CH.
Is there any reason for this ?
As suggested, the CHs would not have any special powers, that a GM would have, so I see no reason to not allow them to be regular players.
I like the sound of that too, but there should be ingame tools for it too (use the community window for something good for once). The only power I could see the CHs getting is a teleport (will explain later) and a posting status.
How it would work:
- the CHs have a tab in the community window, where it is divided into two: One "question" tab, and a "new player" tab.
- The new player tab shows a list of everybody who has joined this month and has not been visited by a CH. When the CH presses a teleport link, he will be teleported to that player, and can now greet him welcome to the game, and tell him players can ask questions in the community tab. Once the CH is done talking to the new player, he can "cross" the player off the list, press OK and get teleported back to the original position he was in the beginning. (We need more visual appearance imo)
- The other list means NCsoft mst enable the com tab so people can actually ask questions to the CH. In that tab, the CHs can also escalate the questions to higher GMs. The low tier GMs also have the option to forward a petition to the CH list instead (the peron sending the petition gets a notice that it has been moved and can view for replies at <given link>). This way GMs can take more time for important things rather than questions like "wtf where is <npc name>???" if they get any.. i dunno what most ppl petition about really, I gave up petitioning little under a year ago really...
The basics: Interaction with new players and a oppertunity/place ingame where they can ask questions and get community help. There are many ppl who sit with knowleadge of alot of things ingame and would love to in some way help making l2 a better place :)
Splatter the problem is that these kinds of community services were messed up back in the UO days where counselors (unpaid volunteer player helpers) sued OSI/EA for breach of labourlaws.
You can't just have people perform a job for you unpaid.
There's no reason why you can't do it perkless yourself. Sit in a noob town, run around noob areas and ninja buff people, etc. I answer all kinds of questions when I make my noobie rounds.
There's no reason why you can't do it perkless yourself. Sit in a noob town, run around noob areas and ninja buff people, etc. I answer all kinds of questions when I make my noobie rounds.
except that you run the risk of getting a chat ban. I've now learned to party the people so that I don't get banned. Imagine their surprise when I set up a store with a piece of coal for 1 adena and a store shop sign that says "Chat Ban 1 sec"
TBH i think anything to help Mistryl and co. out atm with all these people going crazy over stuff (which is valid topics... just bad ways of presenting it.. or just turning into flames) would be nice...
Since Mistryl is a chick... im kind of surprised she hasnt flipped out on anyone yet completely (please dont hurt me :( ) :O. I bet shes building up all her pressure for one day when shes walking in the office.. and like round house kick Rust... Chuck Norris style.
TBH i think anything to help Mistryl and co. out atm with all these people going crazy over stuff (which is valid topics... just bad ways of presenting it.. or just turning into flames) would be nice...
Since Mistryl is a chick... im kind of surprised she hasnt flipped out on anyone yet completely (please dont hurt me :( ) :O. I bet shes building up all her pressure for one day when shes walking in the office.. and like round house kick Rust... Chuck Norris style.
I'd have to say that if she didn't do it yesterday then she never will. ;) Then again, she may have worked at the post office at some point.
I don't think answering newbie questions is any help to Mistryl in specific at all - it's a help to the game as a whole.
My reaction to a question or request always, always depends on who is asking.
There was a rather embarassing mistell somewhere between "Well, I suppose if you don't need it I'll keep it for someone who can pay my price" and "Try red coda, if you can get Gludio seeds they're the best profit until you can do ...".
I look back fondly on the "nub help" chatrooms in Prontera on RO, and this is the one thing where I would say using party matching for keeping a chat room open while soloing or in town might be a cool thing (don't really have time to chat in party anyway ^^: ), but how do the newbies figure this out anyway?
Splatter the problem is that these kinds of community services were messed up back in the UO days where counselors (unpaid volunteer player helpers) sued OSI/EA for breach of labourlaws.
You can't just have people perform a job for you unpaid.
Why not? The soul idea here is to help the game as a whole. Anyways my idea of game volunteers aren't people that ask whats in it for me, but people that ask how can i help.