Mentor List for New Players

I recently had a new player on White Giant message me asking a question about whether he had to pay a monthly fee for additional countries or not. I answered his question, and asked him why he picked me to message (he was located on a different continent from me). He responded that he looked at the players who were currently online, and saw that I had multiple countries and so should be able to answer his question. Since then, I've helped him with advice on fixing his now 2 countries (he joined then got premium membership after getting a country so it was a wreck, as free player countries usually are).

This is something I've seen in other games I've played, and I think it would be great for Simcountry.

Have a mentor button, prominently displayed on the page of new players (say those under 60 days). Experienced players could sign up to be mentors and new players could message the mentors for advice and questions. You could also flag such messages as a priority or sticky, so they are not lost in all the game notification spam (I just happened to look at my 20+ messages soon after I received the message from the new player, if he had sent his message a few hours before I never would have noticed it).

I feel having mentors which new players could message for help or advice would be a great way to grow the game. I remember way back in 2008 when I first started, there was MUCH more communication in the forums and in game, and so it was much easier to learn and get help. The documentation is EXTREMELY LONG, windy, duplicative in many areas, and contradicts itself in many areas (some of it hasn't been updated in years). It has taken me several real life days (and probably over an hour each day) to read through MOST of the documentation. Mentors would be helpful in being a supplement to the documentation and giving correct, updated information.

Simcountry could also vet Mentors, and make sure it's players who they feel genuinely know the game well and would be willing to help. You could say put a minimum game level achieved on it (5 I think would be a good minimum, as its not easily achievable and it is where the welfare index bonus starts). There are several ways Mentors could be chosen, or could even have the Security Council be the Mentors or vote on the Mentors. There's many ways this could be done.

Any player that reads the entire set of docs and passes the final exam should be rewarded with 1,000 GC's.

My first thought is that the FAQs could be rewritten into something that can be read in a few mins with a brief description of the basics. New players could be directed there before getting their country.

I've had new players ask me questions and I responded, but with people logging on at different times of the day it's not very efficient. Chat would probably be better.

It takes a little bit of work to get on the security council, maybe council members could flag themselves as available mentors.

Most the time you just need to ask older players, All we have is time haha

This account will be 11 years in September, I say this account because I had one before this for about a year then came back.

But most new players wouldn't know who the old players are. That's why having say older players flagged as mentors would let them know who to ask.

This might be easier to implement by just having another channel on the forum for people asking for mentors and people posting offers as a mentor.

I like the notion of a final exam. Mentors are fine, but it assumes that there will always be experienced players ready to help whenever people need it. A GC reward would be more than enough incentive for new players, and even experienced ones, to get through it.

1000 GC is a lot of USD value, so maybe not that much, but even just 30 or 60 would allow a new player a large cash influx, another slave, or an Enterprise.

A list of mentors would be great.
It is a good idea.

In the mean time, I see players posting problems on the Problems trail on this forum and very quickly, someone answers their question.

Sometimes we do but in most cases others are faster and accurate.