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Mentor Roles
The Imperian mentor system seems arbitrarily restrictive - I started this game entirely new to Imperian and by the time I wanted a mentor, I was technically "ineligible" for the the system. Despite this, Ahkan has always been super nice to me, and his help is a HUGE factor in why I've bought credits/lesson package/subscription - it's a real shame that he can't get a bit of payback for his extensive time and effort, simply because I leveled out of the mentoring bracket before he found me.
Please consider adjusting the mentor program. In other IREs there isn't this restrictive level requirement, and people are able to swap mentors.Furthermore, the IRE-wide 3-purchase limit seems pretty unfair, as newbs are likely to start out purchasing small, before graduating into bigger purchases. This only invites metagaming for big buys - just let mentors always get credits. It encourages that relationship and discourages the cheesy mentor juggling most players do when making big buys. If someone is about to make a big purchase, their mentor really does deserve a kickback, regardless of the amount of time they've been playing.
Edit, for reference: I've subscribed for several months, bought both lesson packages, and bought straight credits. All of these are directly because of Ahkan mentoring me, even if it wasn't official.
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Something a bit like this happened to me as well. I mean, there I was, a 200-something year old newbie (yes, an actual newbie) who refused to power-level and pretty much just explored at first. Obviously, I was going to grow into the credit whore newbtastic combatant I am today. I'd already made at least one small purchase at some point, which is why Jules didn't poof during her long slumber, and I ended up quickly making a few micro-purchases (the kind that actually don't give mentors ANY credits but absolutely do count as credit purchases).
However, at least Imperian hasn't so drastically nerfed their credit cap as the other IRE games (and I think that's a good thing). When this happened to me with Jules, I issued myself, and ended up making a char that I will probably take to another circle someday. When I wanted to "split" the mentor benefit between two mentors, I made my third (and likely final) char, which would allow me to play all three circles without moving chars - I'd rather not move chars around, although, with the way things currently work in all IRE games, the system sort of encourages org hopping rather than alting in the long run, but that's a topic for another day.
Anyway, I have one more "mentor" purchase, which I will eventually make (for a total of 4 purchases which my mentors have benefitted from) and at that point, although I could still, for example, make two more purchases on each of those chars over the years, or even create yet another alt, I don't plan on it, because I do think that a total of 4 major purchases that work like that is pretty generous on Imperian's part and I'm okay with not giving them a reason to make the program almost worthless like the rest of IRE seems to have done.
That said, I'm glad it's a generous program, because a few people have had a HUGE impact on me sticking around and being able to sort of get it together, and IRE has got some very nice paydays from me because of that. The mentor program allows you to reward your mentors in a tangible way without it being awkward for anyone. As well, it's sort of tipped me to make very large purchases, partly in the interest of maximizing that mentor benefit. If anything, IRE should make it first 4 major purchases for your e-mail account.
Still, I do plan on playing the other circles someday, and I will probably wish I could in good conscience have someone who ends up helping me there benefit from the mentor program too, because even though I finally understand how to track something like rebounding, both in terms of basic logic, and how to make it actually work in my client (after a mere 10+ years in IRE, most of which I had learned almost nothing), I would be starting over in a lot of ways. There's also one more person in my circle who's really knowledgeable and consistently helpful who is NOT currently a mentor of mine that I wish I could seamlessly reward. And here's the thing. Most of these people are credit whores themselves. Actually, in my case, ALL of them are. The credits they get from the mentor program are mad money for the most part I think - I doubt it's having any huge chilling effect on their purchasing behavior because these people have already bought staggering amounts of credits over the years. In other words, the program might actually be able to be expanded so that I could legitimately say "thanks" to a few more people over the course of my playing career. To some degree, it's going to be self-limiting anyway. There are just so many 5000 credit purchases I'm going to make...