Suggestion: Revoke Mentorship Status

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Originally Posted by Nabril

Show me one dungeon party that's willing to stop the run so that a mentor can coach everyone. I've never seen one. Everyone wants to run ahead and pull everything as fast as the healer can heal. Get everyone in the game to agree to give mentors time to teach and then come back and let me know.

Also, please get them to make DPS meters legal so that mentors CAN teach people how to get better.

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It's not a mentor's job to start explaining people's toolkit or rotation mid dungeon. At best you only need tell them things that would bring them up to base competence, like telling a tank to use cooldowns or saying that using AOE attacks is better than using single target when there are 3 or more enemies, etc. All things that take a single sentence to say. At the end of the dungeon, you can still point them towards resources where they can find the needed help, like the balance discord.

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Originally Posted by Lithios

It's not a mentor's job to start explaining people's toolkit or rotation mid dungeon. At best you only need tell them things that would bring them up to base competence, like telling a tank to use cooldowns or saying that using AOE attacks is better than using single target when there are 3 or more enemies, etc. All things that take a single sentence to say. At the end of the dungeon, you can still point them towards resources where they can find the needed help, like the balance discord.

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I wanted to offer some basic tips to a tank in a dungeon earlier, but past experience has made me wary of how people will react. The tank would pop every single CD every time they came off of CD, including Superbolide...right before pulling a boss. After a certain point I felt like I had to say something about his Superbolide usage, so I did. I couldn't take it anymore. I'm sure the healer was tired of the mini heart attacks as well. But I wasn't a jerk about it. I even tried to sugarcoat it in a playful manner. I don't think I saw them use it the rest of the dungeon. He didn't need to, which was the point I made. The rest...I figured I'd leave to someone else. I already took a risk saying what I did. Didn't want to push my luck trying to get more in depth with their...unique rotation.

Mentors are great. Being in the NN channel people are really friendly and helpful. Sometimes I may not know something and another mentor will know the answer to my question.

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Originally Posted by Crossu

That's a really nice suggestion.

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On the contrary, its not really though, but close. I’ve grinded really hard in FF14, I have all classes to level 80, sometimes when my 60 day sub card ends, I like to take a couple weeks off just to rest. If SE tells me that I lose mentorship (which is a long grind in itself to obtain) just because I don’t do what they want once a week, they could kiss my money goodbye for good. The answer is for SE to simply increase payout for mentor roulettes (even for multiple runs in one day) to increase mentor participation in older content. Also I can tell you from experience that there are just as many players who get defensive and don’t want to receive advice as there are players who want to be advised. My role as a mentor is not to tell people how to play if they don’t want to hear it, so my rule of thumb is to simply answer questions if I am asked.

The unfortunate truth of the internet era is that if you have any kind of negative punishment system, it will ALWAYS be abused to bully and troll people. All those trolls looking for any way to annoy people would just "complain bomb" every mentor they saw, regardless of how "good" the mentor is.

Mentor status really shouldn't affect anything. If they are a bad player, then just blacklist them and move on. If they are a troll, report them and move on.

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Originally Posted by SolarisF

On the contrary, its not really though, but close. I’ve grinded really hard in FF14, I have all classes to level 80, sometimes when my 60 day sub card ends, I like to take a couple weeks off just to rest. If SE tells me that I lose mentorship (which is a long grind in itself to obtain) just because I don’t do what they want once a week, they could kiss my money goodbye for good. The answer is for SE to simply increase payout for mentor roulettes (even for multiple runs in one day) to increase mentor participation in older content. Also I can tell you from experience that there are just as many players who get defensive and don’t want to receive advice as there are players who want to be advised. My role as a mentor is not to tell people how to play if they don’t want to hear it, so my rule of thumb is to simply answer questions if I am asked.

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The answer is for people to stop acting like SE pays mentors anything to be a mentor. This whole thread is basically we want mentors to do more than the gms and devs because they have a pretty icon.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Like, you have to run a mentor roulette to duty completion once a week or something.

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Unlocking all of mentor roulette duties is not a requirement for battle mentor.

The entire part of being a mentor is not for the roulette. Its for the Novice Network. The Novice Network is the single most helpful tool a mentor has access to. I have seen so much helpful knowledge being passed on, offers to help users group up and clear content in there, etc.

The real gripe most people have is that novice network is not available to everyone. People really just want a server chat where users can come together and chat outside of mandatory linkshells.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

So at what point do mentors do anything akin to mentoring?

That's part of the problem with the system. Outside of "being an exemplar of player etiquette" (which some mentors most definitely are not), SE doesn't list clear expectations for what mentors should do as mentors. You don't have to be a mentor to be helpful to others so what is supposed to separate out mentors from other players?

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If someone asks me a question about crafting, I will always help as best I can. But I'm not going to go out of my way to tell people how to play the game because that way lies madness. And the people in this thread are angry and hostile towards mentors.

I like the idea of mentor commendations not necessarily tied to battles. The only reward should be in the status that people found your advice helpful.

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Originally Posted by Erendis

Unlocking all of mentor roulette duties is not a requirement for battle mentor.

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It honestly should be. Crafting mentor should require a high completion of the crafting logs, as well.

There’s no way Square would put such a limitation on mentors, though, since they get so much blowback for trivial limitations like commendations.

Then who would tell people how to find delivery moogle?...

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Originally Posted by Erendis

Then who would tell people how to find delivery moogle?...

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lol

Just helped someone with this today in NN, actually. They were in Gridania but were having trouble locating it. Gave them a map flag and they found it not a minute later.

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Originally Posted by Nabril

Mentors are not on your payroll. The only thing a mentor agrees to do is guide people on basic game functions. It's not a mentor's job to know every dungeon or every raid or every single aspect of this game. That's not what mentors are for. A mentor is not going to stop the party in the middle of a dungeon and teach you how to play. Mentors don't have time for that.

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https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...3d2c4227dfdc2e

The mentor system provides more experienced players a means to offer advice and guidance to newer players.

- What is a mentor?
Mentors are veteran players who chose to offer their time and experience to help guide new adventurers. To facilitate their assistance, mentors will gain access to a special chat channel as well as a means to easily register for duties and trials with new players.

https://blog.playstation.com/2016/02...mentor-system/

Q: The mentor system is going to be introduced in Patch 3.2, which hits the FFXIV servers on the February 23rd. Can you tell us roughly what the mentor system is and why you have chosen to implement this feature?

FFXIV: Naoki Yoshida

A: “Mentor” is a special status for experienced players, who are only able to call themselves mentors after obtaining certain achievements and meeting certain criteria. Mentors are players who support beginners who have just started their adventures in-game and answer their questions from the standpoint of a seasoned veteran. Mentorship is also a new element to help those who role play and to further enhance the player community. With the arrival of Patch 3.2, a special chat channel called the Novice Network will be added to each world. This chat channel can only be used by mentors and new players who have played the game for less than 40 hours. The purpose of this channel is to offer a place for new players to ask mentors about the game and for mentors to give answers to their questions. To eliminate the prospect of any malicious RMT (Real Money Traders) from invading the chat channel, we made it so only mentors can invite new players into it. On top of that, when a mentor and new player form a party, they will both receive an experience point bonus. In addition to this, a special duty roulette called “Duty Roulette: Mentor” that is only available for mentors will be added. This roulette will grant a priority on matching mentors with new players or players who haven’t beaten the specific dungeon or trial yet.

MMORPGs offer a huge amount of content and gameplay systems, so I can imagine how playing one could potentially be overwhelming for some players, especially when they play an MMORPG or online game for the first time. However, the introduction of the mentor system with this new patch enables veteran players to proactively support those who have started the game recently, creating an opportunity for both veteran players and rookies to meet and get to know each other. Now is a very good time for anyone who hasn’t played the game before to begin! To any experienced players out there, I’d love for you all to support our new players. I’m also ready to be a mentor on my personal character.

I honestly think they should just change mentor to veteran.

People expect way too much from mentors, yet can get so upset when someone tries to help them out that being banned for giving advice got so bad, ppl do not even do it anymore. The crown means nothing. If you want ppl to help, stop reporting them for helping then trying to get those who you feel are obligated to help you, due to a worthless icon by their name, disciplined in some way for not helping. It's literally a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation here.

When it comes to trade mentors, you most definitely do not need to be a "seasoned veteran" when it all it demands is being level 80 and acquiring X number of collectables with zero regard to their actual quality.

Granted, there's no guarantees that combat mentors will be knowledgeable either, though I'd like to hope someone is at least reasonably good at the game after the countless hours it takes to amass 1.5K commendations.

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

I honestly think they should just change mentor to veteran.

People expect way too much from mentors, yet can get so upset when someone tries to help them out that being banned for giving advice got so bad, ppl do not even do it anymore. The crown means nothing. If you want ppl to help, stop reporting them for helping then trying to get those who you feel are obligated to help you, due to a worthless icon by their name, disciplined in some way for not helping. It's literally a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation here.

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In FF XIV, the average player needs to tread carefully when it comes to what they say in chat. Obviously some don't give a hoot, but they probably should. This is especially true for Mentors, given the current state of the system. There are those that genuinely do want to help but are hesitant to speak up. I am one of those people. If someone asks I will happily answer, but it would take a lot for me to actually say something without permission. Helping in the NN is one thing. Questions pop up left and right there. I am comfortable with answering those if I can. That is what NN is for. Helping a random player in a dungeon is another story. Even the slightest mention of someone doing something wrong, no matter how civil, can escalate things quickly even if you aren't a Mentor. Being a Mentor can make a bad situation even worse in that respect, just because of the symbol beside our character names. I am speaking from experience.

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Originally Posted by van_arn

It honestly should be. Crafting mentor should require a high completion of the crafting logs, as well.

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I mean, it comes down to what you want 'Mentor' to represent.

Is a Mentor just someone who has been in the game a long time and done a lot of different things, so may know the answer to a question (or where to go to look for the answer)? Then that's what you go for: a long playtime, and a broad spectrum of content done. In which case, arguably the current mentor system is sufficient.

But if a Mentor should be someone who knows a given system deeply and can provide meaningful advice? Then you need to have tests for it.

If that's the case, then a battle mentor should need to pass a reasonably-difficult solo instance for a given job in order to get certification on that job; hey, this person is certified as a White Mage mentor, and this one as a Gunbreaker. This one's got certification for every single caster; they probably know their stuff when it comes to casters in general! And if there's a DPS who's certified as a White Mage mentor telling the sprout healer that no, Freecure is a trap, whereas the tank saying "Cure I is totally better, you should just spam it, it costs less MP" has no healer jobs certified at all, it'd be easier for a sprout to know who to listen to.

You'd probably also want to rework commendations, because the current commendation system is gratifying ("Yay I got comms!") but largely meaningless ("...because I was the last person standing there when the sprout was out of the cutscene.").

(But then again, I've got Strong Opinions™ on how you could rework commendations as it is.)

And similarly, if a mentor is meant to be someone who knows the system really deeply, then a crafting mentor should need to complete some challenges along the line of Ishgardian Reconstruction expert crafts. Albeit probably with a higher difficulty and a range of potential quality/progress/durability combinations, so you don't have people coming up with a macro that can just do it for you (as people have still managed to do with Expert crafting). That way, you know someone actually knows the crafting system reasonably well, not just "yeah so you go to the Balance Discord and ask for a macro".

The problem, I suspect, arises because the system is designed for the former (mentors being long-term players who've done a wide variety of content and can help point people in the right direction), people keep expecting it to be the latter (mentors being people who know a particular system really deeply and well), and the disparity between those two leads to a third impression (that mentors are all BK crown wearing incompetents).

(And most of the actual mentors I know who really work hard to help sprouts never actually wear the crown on their nameplate because of that reputation... which certainly doesn't help to counter the 'if someone's wearing a crown it's not a good thing' reputation they have.)

So either the system needs to be re-aligned with what people expect from it, or we players need to re-align what we think the 'good' mentors are supposed to be. The former would probably be ideal.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Granted, there's no guarantees that combat mentors will be knowledgeable either, though I'd like to hope someone is at least reasonably good at the game after the countless hours it takes to amass 1.5K commendations.

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Except commendations are really broad and can mean all kinds of things. Sure, they can mean "holy potatoes you're an amazing tank/healer/DPS" or "I was feeling a little lost in this duty but you helped out with great advice", which are excellent criteria for a mentor.

But they can also mean "I really love your glam game" or "you made quips during this dungeon that made me laugh". It could mean "even though you don't play your caster well, you rezzed a bunch of people, and the healer sees and appreciates that". It can mean "everyone else in this alliance raid was part of some premade party of trolling jackasses except you and me, so I'm comming you." It can mean "three of us were a pre-made running roulettes together, so enjoy everyone else's comm!" It can even mean "you were the last one left in the instance when I finished the cutscene." It can mean "you're the healer, so I'm giving you my comm."

And those ones aren't necessarily so relevant; it's possible to not be a great player mechanically and yet still collect many comms through that alone given enough time.

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

Except commendations are really broad and can mean all kinds of things. Sure, they can mean "holy potatoes you're an amazing tank/healer/DPS" or "I was feeling a little lost in this duty but you helped out with great advice", which are excellent criteria for a mentor.

But they can also mean "I really love your glam game" or "you made quips during this dungeon that made me laugh". It could mean "even though you don't play your caster well, you rezzed a bunch of people, and the healer sees and appreciates that". It can mean "everyone else in this alliance raid was part of some premade party of trolling jackasses except you and me, so I'm comming you." It can mean "three of us were a pre-made running roulettes together, so enjoy everyone else's comm!" It can even mean "you were the last one left in the instance when I finished the cutscene." It can mean "you're the healer, so I'm giving you my comm."

And those ones aren't necessarily so relevant; it's possible to not be a great player mechanically and yet still collect many comms through that alone given enough time.

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Yeah. Commendations aren't really an accurate gauge of player performance. I usually throw one to my healer or other tank as a tank, and to a fellow dps as a dps. Certain factors determine who gets what sometimes, but...it's more of a habit than anything at this point. Some people just don't give them out at all.

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Originally Posted by Nabril

A mentor is not going to [...] teach you how to play. Mentors don't have time for that.

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That is literally what mentors are supposed to do, it's what they should make time for.

You brought up a dead thread and HEAVILY edited out the original post. No, we absolutely do not have the time to stop in the middle of a fight and teach you to get out the yellow circles.

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Originally Posted by Crossu

So the being a Mentor is seen as a meme because of the "Burger King glamour crown" and it's pretty much true outside SOME mentors and the Novice Network. There are a lot of complains of Mentors just outright not doing their job (help new players learn the game and make their experience better). I don't think that a Mentor should be a hardcore -or even midcore- endgame raider but to have some undestanding of the basics of the games: Everyone should be using their skills.

The problem is there's no real danger of losing the Mentor status outside NN bans. So if someone runs into a bad or lazy mentor in a Duty they basically have to just suffer through the dungeon. Even worse if it's a premade where you can't even kick them.

I suggest a system not so severe like a report but like a complain system for these kinds of mentors (the reverse of commendation), once they reach a certain ammount of complain their mentorship status is revoked until they get more commendations, or something like that.

What do you think? Do you have another suggestion?

Feel free to share your experiences as well.

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No thanks, the only thing that will happen, let me tell you: a lot of bad players will report mentors who try to teach people what to do, because no one wants to improve in this game.

thank u, next