thank you for Mentor system

[Nalien]

I'm going to have to disagree. Commendations are a poor benchmark for a number of reasons. Proving your proficiency through achievements would be a much more accurate method of measuring someone's worthiness of being a mentor. They could use preexisting achievements or craft new ones specifically for unlocking the mentor system or a combination of both.

I figured they'd take multiple Achievements into account, not just a single one. The Commendation Achievements say that you're either helpful, or willing to play a helpful role. Mentors are meant to help teach newer players, having a Commendation requirement at least gates off a few people who'd just pick up the title for the special Roulette and its rewards. Proving you can actually play the game says nothing of whether you're actually helpful or not. Commendations aren't the perfect measure of that either, but they're the best we've got.

They might even tie it to the "training hall", but that seems a lot less likely and wouldn't make much sense.

Could tie in with the Training Hall that way; Have an Achievement for proving you can really play your Job there, and have that Achievement required for becoming a Mentor. Then anyone with <Job> Mentor status is (hopefully) someone who knows what they're doing. Getting the Lv60 Achievements really doesn't indicate you know anything, after all.

[Reinha]

Some new info from the live letter:

Mentor System Part I

What is the mentor system?
The mentor system is a system which will allow players to assist beginners. In order to become a mentor, players must earn specific achievements and talk to a specific NPC.

There are three requirements:

Must have one job from each role (Tank/DPS/Healer) at level 60.
It’s set up in a way so that the player can offer advice for each role.
Must have completed 1,000 or more instanced dungeons or trials.
You may feel this is a large amount of number; however, we believe a lot of players have this completed already.
Have earned over 300 commendations.
Additionally, there are requirements for those who don’t play battle-related classes/jobs.

Instead of the above requirements, players can also become mentors by completing the following:

Have at least one class from both Disciples of Hand and Land at level 60.
Have crafted over 100 collectables.
Have gathered over 300 collectables.

Mentor System Part II

Once you’re a mentor...
You’ll be able to invite beginners to special chat channel. As a countermeasure against RMT, we will be allowing mentors to invite beginners to the channel as they see fit.

We’ll also be adding Duty Roulette: Mentor.

Though there won’t be a ton of rewards, you’ll have priority matching for the content that has not been cleared yet by the person you are queuing with. Completing this a certain amount of times will yield achievements and rewards. Additionally, you’ll have a crown mark added next to your name, and you can turn this off and on as you like.

I like that crafters can be mentors too. I wonder if they will have a different icon next to their name.

The 1000 dungeons or trials might refer to the "Dungeon Master" achievement (not title). Seems I'm still 200 off.

This is somewhat related:

Stone, Sky, Sea

This is a battle challenge where you have three minutes to defeat a specific training dummy. At the beginning of the broadcast, we had Yoshida demonstrate the battle against the striking dummy for Alexander: Gordias, The Burden of the Father (Savage).

There are several levels of challenge. Each training dummy corresponds to the difficulty of high-level content, and players will be able to test their rotations for each job. We also have Patch 3.2 content available as well, and players can practice here before challenging the new raid. For example, by completing the Alexander: Midas (Normal), the first area for Alexander: Midas (Savage) will become available.

This content is for solo players. There aren’t any rewards, but I believe it’s worth trying. We believe players will expect healers to DPS as well, so we were worried about whether or not we should include this for healers, but we implemented this so healers can challenge it too.

Can't wait to test my dps as AST! I'm hoping we get some kind of healer and tank tests too in the future, Proving Grounds style.

[Selli]

I just want the crown icon. XD

[EDIT] As for people complaining about the commendations, I find class doesn't effect much of anything. Obviously if you say nothing the whole dungeon and hope people just notice your damage and expect commendations, you're probably not going to get any. You're not playing with a bunch of NPCs, you're playing with people, your attitude does effect what they think of you. Most of them like hello's and good-bye's and even the odd joke here and there. I find I get more commendations on my DPS than my healer some days.

[Dalvy]

What if you just want to mentor for a specific role? I have all mage classes at 60, just about 1000 commendations, but I don't intend to level any tanks. Scholar is my main and I've played healers in MMOs extensively for over a decade, so therefore I would like to mentor new healers only. What can I do in this scenario?

[MrsFluffyButt]

Oh boy! Here come the bads with their now inflated egos!

[BroodingFicus]

I really, /really/ hope the requirements are account wide and not on a per character basis for mentor status. I know. Wishful thinking. Hear me out though. It isn't about the commendations or the 1000 dungeons. I still personally think those things should be account wide as well but at least they are something that you can work towards by just being a decent person and enjoying the game. The 'one class of each role at 60' thing however, presents a rather interesting problem if you leveled alts. Since launch I've kept three up pretty actively. One for DPS melee/physical classes, one for tank classes and one for healer/caster classes. For aesthetics and also for storage etc. As things stand I have a max NIN, a 51 WAR and 60 WHM. Meaning if it is done account wide I would really just need to finish getting my tank up to 60 to be able to go help people in the mentor system. However if its done character to character, I'd need to level two superfluous classes from scratch (and the secondary classes to 15) to meet requirements. I'm relatively sure I won't be the only one in this boat. Logically to me it feels like being a mentor should be account wide anyhow since its a reflection of your knowledge/willingness to help. Neither of which are negatively effected by having multiple characters but, as I said, its probably wishful thinking.

[Gunspec]

Don't rush the thank you just yet. Gotta wait til it's released and see how ppl will "mentor" the community first. That's what im waiting on.

I'm usually pretty good when it comes to helping new players, giving them advice, and helping them make intelligent gear choices. I do this so I don't feel as bad when I occasionally train a Wimp Lo.

[SpookyGhost]

Kinda sucks that I'll need to farm commendations if I want to participate in this. I understand they need a benchmark but that's such an easily abused one - would've been better if they added a special trial in the training hall to gauge whether you're capable of teaching.

[Arrius]

I wonder how Summoner/Scholars will be classified in this, as both level up simultaneously due to the same base class.

[Gunspec]

would've been better if they added a special trial in the training hall to gauge whether you're capable of teaching.

What would also help is if you had to pass some sort of basic information quiz. There are SO MANY systems in this game that new players are unaware of, and the sea of quest markers that most players encounter in cities and the field obscure some of the most important ones.

Where do you unlock glamour, dye, aesthetician, combat chocobo, grand company ranks, materia converting, materia melding, housing ward access, gold saucer, challenge log, sightseeing log, various dungeons, various roulettes, etc. What classes do you need to level for jobs, what cross-class skills should you focus on getting, which job skills should you immediately acquire when they become available, how do you start 2.0 relic weapons, etc.

There is so much that newbies need to know, but wouldn't necessarily occur to endgame grinding pros. You'd be surprised how many new players miss the challenge log quest in Limsa, and miss out on the 2-3 free levels of xp it rewards each week.

As for people complaining about the commendations, I find class doesn't effect much of anything. Obviously if you say nothing the whole dungeon and hope people just notice your damage and expect commendations, you're probably not going to get any.

Basically, anytime you see a new player bonus, just start typing out short 1-2 sentence advice as you approach each boss room. The last pack of adds before the boss might not die as fast if you're typing between GCDs, but a quick "click on an orb when his eye glows so you don't get turned to stone" will suffice. Even if the new guy already knows the fight, you'll probably get commendations thrown your way by everyone since you were the helpful one.