Your mentor system is Horribly Horribly Flawed.

[NorthernLadMSP]

@Lace Valeria I get what you are saying. While I am not claiming it never happens, in my own experience, I have never personally witnessed a new person being rude to a mentor, only the other way around.

I say this completely unbiased - I have never sought help from a mentor, nor have I ever been one (although I could be).

[Marxam]

Except the current SSS primal or top tier recipes are not beginner content. Mentors are there to help NEWBIES. Newbies don't need advice for how to handle meteor placement in Ozma, or what DPS is needed to kill adds in Nidhogg, or the best way to HQ an Eikon set. Newbies need info about how stats work, or how to unlock your chocobo, where to find that next quest, or what their role is in a party. You don't need to be a top tier player to mentor a newbie, you just need to know enough about the basics. A kindergarten teacher doesn't need to win the Nobel prize in Genetics to teach science. They just need to know enough to teach the beginner essentials.

Your post leads me to believe you don't really know what a mentor is.

Given the amount of people who go right when someone usually states at the start of the ozma fight back and LEFT I'm led to believe that for a majority of new players, FFXIV is their first mmo. Also people still forget to kill adds in a boss fight (a mechanic used in EVERY boss encounter that has adds since 2.0 launch) which leads to a wipe. If new players can't even adapt to things on screen like dodging aoes or placing meteors, how can we expect them to adapt to things off screen like current meta, bis stats, min/maxing a job?

This is where the mentor program failed. I'm not suggesting that mentors need to be maxed with raid content under their belts but they at least need to have some proven experience in their said classes, ex Tanks need to have Tankless job II, etc. Just as you said a kindergarten teacher doesn't need to win the Nobel Prize in Genetics to teach science but they do need to have at least a Degree/Diploma and not be just some person who walked off the street with a resume.

[Cnidarian]

snip.

How exactly is this a failure of the mentor program? If people can't learn the difference between left and right or are unable to adapt to things on the screen, no amount of explaining from Mentors will change that. The situation you outlined is that of said players being incapable or unwilling to play at that particular skill level. The only difference between a Mentor explaining something and a text document or forum thread explaining something is the fact that one is in game and the other isn't. The ability to adapt is on the player, not the source of information.

[Lone-wolfe-02]

I'm a quiet mentor. I'll give advice when it's needed and that's it i'm not going to hold their hand to me that's not good mentorship they need to learn themselves from the advice given.

[Melondra]

Should of ran the mentorship program similar to FFXI Must have 5000+ hours of game-time to become one. There were very very few of us on a server but the quality of those mentors were outstanding. Quite a few that are mentors should not be one, while those that would make great mentor don't want to put up with the BS of it.

Remove the Mentor roulette and the rewards for it and we will se how many stick around.

[Cnidarian]

Should of ran the mentorship program similar to FFXI Must have 5000+ hours of game-time to become one. There were very very few of us on a server but the quality of those mentors were outstanding. Quite a few that are mentors should not be one, while those that would make great mentor don't want to put up with the BS of it.

Remove the Mentor roulette and the rewards for it and we will se how many stick around.

That was not the FFXI Mentor requirements. The only requirements for Mentor in FFXI was have a job at level 30+ or have /played of 180+ hours. Not quire sure where you got the 5000+ hours from.

[Melondra]

yea that sounds about right.

[Blindheart]

There are no rules given for being a mentor. The way I play, especially with new people, is I keep my mouth shut and pretend every dungeon is brand new and no one has ever done it before. If/when people die, then I may tell them what they need to do. Otherwise I let people experience the content and learn from doing. No spoilers.

[Eorzean_username]

Most of the mentors I notice, I only notice because they're being awful to someone. I click on them, see the crown, and I am not surprised. There's also the ironic Crowns that sit there silently saying absolutely nothing when someone is obviously struggling or does not understand mechanics.

I see the Crown as a pretentious status symbol, it certainly does not have anything near a 1:1 relationship with being helpful, supportive, or educational.

Today's leveling Roulette, I had a Non-Mentor PLD who spent the entire Qarn obsessively explaining every detail to the two Sprouts. Possibly way too many details (I was fidgeting and falling asleep, but remained polite), but the two Sprouts seemed to have a lot of fun and enjoy their run.

MSQ Roulette? Mentor BLM pulls every boss while the New Player Bonus Sprouts are locked outside in cutscenes. Mentor Tank early-pulls anything the BLM was too slow to get first. Everyone leaves immediately without saying a word at the end.

Clearly, the issue is not "all Mentor = Problem player" (I have encountered at least several dedicated and helpful mentors). Instead it's that "a lot of Problem players = Mentor", tarnishing the reputation overall. I've met multiple Sprouts now that have expressed a fear of mentors and an assumption the Crown means they're going to be bullied soon. That's probably not working as intended.

[Letbluevannback]

Mentorship shouldn't have requirements to begin with. I'd like to mentor, I love to help and take my time to explain dungeon mechanics or do longer routes to get more exp to those who need it, but I can't access the mentor roulette because I'm not 60 yet, or haven't done a thousand dungeons, or beat some raid... Why do I need those things to help a newbie go through Dzmael Darkhold?

I have yet to meet a mentor in duty who actually acted like one. I've seen mentors pulling ahead of tanks as DPSs, or mentors leaving duty upon entrance because they didn't like it. That defeats the spirit of mentorship completely. And I think the fact is, most of those people are purely driven by the rewards of mentorship program. That misses the whole point.

If it were for me, I'd remove all requirements and rewards for mentorship (put the rewards into something else, I don't know). That way we're sure that only those who want to bother helping out will do it.