Hi Teppy,
This is tspacepilot from Dragon's Tale Casino. If I understood you correctly in today's chat, the problem you want to address is that students have an incentive to choose the highest mentor possible. You wish that they would pick mentors closer to their level in order to "improve the culture" and to aid mid-level mentors in finding students.
Right now, the mentor gets the difference between a student's DT rate and her own DT rate so students have an incentive to pick a mentor with a high level so that that difference is high. My solution is a little like an automatic DT split implementation, but it reverses the incentive a little. Consider this:
Let d be the percentage difference between the student's DT rate and the mentor's DT rate.
d=mentor_dt_rate-student_dt_rate
Right now, the mentor gets the entirety of d. But what if you split d between student and mentor based on the closeness of their level.
Let l=mentor_level-student_level
Distribute d between student and mentor based on l:
student%of_d | mentor%of_d
l=1: 50% | 50%
l=2: 40% | 60%
l=3: ... | ...
l=infinity 0 | 100%
This proposal is basically like the DT split scheme that we've been seeing regularly for situations where l=1. So, if you choose a mentor that's only 1 level higher than you, you get what would currently be known as a 50% DT split automatically. If you choose a mentor with a level infinitely higher than yours, your mentor gets the entire difference between your DT percentage and her percentage.
This is just an idea, but I thin it addresses your problem directly and avoids making unenforceable rules, it strengthens the incentive to have a mentor and it helps out lower-level and mid-level mentors more than it helps really high-level ones.
TS's approach would work, imo, but the assumptions behind the whole idea are ghastly!
Arrrggg! What's with the assumption that choosing a mediocre mentor would 'improve the culture' (whatever the heck THAT means in this context).
If 'mid-level' mentors want students, let them show that they are WORTHY of having them! Forcing mediocrity on students can not have a good result.
If you want to mix the mentorage up a bit, that's fine, but select other less noxious ways: Require students to pick a new mentor every month or two, for a year or so, and after they have had a good sampling, let them choose who they will. That should relax that whole dynamic a good deal. If you like you could institute a Mentor evaluation & tabulation.... such that a student can broadly rate a mentor with whom they have just spent the last month. (By Broadly, I mean something like "Rate you mentor as : A) Fantastic in every way!; B) Was really helpful, but improvement could be had (see notes); C) Pretty good but I'm not in love (see notes); D) Would not choose this mentor again.
You can do a 'mentor of the month' based on those... they should be fairly legit input for evaluation. I think that there are several mid-level mentors that would do very well in that sort of competition.
Scorp~