The Actual Solution to the Mentor Roulette problem

Step one: Remove extreme trials from mentor roulette. Frankly, remove Cas and Prae as well. Turn the mentor roulette into mentorship of general duties and sure, why not, remove the ability to leave duty in progress or something because you queued as mentor, you need to help the people there complete the duty.

Step two: Create a new roulette that is only extreme trials. Make this like Mentor Roulette 2.0. And sure, make it a requirement you have to've completed everything synced or whatever. Sure, why not, I don't care.

Step three: Make a really awesome mount as a reward for doing x number of successful extreme trials, like a 5-seater pegasus carriage please Squeenix feed my horse obsession?

Step four: profit.

... okay but as much as this is a joke, it's not. The biggest gripe about mentor roulette are mentors who bail on expert trials (from what I understand) but there's absolutely no real incentive for mentors to stay, especially in the harder trials. So give them an incentive. Separate the extremes into another roulette, give it a sick reward, and make it so mentors will want to drag sprouts kicking and screaming through the extreme trials to get it.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

ironically i do wish the game had the astrope equivalent of the black pegasus. Could you imagine a black red and silver? astrope, Would be 10/10

My god I would be in love with that mount. And if they added unique music to it-? No, wait, that's being unreasonable. But honestly!!! Some dope ass mount like that!! People will do the grind for it. I know I would do the grind for it.

1 - Remove EXs. They were never designed to be done with DF randoms in the first place. Sure you can straight up overpower the easier ones like Bismarck with those 100 extra ilevels, but Sophia, Shinryu, etc? Never going to happen.

2 - Make the rewards dynamic based on the content. Titan HM gives trial roulette rewards, Antitower give 50/60/70 roulette rewards, etc. Right now the rewards are insultingly low.

3 - ???
4 - Profit

The EX content is doable with the hour of time allotted if you mentor the people there. I have done it on many occasions. If you don't want to mentor people why are you in queue for mentor roulette in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Reap00

The EX content is doable with the hour of time allotted if you mentor the people there. I have done it on many occasions. If you don't want to mentor people why are you in queue for mentor roulette in the first place.

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You'd think that, but I've seen plenty of duties where people refused to learn.

Like a WoD group I had a couple days ago where we had 2 newbie tanks spamming provoke on Angra Mainyu (sp?). We kindly asked them to please stop provoking the boss and keep him facing in one direction. 3 wipes later, everybody voted to abandon the duty.

A few weeks prior, I had a SCH in Aurum Vale who casted nothing but Adloquium the entire dungeon. I spent the time and effort to type up a short primer on Aetherflow, Lustrate, etc .... only to not see any sort of response. This was after five wipes (1 in the first room, 3 on the first boss, and 1 on the diremites outside of Coincounter's area). We went through the whole dungeon, and yup. No Aetherflow. Just Adloquium the whole way.

Doesn't matter how polite you are, people will just refuse to take advice sometimes. And.... for Extreme Trials.... you really need to be on the top of your game for those, and random joes in Duty Finder are certainly not that. If you want to learn how to do an Extreme Trial, go with your FC or make a PF that specifically says you're a learning group and you need someone to help you learn.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

1 - Remove EXs. They were never designed to be done with DF randoms in the first place. Sure you can straight up overpower the easier ones like Bismarck with those 100 extra ilevels, but Sophia, Shinryu, etc? Never going to happen.

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But they were designed for DF though. Just because NA/EU prefer to use PF for Ex Trials, it doesn't mean that's the only way it should be done. It's still common for JP worlds to use DF for such things, and besides there are still many new players who continue to queue up this way (regardless of region), and Mentor Roulette helps them to matchmake with a party faster.

Edit: The ARR Ex trials are usually quests as well and will appear in a player's journal, i.e. "Use the Duty Finder to confront Garuda in The Howling Eye (Extreme)"; it does not say oh this is really hard content so only use the PF to complete it.

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Originally Posted by Reap00

The EX content is doable with the hour of time allotted if you mentor the people there. I have done it on many occasions. If you don't want to mentor people why are you in queue for mentor roulette in the first place.

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It's mostly that the mentor roulette is a mess. You can get a 2mn guildhest clear alongside a 1h ex trial non-clear. Yes mentors should be aware of this and only queue if they're willing to go through the sacrifice. But there's no denying the design is flawed and really doesn't appeal to actual human psychology. Not only that but it really does create an incentive for people to drop the longer content for the shorter stuff, since there's a huge grind reward at the end of the line and many a sprout parties enter content unprepared. Hard to teach someone mechanics when they don't even know their class. Yeah you can clear because with echo it's possible to carry other players hard. I sometimes wonder if my sprouts learn anything from the fights because the carry was so prominent.
Actually separating ex from mentor roulette would be a great move.

The issue isn't whether or not synced extreme trials were designed for DF. That's an issue no one will agree on. The issue is, what will allow people to achieve the most clears of content, and I'm not sure anyone will be able to truthfully say that the mentor roulette system currently works because mentors can just skip out, chill for half an hour, and then try again to get an 'easy' duty for their mount. And since mentors are still players who aren't being paid and are doing this with their free time, that's completely okay! So instead of saying 'no, it is the mentors who are wrong!', making the extreme trials a separate, higher-tiered mentor roulette with a far better reward attached to it will entice mentors to actively queue for it and complete those duties.

'Mentors sign up for it.' Sure. Mentors also have the ability to just leave and not do them. That doesn't help the players who want to complete it through DF though. This is a different angle aimed to help both mentors and the ones who want to DF the fights.

You can't force someone to stay against their will. When mentors leave they get the same penalty as anyone who leaves and they don't get the completion rewards. That is fair enough already.

considering that virtually anyone can be a mentor, scrap the system. I know of a known botter that has the mentor tag so yes, I have little faith in the system

You can be helpful as heck in a dungeon and if you are dps, likely never get a comm. typically, the person that raised them repeatedly because they kept standing in aoe's gets the comm, which is fine, but saying having x number of comms may not be teh best way to ensure you get actual mentor material. and some mentors obviously just go that route for potentially faster queue times, they dont really care if they are helpful or not.

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The EX content is doable with the hour of time allotted if you mentor the people there. I have done it on many occasions. If you don't want to mentor people why are you in queue for mentor roulette in the first place.

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Good for you. I still have no particular desire to spend an hour to maybe get one roulette clear (you might take that long and not even get the clear, meaning you just wasted an hour and accomplished absolutely nothing), and neither do most other people. A lot of people already get uppity if their basic dungeon run starts taking over 20 minutes. What makes you think an hour is gonna be acceptable to these people?

Also, the vast majority of people in DF will not listen to anything you say. Good luck "mentoring" those people.

Also, since you seem to be ignorant of people's motivations, most people in the mentor roulette are there because they want Astrope.

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Originally Posted by Kurando

But they were designed for DF though. Just because NA/EU prefer to use PF for Ex Trials, it doesn't mean that's the only way it should be done. It's still common for JP worlds to use DF for such things, and besides there are still many new players who continue to queue up this way (regardless of region), and Mentor Roulette helps them to matchmake with a party faster.

Edit: The ARR Ex trials are usually quests as well and will appear in a player's journal, i.e. "Use the Duty Finder to confront Garuda in The Howling Eye (Extreme)"; it does not say oh this is really hard content so only use the PF to complete it.

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Actually they weren't. The original 2.x ex primal were not even queueable without a full party when they released. They did not get unlocked in df until a patch or 2 later.

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Originally Posted by Reap00

The EX content is doable with the hour of time allotted if you mentor the people there. I have done it on many occasions. If you don't want to mentor people why are you in queue for mentor roulette in the first place.

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The problem is that you might have more than one person who will not listen to you (and chances are they'll be a tank who immediately pulls because that's always a good idea). I don't mind getting EX Trials in the roulette as I love the pure RNG, but it really annoys me when I'm trying to help and there's one or more people making this near impossible because they're not listening to extremely helpful advice.

On the flipside, sometimes you'll get people who actually do want to learn and we can clear fights like Rathalos EX, Thordan EX and Titan EX. EX Trials are so rare to get in Mentor Roulette anyway, so I don't see a point in removing them. If I'm doing Mentor Roulette, I'm doing it for the Pure RNG and I'm in the mood to try and help someone. Tomes and achievement I couldn't care less about.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

1 - Remove EXs. They were never designed to be done with DF randoms in the first place.

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Honestly pretty silly thing to say considering the JP datacenters have no issues clearing even savage with DF

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Originally Posted by Katie_Kitty

Honestly pretty silly thing to say considering the JP datacenters have no issues clearing even savage with DF

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Yes well, the JP playerbase tends to be more group oriented, while the NA playerbase tends to be more "wait, you want me to learn my job? Nah" oriented.

Alternative solution: bailing in mentor roulette earns a strike. After some number of strikes you are no longer able to do mentor roulette, use mentor tags or use the novice network chat (where theoretically mentors should be advising sprouts, but obviously not what happens).

After some length of time you earn the strikes off in mentor roulette again. If you complete the roulette, you decrease strikes by 1. If you bail, you are back to full strikes and have to wait some length of time again at full penalty.

I would take it further, but this is a game and I think that’s enough. People want the NNetwork for chat...so that might be a motivator.



Alternatively, create some kind of count where it counts a “streak” of completed roulettes. On a success, +1 point. On a fail, no change (vote abandon/time over). On a leave, the streak is reset to 0.

At some number of streak (25? 50?) the streak resets and the mentor gets a token to exchange for rewards. Could be along the lines of the mogtomes, or even exclusive stuff.

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The problem is that you might have more than one person who will not listen to you (and chances are they'll be a tank who immediately pulls because that's always a good idea).

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Yep, I run into this a lot. You don't even get a chance to teach anything because the tank literally doesn't allow you to.

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EX Trials are so rare to get in Mentor Roulette anyway, so I don't see a point in removing them.

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Pfft, maybe for you. I get them constantly; just the other day where I ran maybe 10 or so of them, 3 of them were extremes.

I usually only get levelling dungeons or Guildhests in Mentor Roulette. Though yesterday I got Dun Scaith (I was worried it was gonna be a Crystal Tower raid. I hate those raids as a WHM), so that was neat.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Actually they weren't. The original 2.x ex primal were not even queueable without a full party when they released. They did not get unlocked in df until a patch or 2 later.

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It didn't matter what they used to be but what they are now. Don't be making excuses for mentors that don't want to do duties.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

1 - Remove EXs. They were never designed to be done with DF randoms in the first place.

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JP servers would like to have a word.

Removing extremes have sense. Old ones are done unsync, and new ones are done with PF. Not counting that mentor is designed to help people new to the game, and extremes are quite off the target.

On Tonberry and I can’t say it’s a JP vs Western thing, but I’ve never done an ex trial via DF, only pug.

Granted I never do the newest ones...like now in the patch cycle is is about when I start attempting the earlier ones..a la Titania.

Maybe give players the ability to demerit mentors who queue through the roulette, that way if they are not helpful or leave early they can actually make a meaningful move to removing their mentor status.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

Maybe give players the ability to demerit mentors who queue through the roulette, that way if they are not helpful or leave early they can actually make a meaningful move to removing their mentor status.

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ROFL, give players the veto power over other players (this should never happen) Or how about you use the PF function for crazy stuff nothing beats getting ramuh ex and people asking how do we do this and nobody had the brains to watch a vid on youtube and expect a carry and to top it off. you are the only mentor there and everyone else has sprout icons. There are times mentors happily take this 30min lock out.

Most of my experiences with the Mentor roulette have been positive, generally. Most of the time when I bother to queue up for a daily run it's something along the lines of a guildhest or dungeon.

From time to time I end up being thrown into something tougher, though last time I was thrown into an EX fight - namely Garuda - our group one shot it despite consisting mostly of newer players.

Another time I was thrown into Odin, which can be tough for players who are new to the game. We wiped a few times but I could tell that the players in my group were trying so I stuck it out for a good thirty minutes and we succeeded at clearing the duty which felt pretty good.

Then there's the time I got thrown into Eden: Iconoclasm. I spent most of the fight dead because I'd only ever cleared it once and the particular combination of mechanics in that fight is a weakness of mine. Still, with the sheer amount of duties available in-game I don't believe that any Mentor should be expected to be perfect at them all. Especially when there's older duties that they might not have done very often.

Ultimately it's a volunteer position - not an actual job. I think that Mentors should strive to be patient and civil but at the same time I don't think they're obligated to run players through absolutely everything or do so perfectly.

Better idea:

Remove the entire chat and any/all rewards for mentoring. Give novices a clear method to reach out via /tell to listed mentors on their server.

That way only the people who actually want to help others can do so, as they have zero incentive to put up the mentor flag aside from doing exactly that.

That's real profit.

Delete the novice network. All Mentors Are Bad.

Deleting the Novice Network, and the closure of the mentor system would only be a benefit for this game, in my opinion. :)

I find it funny how polarizing the opinions of the Novice Network tend to be.

On Cactuar it works very much as intended with questions being answered swiftly amidst the casual banter and there rarely being anything in the way of toxicity.

Imagine getting butthurt over all mentors just because a couple of them weren't willing to bend over backwards to be your doormat. :rolleyes:

Many or most newbies who sign up for Extremes in Duty Finder do it because they don't know there's an alterative. The game is great at teaching you to use Duty Finder - but does NOTHING to teach a new player about Party Finder.

When I wind up in Ramuh Ex, I usually take some time to tell players about Party Finder, how it works, and why it's better than Duty Finder, whether you want a quick win (go unsynced) or actually learn the fight (can go in multiple times with the same people, rather than be saddled with a new batch of newbies every time). The reactions I get are usually positive.

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Many or most newbies who sign up for Extremes in Duty Finder do it because they don't know there's an alterative. The game is great at teaching you to use Duty Finder - but does NOTHING to teach a new player about Party Finder.

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Yep, exactly; and I've faulted the game quite heavily for this. The PF is an excellent feature and the fact the game doesn't really bother to educate about its use surely leads to lots of players remaining ignorant about it, and how it can be used to organize a content run with specific goals in mind, rather than just the DF's "complete duty XYZ, generally as fast as possible" mindset.

Incidentally, they could have solved the issues with CM/Prae more elegantly this way too; warn the player when unlocking CM/Prae that they are story-intensive dungeons with lots of cutscenes (you know, just like how it does before major story beats like The Banquet) and encourage the people who want to organize a slower paced run with people who will actually let them watch the cutscenes to set up the run in PF instead. You could even go in with fewer people with the undersized + level sync settings, or even the minimum IL setting too, if you wanted to help enforce the slower pace -- all of which would make the fights a bit less faceroll to boot).

In other words, let the players retain the choice instead of shoving one way down everyone's throats. They never needed to make the dungeons forced cutscenes no matter what, and I still say it was a mistake that they did.

Anyway, tangent.

The solution is to stop telling volunteers how to do their job. If you want to do things another way, you do you.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

(CM/Praetorium) They never needed to make the dungeons forced cutscenes no matter what, and I still say it was a mistake that they did.

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Those two instances are the story capstone of 7th Umbral and they are mandatory. The right fix would have been to separate the story bits from the instances however Square simply didn't have the time (or likely the developers due to burnout) to provide that rewrite/refactor.

PF would not have solved it. Once they were unskippable Square had to significantly dial up the rewards just to get vets to fill the queues because it was taking days for fresh 50's to get the instances to pop.

The rewards go hand in hand with the unskippable CS. Make them skippable and they'd pay out no better than the 50/60/70 roulette.

There’s nothing wrong with mentor roulette, if a dungeon/trial wasn’t designed to be queued for with the duty finder, you wouldnt be able to queue for it with the duty finder, there are examples of this.

If you can’t drag a group of sprouts across the finish line in Ramuh extreme (for example) you’re not much of a mentor, and probably shouldn’t be using mentor roulette.

Sometimes we get some bad groups, but 9/10 you should be able to clear the fight with plenty of time to spare.

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Originally Posted by Ariel_Valmont

There’s nothing wrong with mentor roulette, if a dungeon/trial wasn’t designed to be queued for with the duty finder, you wouldnt be able to queue for it with the duty finder, there are examples of this.

If you can’t drag a group of sprouts across the finish line in Ramuh extreme (for example) you’re not much of a mentor, and probably shouldn’t be using mentor roulette.

Sometimes we get some bad groups, but 9/10 you should be able to clear the fight with plenty of time to spare.

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The lesson of how to participate in endgame(s) content via party finder instead of duty finder is more valuable than a single clear.

Again, "can" doesn't mean "should." Your time is better spent helping someone within the scope of the mentor system if you are so passionate about mentorship, and endgame(s) activity is outside of that scope.

Of course, you do you. Should you decide to go beyond the scope of the mentor system, kindly don't waste your breath by expecting the same of others who don't share your same passion.

I like this idea, mostly because I'm technically a mentor, but I never turn on my status or do the roulette because I haven't unlocked 100% of extreme trials. And even if I had, I did a lot of them so long ago I barely remember the mechanics. I'd happily help sprouts through any other content, but I wouldn't feel like much of a mentor in some of the EXs because of a gandalf moment.

So, I'll just keep my status off and stick to helping sprouts in normal roulettes.

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Originally Posted by seida

I like this idea, mostly because I'm technically a mentor, but I never turn on my status or do the roulette because I haven't unlocked 100% of extreme trials. And even if I had, I did a lot of them so long ago I barely remember the mechanics. I'd happily help sprouts through any other content, but I wouldn't feel like much of a mentor in some of the EXs because of a gandalf moment.

So, I'll just keep my status off and stick to helping sprouts in normal roulettes.

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This is more valuable mentorship than someone that spends an hour in a df'd extremes. Bonus points for spamming leveling roulette, of course.

Wouldn't a better and easier solution be to remove mentor status from that that bail trials alot?