Suggestion: Change the Mentor Icons

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

For all of the virtue signaling people on this game do, I find it genuinely funny that they draw the line at spending 30 minutes teaching some of the easiest EX's in the game in a voluntary roulette. Do ya'll have any idea how disappointed some of those sprouts you bail on are? I sit around and talk to them a lot while we're waiting for fills, and experiences like that are a huge reason that the Mentor system has such a poor reputation. If you can't spend 30 minutes helping to teach a joke EX with 3 mechanics and 20% echo, do everyone a favor and don't queue the roulette.

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You can teach an extreme, but you can't forcibly make people improve enough to actually clear something.

And then sometimes you get cheeky sprouts who get offended if you call them out on any kind of failings that are making things difficult.

IE, the zero DPS healer I ran into in Ultima EX just a moment ago who talked back and said "why aren't you using mitigations" (When I in fact was) when I remarked about dying after not getting any healing for around 20 seconds straight.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

For all of the virtue signaling people on this game do, I find it genuinely funny that they draw the line at spending 30 minutes teaching some of the easiest EX's in the game in a voluntary roulette. Do ya'll have any idea how disappointed some of those sprouts you bail on are? I sit around and talk to them a lot while we're waiting for fills, and experiences like that are a huge reason that the Mentor system has such a poor reputation. If you can't spend 30 minutes helping to teach a joke EX with 3 mechanics and 20% echo, do everyone a favor and don't queue the roulette.

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That’s by design— they should be setting themselves up for disappointment by going into an extreme unprepared.

Furthermore, if they barely scrape by because they’ve farmed echo, they haven’t actually learned the fight. Unsync gives them a clear if they’re merely wanting the clear without preparation or requisite learning, with less time wasted on futile wipes while you hope the ice mage will push buttons.

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Originally Posted by van_arn

That’s by design— they should be setting themselves up for disappointment by going into an extreme unprepared.

Furthermore, if they barely scrape by because they’ve farmed echo, they haven’t actually learned the fight. Unsync gives them a clear if they’re merely wanting the clear without preparation or requisite learning, with less time wasted on futile wipes while you hope the ice mage will push buttons.

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The idea of 'preparing' for an EX is honestly funny to me. Does someone need to go through a training arc and meditate in mr.happys magic library before they're allowed to enter a fight with 3 mechanics or something?

Most of the low-grade EX's that come up in mentor roulette are great places for sprouts to be exposed to content that has extremely basic mechanical requirements. Most ARR Ex's can be explained to a clearable degree in 3-4 messages. If typing a few messages in chat is beyond the effort you are willing to put into being a mentor, you just shouldn't be a mentor.

I do genuinely think that if Astrope was removed - I personally wouldn’t want it to be, but whatev - the amount of mentors who would queue up for roulettes would plummet dramatically. This would likely lengthen Extreme queues by a sizable margin since there’s nothing to be gained from it aside from a handful of tomestones, but I imagine that would make for a satisfactory result for a few people here.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

The idea of 'preparing' for an EX is honestly funny to me. Does someone need to go through a training arc and meditate in mr.happys magic library before they're allowed to enter a fight with 3 mechanics or something?

Most of the low-grade EX's that come up in mentor roulette are great places for sprouts to be exposed to content that has extremely basic mechanical requirements. Most ARR Ex's can be explained to a clearable degree in 3-4 messages. If typing a few messages in chat is beyond the effort you are willing to put into being a mentor, you just shouldn't be a mentor.

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Apparently yes, because even ONE mechanic, "tank gets 3 orbs, offtank gets 3 orbs, swap" seems to be too much for most groups I've encountered.

I don't care what you use as a training montauge, but, go do one, learn the stuff, then show up.

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Originally Posted by xxmiamorecadenza

This would likely lengthen Extreme queues by a sizable margin since there’s nothing to be gained from it aside from a handful of tomestones

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That's a good thing. It prepares sprouts for getting into current content, and encourages them to familiarize themselves with the PF. On JP people use the DF for these no problem, but anyone on NA is going to only group up with other people who have no idea what to do, and mentors who are internally screaming; since anyone else who knows what to do avoids DF for those ques.

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Originally Posted by Rae88

Pretty much this. Mentors have a really, REALLY bad name in much of the FFXIV twitch community now

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Only because the playerbase refuses to give most Mentors a chance.

Get a bad "Mentor" one or twice a month? "I knew it, those mentors are sh!t" "Of course, you're a mentor" etc etc

While ignoring the 20 or so mentors you don't even notice in the background giving positive advice.

People remember bad experiences because they tie emotion to them. This is a known psychological affect.

If the only reason some players become mentors is to get the crown and the mount, then remove those rewards from the mentor system.

Players who truly want to help other players are rarely looking to be rewarded for doing so. They'd still be able to gain their crown and mount through the new method if they want those rewards.

SE needs to set and enforce stronger behavior standards for mentors when they are displaying their crown - displaying the crown is supposed to mean "I'm here to help if I can". If a mentor isn't in the mood that day to help, then they should turn off their crown.

Even more importantly, SE needs to strip mentors of their status as the police for Novice Network considering 80% of the problems in Novice Network seem to be caused by the mentors responsible for policing it and who abuse that position (this was my own experience on one of my alts - there were a few problems caused by sprouts but the majority were caused by mentors).

Add a "Report a Novice Network member" button to the Novice Network interface that would connect the reporting player directly to the Support Desk interface. A GM could then review the NN chat to see if the reported player should be removed from NN and/or banned, and/or also stripped of their mentor status if a mentor. It doesn't make it simpler to report another player as such (they would still need to type out details) but it does make it easier for the player to get to the right interface.

I think the NN and mentors are fine for the most part. People are flawed and no system is going to be perfect. Removing NN because some people are bad is as good a reason as removing chat from the game all together because some people are bad, and if you do that, you may as well remove multiplayer from the game because some people are bad.

The thing about MMOs and social experiences is that you open the door to good and bad experiences. But by and large, most of the mentors are decent people, just like in the real world, most people you encounter aren't going to be terrible folk. I get people always try to avoid any and all negativity and whenever they come across it they go on a giant crusade to "correct" the problem, but people having moods is human nature, so the problem is people itself. Taking them out of the equation only creates isolation.

The best solution is to be prepared to have mostly good but some bad experiences when playing an online game, and report those who cross the line. I feel a lot of people want to destroy systems just because every once in a while they have a bad experience with them, that's not productive or rational. It's very emotional.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

For all of the virtue signaling people on this game do, I find it genuinely funny that they draw the line at spending 30 minutes teaching some of the easiest EX's in the game in a voluntary roulette. Do ya'll have any idea how disappointed some of those sprouts you bail on are? I sit around and talk to them a lot while we're waiting for fills, and experiences like that are a huge reason that the Mentor system has such a poor reputation. If you can't spend 30 minutes helping to teach a joke EX with 3 mechanics and 20% echo, do everyone a favor and don't queue the roulette.

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I don't fully agree on your last post about the idea that you "don't need to prepare for extreme trials" and that they're a joke, because for some newer players they clearly aren't.

That said, this, this and this.
People queuing for content and bailing on their teammates when it falls on a mission they don't like are pure cancer. If you are only willing to do content that you like, then don't queue for something random. Like others said sometimes sprout are rude and annoying as hell, but we all know that mentors who bail on their team as soon as they're thrown in an extreme trial are unfortunately not a rare thing either.

(although to be honest, maybe making extreme trials part of a roulette full of inexperienced players in the first place might not have been the brightest idea on SE side)