Your mentor system is Horribly Horribly Flawed.

[Nights-Rune]

I did over generalize a lot as people have pointed out but its hard to be detailed with a word limit. Ironically I DO think non crowns should be shining examples willing to learn and not complete asses to people. To all of you who do actually mentor properly this is not aimed at you. I have only personally met like 2 mentors that were worth the crown and its a shame more cant be like you who actually do guide and teach.Hence why those who do it properly should be rewarded also.

As for the system going away I am not sure. I think were it to be a little better then it has potential to be really useful to players who don't have a group or FC or are new.

I am not intending to insult anyone, I have just seen a serious problem that I feel needs to be worked on.

[MeiUshu]

snip

then I am afraid to say so to you but you dont deserve the title of Mentor....at all. you are the reason why I was against that system and still am. Your attitude/approach whatever is just dispicable and does in no way reflect what a Mentor should be like.

Mentoring is a job...sure some wont listen but as aMentor you have the power (and I dont speak of kicking) to make them follow you or suffer the conséquences...but in no way is your place or your right to look down on those newby for no reasons....(albeit this is independent of a crown )

The crown is NOT a reward for your achievement is an indentification to others that you are someone they can turn to for questions , game questisons, class questions, job questions, mechanics questions and by your decision to be a metnor, you accept that fact that youw ill be bugged stopped when walking around interrupted andt he like...if you cannot deal with that YOU shouldnt be a Mentor and just give up on the crown AND status. you dont deserve it

[Skivvy]

I'm still of the opinion that the mentoring system should have been a voluntary thing. I would much rather talk to someone who is experienced at their main job, who actually WANTS to help, instead of the people who just got the crown because a) they could or b) just wanted a shiny icon. Of course there are mentors now that do actually try to help, but plenty of the others are completely useless and prattish.

What would have been the worst case scenario here? You get a new player asking someone who may have to tell them "oh, I'm sorry, I don't know that particular answer"?

[loreleidiangelo]

I confess to being a largely silent mentor, unless the sprout or person new to the duty either a.) asks for advice at the start, or b.) is clearly struggling/dying to the same mechanic/wiping the group repeatedly by not figuring out what to do. I generally assume that most players don't want their hands held, and will try to figure out mechanics on their own, and taking that fun away from them by immediately launching into a diatribe of every fight mechanic in the instance seems rather condescending and gauche.

Sorry if this makes me a "bad" mentor, but I was raised to believe that's it's polite to give advice only if it's asked for, or if it's really needed. I'd be curious to hear what sprouts think of this approach, though...I should ask in our Novice Network when I get home from work.

[Istede]

Less concerned with the behavior of mentors, more concerned with the fact that many of them aren't even remotely competent players. If I had 1,000 gil for every time I saw a mentor utterly failing to perform their role, I'd have enough money to pay for a relinquish on Balmung.

[Vanathi]

Not sure how long i was gone from the game, but the mentor system did not exist when I left. Coming back I decided to restart because I could not remember how to play my class. A week in I sat and watched a group of mentors verbally fight with each other in the novice chat channel for at least an hour. It was pretty disgusting. I figured out how to remove the sprout and leave the novice channel and have never looked back. Finding a good FC is all you need. Or use a system like SOE did EQ2 did where you had "guides" that were at least monitored. I used to be one would willingly do it here too help people out.

[bounddreamer]

Queue for mentor roulette on WHM. Everyone says hellos. I buff the party and off we go. DRK has grit on but not darkside. I don't say anything for the first pull.

Second pull, I say "Darkside?"

No response.

Third pull, "Do you have Darkside?"

No response.

I check the chat log. He said Hello all in English. I find the skill in auto translate anyhow. {Darkside?}

No response.

I start turning cleric stance on for every pull longer and longer to do more damage, cutting it close a few times. I'm trying to weigh whether I should ask again. I've had runs where a DRK never turned on Darkside. I've had runs where an arcanist physicked the tank and accused me, on SCH, of not doing my job when I advised them they'd be most effective if they dotted all the enemies. Some people get hyper defensive about what they perceive as criticism, or it just falls on deaf ears.

Just as I've steeled myself to not saying anything and staring resigned at that lonely Grit icon for the run, the DRK turns on darkside. I was about to recommend he use Blood Price at the start of every pull when lo and behold he starts doing it.

Not everyone wants to play optimally all the time. I get that. I feel that way myself sometimes.

Breaking this whole thing into camps "All mentors are bad! The system is broken!" "All new players are lazy and unwilling to learn! They're ungrateful and won't take guidance!" is the worst kind of over generalization and sloppy thinking. Of course everyone has bad experiences with one or the other, but isn't that because bad experiences tend to stand out in people's minds?

Look at the Tales from the Duty Finder thread. How many of those are bad stories versus the good ones where players pulled together and supported one another? I can tell you I've seen the negatives get far more forum response and interaction than the stories where things went well.

It's important for everyone to assume good intentions in cooperative game play and go from there. And when people don't react the way you want them to, the only thing you can control from there is your response.

Could the mentor system use more guidelines and maybe even higher standards for entry? Sure. Could the crown be a different icon so it doesn't look like a player putting themselves above others? Sure. Should the mentor roulette rewards be rethought? In the case of that achievement mount, absolutely. But give mentors the benefit from the doubt you'd give any other player. A lot of us really are just here to help.

[Lilith_Merquise]

Cool Story

It doesn't change the fact that I am, and if you want to hold player hands. Have at it. But I don't pay a sub to work a job I'm not getting paid for. Tomes are me helping to clear the content since they couldn't do it themselves or find a FC/LS willing to help em clear content, or pay the gil amount that players are selling clears for. You want to be high and mighty, fine, but if you know so much get off your rump and get a crown so you can do the mentor roulette and help noobies out. If not you're just being a Arm Chair Activist, criticizing from a far with no intentions to improve. The fact I help contribute SOMETHING to new players is what "$free.99" gets you.

NOTHING IN A VIDEO GAME IS A JOB, Until you actually receive monetary incentive to conduct actions you put in what you're willing to do FOR FREE. And if it's the glory of feeling like you helped someone, great, if it's the tomes because that idiot that thinks he can stand in all the AoEs and be "healed through it" than you do what you gotta do. And given that I'm getting some likes for these posts. I'm going to assume that there are those that have the same mind as me, just as there are the Arm Chair Carebears that want to complain and contribute nothing more than words.

Funny enough many of the posts i've read that do complain about it ARE NOT Mentors, and refuse to take up the mantle out of some sort of righteous protest. When in truth all you're doing is hurting the players more by offering nothing more so than the players that offer very little but at least are offering SOMETHING. Again whether it be the knowledge that there are jerks out there and that if you want anything done, sometimes you gotta use what tools are at your hands. Or that there are some people willing to hold your hand and let you walk all over them.

[MeiUshu]

no you are not, not remotedly even close to it, no matter how much you want to convince yourself of the contrary.

You, and those like you, are a pleague, a sickness, that should be eradicated to the root, understand removed from the game as a whole...hopefully it will soon be the case as the damages done by you and those like you are high to new players and to those Mentors that take this to heart knowing how much it is important to support, guide and help new comers. You contribute to give a bad rep to the overall Mentor group and promote arrogance to its best with new players..

You just an ignorant person, very ignorant and arrogant in a negative way which makes you a sad little person.

[KitomiSaitichi]

Or that there are some people willing to hold your hand and let you walk all over them.

Anyhow, I do see your point as some players hate to take any sort of constructive criticism. I was told to 'not blame anyone' when the tank died from a bomb in Hakkuke Manor at the final blast. Someone was reiterating the fight mechanics. I only said that, those mechanics were not the problem since we did them correctly and that only the tank died from the bomb. I didn't say anything bad about the tank or his/her ineptitude at dodging (could just be a brain fart or keyboard froze or didn't react / camera got zoomed awkwardly or whatever).

When it becomes pervasive to that extent at identifying the cause of wipes, I do feel a little down inside. I prefer to take responsibility for my actions in causing success and failures for the entire group, since my groups' success is also my success and vice versa.

As a sprout, it depends on the context of the environment. Whether you see players rushing ahead you (probably efficiency - achievement orientated players) or players waiting before everyone is ready, or players talking and being chatty. It's best to explain it after a wipe, so it makes more sense. You can also make a quick outline of three or so sentences of key points and remind them when the mechanic is about to happen in fight, then reassure them it will be fine [if it is the sprout in question that is failing the mechanic or failing to notice the contingency]. I kind of prefer to learn the fight myself and design a strategy, but the run of the mill average player just wants to clear it and probably is thankful afterwards.

My biggest gripe with these crown status mentor players are that, by and large, they all try to rush mobs before I establish a solid ground of aggro on mobs, and do things pre-emptively, like activating switches and whatnot. Which I am somewhat kind of, and not grateful for. I do certain dungeons over 30+ times already, and I just autopilot with a blank mind. However, I have to be at my tippy toes and mashing buttons to move fast and swiftly when these players come. They also tend to be tippy happy in terms of telling me to optimize my gameplay like... I'm restoring mana using Umbra Ice after transposing from Astral Fire, and they start commenting that I'm an ice mage, or how I need to use Fire II only on mobs of 3 or more before BLM or something of that sort, when I (a) don't need said advice, (b) don't appreciate being told to play optimally when I know I am not playing optimally, (c) could possibly be considered pretentious, condescending or stupid based on the way they say it with a few remarks like "lmao", or some further comments (although I don't really care about the tone, and more so the content - but I can definitely see other sprout players avoiding you guys like the plague).

I can definitely see the correlation between crown status, willpower and focus to grind to said status, and trying to rush through dungeons without any consideration of the status of other players' experiences or willingness to pre-read "video guides, strategy wiki guides" on everything, of which, I recall, the Japanese might presumably do so in converse to American culture (I might be wrong), and thus further infer that a mix of some minimal experience requirements, as well as a formal community approval process would get better results. At least a plus or minus voting system, where you can only vote three times a day on mentors as a new sprout would filter out the bad bunch.

Also, a pretty good system would be a trinity-tiered styled graph with multiple edges from points A, B, C - stating efficiency, conscientiousness, relationship. Before any dungeon or trial or whatever can be queued, you need to select your point on what you value the most. The system parses this in consideration in addition to the queue, so that you would never get a (0, 5) - (X, Y) trait player with the other player, henceforth eliminating irreconcilable value differences between players. The most social players who want to goof around or have interesting talks while doing small pulls or taking their time would choose relationship - or maybe they want to establish friendships. Players wanting to just get things done straight to the point would choose efficiency, aiding in pulling mobs, choosing the right targets, DPSing optimally and everything associated with said trait. Players wanting to feel needed, and want to do the run in a respectable manner in consideration of other players' feelings at all times, following closely with all socially inclined procedures like standard hellos, byes, explanation of mechanics, waiting for cutscenes would choose conscientiousness.

If SE had the capital, they could probably do all this by analytics and heuristics.