WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Two of my veterans have the following listed:

Warrick Dunn
Leadership--66
Intelligence--87
Mentor To: Running Backs

Keith Brooking
Leadership--83
Intelligence--90
Mentor To: Inisde Linebackers


This is apparently NOT strictly attached to being a position group leader. Dunn is a leader, but Brooking is not. Does this mean what I think it means???????? Do smart veterans with high leadership help develop youngsters?????



Uh.....excuse me.....I...uh....gotta go to the bathroom for a few minutes.....


(Now where did I put that Kleenex???)

Cool. Haven't seen it, but will have to look for it. It's the little things (actually this is big) that make me enjoy it more and more.

Dang....just found another one. CB Tyrone Williams....Leadership 57, Intelligence 990---Mentor To Cornerbacks.

That is outstanding...I am so impressed with FOF 2004 thus far.

One more....DT Ellis Johnson...Ldr--58, Int--84....Mentor To DT's.

It looks like they have to have above 50 leadership, high intelligence, AND 8+ years of experience. This is VERY VERY VERY cool!

Can you do a quick "search" and look in the chemistry of each team for this?

No...it is not in the chemistry. It is on the player card only, as far as I can tell. Go to the personality view screen, and sort by intelligence. Then, just starting looking at player cards. If the guy has more than 8 years experience and high intelligence, look for "Mentor To". It is listed between his Agent and his Loyalty on his player card.

I'm guessing 8 years, because Keion Carpenter is in year 7, with 100 intelligence and 74 leadership, and is not listed as a Mentor, while Brooking is in year 8, and is a Mentor.

Skydog, thanks for pointing this out...now, the question is what you have above, and if it's true, then we need a free agent search capability for leadership and intelligence!

Dola--

You can see it listed on teams other than yours as well. The cutoff appears to be 8 years, leadership >50. I'm not sure how high intelligence has to be, but I'm looking at an 8-year guy with leadreship 75 and int. 62 who is not a mentor.

Muuuuuuuussssstttttt purchase this game.

It will be extremely cool if former mentors are the guys who become coaches and coordinators. I know that Jim indicated that players would show up in the coaching/scouting pool.

well, we're in agreement on this, at least. :)

Darren Howard is a mentor to DEs on my team with only 7 years experience...He is the youngest mentor on my team.

Re: WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Affirmative, at least in part. I haven't confirmed that intelligence is necessary, but mentors definitely do help your youngsters in that position group develop. I also don't yet have a handle on the magnitude of this, but I agree it's a really intriguing feature.

Re: WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

lol...I hate to say it, but when I read this, I thought of another way this could go down.

"Holy Cow! A running back held out all year and is returning to the draft? Oh my...HONEY! We're going to bed!"

CR

Re: Re: WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Can you or SD elaborate, how does this effect decision-making?

you people are really making me want to buy this game, and I swear, I just do not have time for a new game right now, espicially one I would become this.... AHEM, "immersed" in. If this feature actually impacts the game it is easily one of the most interesting additions I have seen to this series.

Skydog, I don't think I believe what I see... you are using the real roster? Don't you have several thousand reasons not to do that? :D

Re: Re: Re: WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Maybe I don't understand your question, but here goes:

A player who has the potential to be a mentor is worth more to you, since his presence on the team will benefit the development of younger players in the same position group.

So, it becomes one more thing to consider when evaluating players for your team -- in addition to current and potential raw talent, team cohesion and chemistry factors, off-skills like special teams roles, etc. More things to consider (or not) makes the game more nuanced, at least potentially.

If I have Personality and Chemistry turned off, then this would not be a factor?

Come on bucc... one thread your kissing Jim, the next you are Zero Personality. What gives? :D

Pretty cool stuff.

Ya know, I read a few threads from a few days ago where folks were saying that it didnt look like there was too much new in the game and probably wouldnt be worth buying. And, other than multiplayer, it didnt really appear as though there was much in the way of bells & whistles added to the game. Instead of fancy chicanery, Jim chose to tweak and add lots of little things that we are just now finding out about. It would appear that he has, in subtle yet important ways, improved the game play and made this into a much more difficult game to 'master', as so many of us have through the years.

Kudos to Jim for a job well done. Maybe some day soon I can get around to actually playing the game!

This should have been on the "new feature" list

This thread had me look through my Eagles' lineup more closely. I have 2 mentors. Troy Vincent is a mentor which is to be expected. But, I also have Nate Wayne as a mentor to outside linebackers. This is interesting as he is only in his 5th year and this is his first year with the Eagles. His intelligence (71) and Leadership (87) are high, but his strength of personality is a zero! Troy Vincent had high values in all 3 of these ratings (83 int, 78 leadership and 89 strength of personality.)

Corey Chavous
6 yrs
Leadership--76
Intel--91
Mentor to--Safeties

Yet he has a conflict with Denard Walker.........Hmmm..........

Re: Re: Re: WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Well, here's a specific answer. I've got cap room issues, with Dunn on my roster taking up $1.96M in space as my #3 RB, with three more season left on his contract. However, with a 4th-year guy and 2nd-year guy getting all the carries (and doing well last year), I'm wondering if part of their success is due to the presence of Dunn's mentorship. So, rather than cut him (which I would have done without the mentor rating), I am going to just deal with the cap room he takes up for at least this year. I suspect this decision will be repeated numerous times with aging veteran mentors with waning skills. I like it.

Re: Re: WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Is this just a qualitative assessment, or have you examined this in some detail?

Re: Re: Re: Re: WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Is it possible to run the same season twice? Once keeping Dunn and the other season cutting him to see what the exact effect of the mentoring ability is?

8+ years? My only mentor I have found in my OPU is a guy with 5 experience.

I'd say 5+ years.

I had a mentor with low intelligence, so I don't think that's a factor.

Actually, the more I look around, the more I see that this is varied, which imho is a good thing. It would have been a little disappointing if this was as automatically decipherable on the first full day of the release as it appeared. It doesn't look like you can say, "If years>x and ldrship>y and int>z then he will be a mentor."

Heh. Interesting. Haven't seen one of those yet.

*****WARNING*****
The rest of this thread my contain what some of you might consider spoilers with regards to how mentorship is determined. If you don't what to know some pretty solid stuff on what ratings are clearly the determining factors for being a mentor, stop reading now.











OK. I'm in the process of entering some mentors into a spreadsheet, and it is very clear that the determining factors are (in no order yet): intelligence, leadership and experience. At this point, intelligence and experience appear to be the top two determinants, with leadership being a secondary determinant. I'll post more in a few minutes.

I signed an old vet with nearly no skills because he was a mentor to QBs and I had a 3 year pro that was only about 50% full of his potential.

By the end of the year he is nearly maxed out his potential. Very cool.

Shouldn't these features be documented? The game looks excellent thus far, but the documentation is underwhelming.

OK, here are some hard numbers. I went through all 32 rosters in my league. There were a total of 93 mentors. Here are how the three determining factors break down in the pool of mentors.

INTELLIGENCE
>=90: 32 (34.4%)
>=80: 52 (55.9%)
>=70: 65 (69.9%)
>=60: 80 (86.0%)
>=50: 86 (92.5%)
>=40: 90 (96.8%)

Only three guys <40 intelligence are mentors. All three of them were on the high end of the other two categories. (Ldr>87, Exp>10).

Average intelligence of mentors: 78.1

LEADERSHIP
>=90: 24 (25.8%)
>=80: 37 (39.8%)
>=70: 50 (53.8%)
>=60: 66 (71.0%)
>=50: 79 (84.9%)
>=40: 89 (95.7%)

Only four guys <40 leadership are mentors. They are on the high end of the other two categories, but not as extremely so as low intel guys: (>71 int, >8 exp). It appears, then, that intelligence is a stronger determining factor than leadership

Average leadership of mentors: 71.9

EXPERIENCE
5 yrs: 2 guys
6 yrs: 8 guys
7 yrs: 2 guys
>7 years: 81 guys

Once again, the mentors on the low end of the experience range had very high scores in leadership and intelligence.

Personality and popularity of mentors graded out to very close to the league averages, and was evenly distributed, incdicating that they had little/no effect.

Now, two major questions remain in my mind:

1. How strong is the effect of mentorship?
2. How often do guys with high intel, high leadership and high experience become mentors?

The latter question can be checked out fairly easily. The former is going to take some time and testing, I would think. That's all for today.

--Ben

Good work, Ben :)

This is so cool. Especially if you can hire free agents specifically for their mentoring ability as Shorty was mentioning to help bring along young players. It puts a whole new value on old players with declining skills.

It also appears nothing is set in stone. As I said, a mentor can be as young as a guy with 5 years experience.

Well I have had the same 3 RBs for now a 3rd season, and just this year 9 year pro Marlon Mayes is a mentor to Running Backs. Too bad I notice this after I release him, and now I frantically try to resign him and he won't due to past injustices. :)

I more or less agree. I would point out, though, that the "new" features being discovered lately are essentially things that have come about since the first beta version of the game. So, when Jim first produced a "features list" he had not included any of these things, to the best of my knowledge. An explanation more than an excuse, but it does offer some context for this.

It would be really cool if mentors entered the coaching pool when they retire.

Even so, I'd like to see definitive word from Jim on these features rather than guesswork (albeit ingenious) from FOFC. Perhaps a help file update or, alternatively, a web site FAQ would be appropriate.

In a way, this is similar to Bucc's preference for Civ3 rather than Europa Universalis. Civ3 is explicit about its rules whereas EU's ruleset is ambiguous at best and nebulous at worst.

Perhaps this is the old "open versus closed system" debate. Do you want a game with known rules or a simulation of real life with all its uncertainties...

I'm confident all things will be revealed in time. Meanwhile, I'm having fun "discovering" the little nuances myself, though, I definitely would like the official word at some point.

Since Quik is our resident computer and beta tester, I tend to accept his take on things. He usually doesn't speak in certain terms when he is guessing. Kind of reminds me of the line in Star Trek IV when Bones tells Spock, "I think what he (Kirk) is trying to say is that he trusts your guesses more than most people's facts."

This doesn't excuse the missing info, but I would much rather be playing this sans good documentation than waiting for the help doc to be complete.

Jim has also traditionally been extremely tight-lipped about inner-workings of the game so I don't know if this is a (lack of) documentation issue or if it's his usual mode of operation.

Then I would have to find another smilie where I would be kissing the whole beta team.

I see it... I can picture the FOFC version of Star Trek:
SkyDog as the fearless leader, Cpt James T. Kirk.
Buccaneer as the grumpy ship doctor, Bones McCoy.
Quiksand as the highly logical Vulcan, Spock.

:D

This thread now has a link from the main thread.

Just an observation, not a conclusion, but Duckett has 2950 yards and 4.6ypc in two seasons, and doesn't have oustanding ratings. He has, however, an affinity with Dunn, and Dunn listed a mentor. I have to wonder if those two facts are boosting his performance significantly.

No amount of mentorship can help T.J. with this, after the third game of the preseason:
:(

I curious about a couple of things.

If a mentor changes teams, is he still a mentor, or does he have to earn the respect of his pupils? Based on comments above I think he would still remain a mentor.

Can you have more than one mentor at a position group? If you bring in a mentor LB from another team and you already have a mentor LB are they both mentors, or is one "chosen" over the other to be a mentor? If you can have two, is the effect doubled, or just boosted a little?

Does team experience have anything to do with who is designated a mentor? In other words, if you have two players with the same INT, LDR, and EXP, will the one who has been on the team longer be the mentor?

1. It appears that when changing teams a guy is still a mentor. I don't have a problem with this. In real life, if your team signs a cagey vet, everybody knows he's a cagey vet. There might be the occassional young, brash, hotshot hotshot who doesn't pay attention to his wisdom (now THAT would be cool if that were modeled...say a guy with strong personality and low intelligence might not listen to the mentor). Several mentors will be changing teams via free agency (which I'm about to play through in a few minutes), and I can confirm that for you within the hour.

2. Yes. In my looking around, Oakland had THREE mentor QB's! (K. Collins, K. Stewart, R. Gannon).

3. I'm not sure about the effect being increased with multiples, but I can tell ya this: the 4th-year QB on Oakland's roster, Shannon Quinn, who has yet to play a down of football, is rated 25/39. He has a good bit of red for a guy who has yet to get a regular season snap. Here's how his ratings have progressed:
End of 2K3: 14/45 (1 mentor)
End of 2K4: 19/41 (1 mentor)
End of 2K5: 25/39 (3 mentors, appears to have spent all year on the inactive roster)

So, there was a slight increase in development in the year he had three mentors, and the odds are that he played none in the the preseason that year, whereas he definitely did the first two years. They've had the same off. coordinator since he's been there, so at this point I'm hypothesizing that the presence of multiple mentors accelerated his development even though he got no PT whatsoever.

4. Since you can have multiples at a position group, the last two questions don't matter.

Oh....I've uploaded the spreadsheet that I used to do this analysis. Click HERE to download it and take a look.

Uh oh, Freddie Mitchell has become a mentor to receivers. I guess he can teach them to act as if they are one of the elite receivers in the league, even if they catch no more than 1 pass a game.

Also Hank Fraley is mentor to centers, Jon Runyan is mentor to offensive tackles, Ike Reese is a mentor to inside linebackers and Carlos Emmons and Nate Wayne are mentors to outside linebackers.

I gave up on Ike Reese :( OH well, I lost a mentor. I still have Carlos and Nate though :) This aspect is so cool, as I find myself trying to predict who will be mentors and keeping them where I might not otherwise. That is too true about Freddie Mitchell ;)

I need to retract this statement, and apologize if it misled anyone. I still have my various beta files, and after looking back I can confirm that the mentoring function was indeed present even in the first beta version that I had available to test. It turns out, I guess, that it's something that I just never noticed when running the game in that version -- and that I first noticed it with a later Beta version. I wrongly assumed that the mentoring function (and a couple of other things) had newly appeared in the game as the beta process had gone on, but my discovery of them was just delayed - not their inclusion.

Again, I'm sorry if I misled anyone with those statements. It doesn't help with the initial questions about documentation, but I wanted to set the record straight(er).

You mean I noticed it faster than Quik did??? :eek: Ya slippin', Big Blue.

;)

I wish the "Mentor" designation appeared on the Attitude Advisory screen so these folks would be more apparent. I have to flip through every player in the game to find out who the mentors are.

I'm beginning 2007 and checked all 32 attitude screens and thought there were no Mentors in my database. Then I checked a couple of the players mentioned in this thread, and sure enough, they had the designation, too. But buried on the player card where it takes lots of clicking to survey the market.

Tedious

Great idea that hopefully will be implemented!

Just a quick question/comment along the lines of mentoring. I'm not sure if anyone has previously documented the percentage of mentors that are released into the coaching pool after retirement (it would likely take a good deal of work), but just wanted to see from someone who has simmed far ahead if there appeared to be several former player/mentor types available for hire.

In my sim it is 2006 and I noticed Doug Flutie was in the pool and if I remember correctly he also served as a mentor for SD before retirement. I hired him just for the fun of it, although the season was a bit of a disappointment.

A quick update on my luck hiring Kordell Stewart as QB mentor.

Dallas had gone 7-9 (incredible luck with 10 defensive/return TDs for the season), 3-13, 5-11, and 6-9-1 with a young QB in the lineup the past three seasons. Progress, yes; hope, no.

With Stewart mentoring the kid led us to the title game, going 14-2 and missing undefeated status only due to two late FGs. Lost the FOF Bowl to Jax, but nonetheless, seems this mentoring thing is great.

Ratings-wise the QB didn't develop much--one or two points in either direction, with the exception of Sense Rush where he went from 7 to 11 and Read Defenses, also up 4.

His TD/INT ratio went from 13/17 to 25/13 and his sacks plummeted from 54 to 36.

OTOH, in pre-season, his ratings have tumbled across the board to lower then he ended two seasons ago. Only a few points, but noticable. We'll see about next season.

Has anyone noticed at what point players become mentors? I signed a 9th year DT after training camp, hoping that he would become a mentor when he joined a team. I assumed that even though he wasn't listed as a mentor currently, it was possible that it was just because he wasn't on a team -- I mean, you can't be a mentor if you're not on a team, right? Is this a correct assumption, or are free agents (not just guys up for free agency, but guys that aren't on any team's roster) also listed as mentors? Anyway, the guy is, as I said, in his 9th year, and has leadership and intelligence in the 70s, so I thought he would be pretty good mentor material. However, he showed up to practice not mentoring anyone.

So what should I do? Cutting him would give me a very small cap hit, but on the other hand, if the guy becomes a mentor in a year or two, I don't want him to hate me cause I cut him. But on the other hand, he's only got a 1-year contract, so keeping him around for this year won't even assure me of having him next year anyway.

It differs when different players become mentors. Download the spreadsheet from earlier in this thread if you want to take a look.

Thanks, SkyDog. I'd looked at the spreadsheet before, but my question was meant to be 'at what time *during the season* can players become mentors?'

I've seen free agents who are not on any team listed as mentors. I wish there was a better way to sort this, as I actively look for free agent mentors. I've also noticed (although it might be my imagination) that free agent mentors seem to get better contract offers then their playing skills would otherwise dictate. If this is coded into the game, that is awesome. :)

Ahhhh....I haven't looked carefully enough to know the answer to that one. I *think* they become mentors during the advancing to the next season stage, but I could be wrong.

Thanks again. Looks like that puts me in the same situation, not knowing if I should keep this guy around. I mean, it's the first season, so I have plenty of cap space to keep him, but I'll have some tough decisions to make, when I cut down to 53 men. I guess that if he becomes a mentor as we advance to the next season, by that time, everyone else will have a shot at him, so I might as well give up.

When finances aren't an issue, I use the IR to stash as many players as possible. When I've had a seemingly worthless mentor, I'll play him at 9 in the preseason, and hope for an inury, so that I can IR him for the season, keep the player, and keep the mentorship.

In general, I also take a chance on 1-2 injured free agents a year as well. If I can sign a seriously injured player to a 2 year deal with low or no bonus, I'll IR him for the year and hope he's ready to roll the following year.

Dang, that's just ruthless! ;)

Question re: Mentors and Affinity
 

If affinity is turned off, are mentors still active, or are they shut off as well. I know a previous thread had said mentors are seperate from all the affinity rankings, but the question came up in my league and I wanted to be sure.

Thanks

ditto.....affinity turned off, im assuming the mentorship still works, right? The only thing affected by this are the in team fights or friends, right?

We have affinity turned off in our league but we still have mentors.

word up!!! Everybody Say!! When you hear that music got 2 get it under way, OW!!!

Sorry to bring up a way old thread, but I added another league's worth of mentors to the spreadsheet and graphed LDR vs. INT for mentors and EXP vs. (LDR+INT). From the former, it seems that a player needs a combined leadership and intelligence score of 100 or higher to become a mentor. From the latter, it seems that to become a mentor in his 5th year he needs a combined score of at least 150, and by his 9th year that requirement dips to 100. The requirement goes down even further by the 15th year.

Good info to know. Thanks.

Seriously... we need the QOTM back...

Bumping this because I think it's a damn cool thread and just went through my Buccaneers team and was surprised to find who was a mentor and who wasn't:

RDE L.C. Greenwood (May actually have to resign him now whenever his contract is up)
MLB Nick Buoniconti (This one I actually suspected because Brad Van Pelt's current ratings took an astronomical jump after I signed Nicky B and had him start for a year with Van Pelt as the backup)
WLB Bill Budness (Most of my OLBs have tanked, so I don't know how good a mentor he is in actuality)
LCB Carl Lockhart (Allen Turner bit it, so I'm not sure about him either)

So maybe the potential of the player has a lot to do with it too? I mean, Van Pelt was a really high potential guy, so maybe if the athlete in question has really low potential to begin with and doesn't look like a boom guy, maybe mentoring won't do much good, if any?

Just something I thought I'd toss out there for further discussion on the subject. :)