From what I've seen, the mentor simply spces a game and doesn't really have much interaction with the team. Was thinking about giving a hand, but I'm not quite sure what is involved / how dedicated I have to be.

ANSWER ME JAY.

In my opinion, a mentor for Community 4 Fame is an individual who is a part of the competitive community who has enough knowledge about the game and the config being played, as well as experience, to share his or her knwoledge with the newer generation of the community. I would say it's not just the mentor's job to spectate the game and give tips, but also guide those he or she mentors even after the game is over in terms of informing them about pug opportunities, and how to go about becoming better at the game.

L4D2 is a very situational game, and the problem I was having when I first did C4F meetings as a player was that the mentors weren't giving a lot of tips/advice, but instead were more focused on calling for their team as a spectator. Granted it gave us a good view on how more experienced players called, but it didn't give the mentors time to really focus on what each individual player was doing that could be improved. I don't like mentor spec calling, unless there is no one who is up to calling for that particular team, because I feel it's a mentor's job to keep their eyes on each of the players throughout the game, not just as a team, but as individuals, to be able to show them things they may not have known they were doing, or may not have known about the game.

I don't really see being a mentor as being 'very involved' at the moment, it never really felt that way at least, but in my own opinion I would say that you should at least be dedicated for those you are teaching, because they look up to you to teach them new things about the game, and get them some experience to be able to go into the competitive community and succeed. A good leader (mentor) inspires people to have confidence in that leader, a great leader (mentor) inspires people to have confidence in themselves.

Whenever I mentor I make the players call. Everyone has to (unless they REALLY REALLY don't want to). Learning how to call is the best way to learn the game quickly IMO. I then critique the calling and strats as well as tell players when certain aspects of their play need to be improved. Also any random facts that you know about the game can be useful to teach the players.

Exactly.

Rorek, I would love to get more involved with the players. The question is how to get more involved with the players in the same period of time(1 game)? I love Prodigy's idea but how would we go about doing that?

I think we could even apply Prodigy's idea to a 2/2 split. The only problem is it requires a lot more mentors, which C4F seems to already have trouble finding.

Well, the way to implement it would basically get a team (teams) or a set of "mentors" to pick a time when they would do the "scrim", and post about it on the steamgroup or somesuch. People could respond to that.

i learned the most playing with 3 players who were > me in skill level, with one of them calling and me learning to play as part of a team.

when we're helping somebody newer out, we just treat them like they are a member of the team- just explaining to them why were calling/doing the strats after we do them.

tl;dr set the bar high and work them up to it, don't baby them

I agree. Shouldn't the mentors be playing on the team with the students? In its current format, it seems like C4F could be a good introduction to comp play, but I don't see much potential for learning or improvement.

Picture this: 1 student per group with 3 teammates.

30+ students. How many tutors do we need?

When I request mentors for Wed @ 9PM I can barely get enough. =X

Not too many... instead of students/4 it's students/3.

The mentor only spectating does have some benefits- commentary can be done by even mediocre players if they pay attention and know the game. Also, due to the situational aspects of l4d, there are definitely times when a good player will respond a certain way all by himself to support the team which, if the mentor is playing in the game, they might not necessarily see to praise or expound upon.

So I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say 3 students to every 2 mentors, one spectate and one play.

I think your math is a little off. If we do one student with 3 "mentor" teammates, that's students*3.

I think more people might be interested in mentoring if they actually got to play, though, so finding more might be easier.

e: 2 mentors per 3 students is still students *(2/3).

30 students:
1 mentor to 4 students: 8 mentors
1 mentor to 3 students: 10 mentors
2 mentors to 3 students: 20 mentors
3 mentors to 1 student, 90 mentors.