Replacing Aides with Volunteers?

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To help with new player retention and new character integration, let players volunteer their in-game time actively seeking out cyans.

Volunteers will have a Staff-set flag that lets them toggle on and off duty. While on duty, they are expected to make cyans their top priority. To help with this, volunteers will:

1) be visible on a 'who volunteer' list
like 'who cyan' but in the other direction

2) get alerts when new characters leave chargen*
*not everyone wants to be approached right out of chargen so maybe a y/n prompt asking the new character if they'd like IC help getting acclimated to the city.

3) maybe receive alerts from a cyan RP 'beacon'?
whereRP on its own isn't always effective, and it can be uncomfortable asking for RP on an OOC channel, so let cyan characters toss out a 'play with me!' beep to call on Volunteers.

Further thoughts:
The expectations for Volunteers can be clearly spelled out in some help files or a booklet.
It might be worth limiting the who list to a certain percent of on-duty Volunteers at any given time.
This isn't much different from what our player base already does when it comes to newbies, it just adds a few useful tools while clearly marking who is available and willing to help.

[Kinaed]

I like replacing the name 'Aide' with 'Volunteer', albeit we need a shorter synonym that will fit on the who list (no more than 8 characters).

I don't like volunteers turning their flags off; we had that for Aides and it *seemed* to contribute to their doing nothing but having an Aide flag for prestige but doing minimal cyan-player help for the benefit.

[Voxumo]

I do feel it's important to note Aides not only dealt with rping with cyans, but also helped further such as if a Cyan's name was unthemely they could change it, or a fight broke out in the ooc chat they could temporarily disable use of the chat. Heck if it was found a command was causing the game to crash, they could also temp disable that command as well. Most of this of course was in the case a staff member wasn't around.

I feel like there were other commands at the Aide's disposal, but I can't recall right away. Just wanting to clarify the full scope of an Aide's responsibility for prosperity's sake.

[LonelyNeptune]

How about "Helper"?

I would probably be interested in volunteering.

[Taunya]

VLTR?

[Kinaed]

Here is a list of the old Aide powers:

     Aide Toggle         Aidetalk            Ban            
     Ban                 Disable             Intro          
     Nochannel           Nocourier           Nomessage      
     Nomood              Nopost              Notitle        
     Punish              Settitle            Whoinvis       
     ban_player

[-+[-__-]+-]

Ah! I was under the impression that we wanted to avoid a lot of what existed before, so I was concentrating only on the RP part. If other old commands are options too, I'm putting another think on this.

Yes, if not volunteer, maybe Helper? Guide?

[Starstarfish]

I don't like volunteers turning their flags off; we had that for Aides and it *seemed* to contribute to their doing nothing but having an Aide flag for prestige but doing minimal cyan-player help for the benefit.

If there is a toggle, perhaps there should be an expectation of Aides of a minimum of X hours per week of time counted with the Aide flag on. That's how AFAIK a lot other games with similar systems handle things. Further, as RPing with new characters gives a coded benefit, RP time spent with cyans could in theory be tracked to show that the Aide is active enough.

But there might be times you need to login and do other stuff (mail, plots, board posts, etc) where you have to be "off-duty" in order to keep your char functional on-grid. Or sometimes needing to re-charge your batteries as it were with other RP types.

[Voxumo]

I think before discussing the toggleable nature of aides/volunteers we should perhaps first decide what exactly would be expected of a volunteer.

For example, aides weren't expected to rp exclusively with Cyans, and several who were aides had high profile characters engaged in numerous plots, such as myself who was a noble. I don't think a Volunteer flag would need to be toggleable if it had the same kind of expectance. Furthermore, in the past the position of Aides wasn't something handed out willy-nilly nor something people could just volunteer for. I remember being approached by staff with the offer to become an aide, and I would kind of hope if we have another similar system it would function similar, with it being a select few and what staff may deem as "Prime Examples" of the game, people they don't have to worry about, yet were knowledgeable about the game and it's theme.

I feel like I'm rambling, but Aides were more than just somebody to rp with cyans, they were there to help them, to keep their tells open for any cyans who may have questions they'd rather not wish to ask via visnet, or who needed a certain section of chargen explained further. It wasn't just about rp.

So what exactly are people wanting out of a new system similar to aide, but not aide? For it to be solely focused on rping with Cyans?

[Kinaed]

In my mind, the best and most powerful use for volunteers is helping new players integrate into the game, primarily an RP perspective (see a cyan looking lonely on whereRP? Go RP with them!). This is the absolutely most important key to new player retention and we frequently fail at it.

The other things, like being there to answer questions and just help out, are well-covered by our average player because we have such a good pbase.

That said, we provide RPxp bonuses for RPing with cyans, and it seems this works, but a lot of cyans report that their RP drops off after they achieve the normal status. I wonder if we're not bridging that gap with a long enough cyan period, and if there are other ways to make them attractive to RP with beyond just an RPxp bonus.