Mentor minimum requirement is too low / needs adjustment

[Bourne_Endeavor]

snip

You are drawing a false equivalent. Mentors are not college professors, they are intended to be people willing to offer advice for no tangible benefit beyond the help itself. A better comparison to Alpha's stance is people who volunteer their time at senior citizen homes or feeding the homeless. Neither are paid yet people do it purely out of the satisfaction they helped someone else. The raider comparable makes no sense as its an entirely different mentality. We raid specifically for rewards, be it our personal parses, gear or a pretty little title. Mentoring is meant only to teach new players in the same sense people who make various guides for jobs get next to nothing for their time and effort. A prime example on Balmung is one of the top tier raiders who joins learning parties purely to teach people how to clear Savage. They get literally nothing out of it except knowing they helped a new raid group get their first clear. That is what I imagine Alpha is referring to.

Dangling a carrot only encourages people with no interest whatsoever in helping new players to put on the silly little crown and grind for a mount. If you want to say removing the aforementioned "carrot" would see mentorship die instantly. By all means, but it is an opinion.

[Brian_]

You are drawing a false equivalent. Mentors are not college professors, they are intended to be people willing to offer advice for no tangible benefit beyond the help itself. A better comparison to Alpha's stance is people who volunteer their time at senior citizen homes or feeding the homeless. Neither are paid yet people do it purely out of the satisfaction they helped someone else. The raider comparable makes no sense as its an entirely different mentality. We raid specifically for rewards, be it our personal parses, gear or a pretty little title. Mentoring is meant only to teach new players in the same sense people who make various guides for jobs get next to nothing for their time and effort. A prime example on Balmung is one of the top tier raiders who joins learning parties purely to teach people how to clear Savage. They get literally nothing out of it except knowing they helped a new raid group get their first clear. That is what I imagine Alpha is referring to.

Dangling a carrot only encourages people with no interest whatsoever in helping new players to put on the silly little crown and grind for a mount. If you want to say removing the aforementioned "carrot" would see mentorship die instantly. By all means. but it is an opinion.

It's not a false equivalency at all.

For a lot of skilled players, if you want them to dedicate their time and effort to something, you are going to need to entice them to do that.

If you want a qualified professor or teacher to teach at your school, for most, you're going to need to give them proper compensation.

Like I already said, will some help out purely for the sake of helping out? Sure. I join plenty of learning parties just to help out. But, plenty of PF listings for learning or weekly clear groups go unfilled for their full listing time limit or turn into trap parties. Clearly, there aren't enough people like me to support a self-volunteering system. In the ideal world, I'm sure we'd all love it if 3-4 elite helpers joined all our learning parties. We don't live in that world.

Which is exactly the same as raiding. Are there some people who raid purely for the enjoyment and challenge? Yea. There are. Are there some people who raid purely to improve as a player? Yea. That's actually part of why I join some groups as a helper. But, are there enough to support a self-motivation system or justify content designed for that purpose? No. We already saw what happened with SCoB Savage and that still had titles.

And if you removed the lore / scripture / gold and the achievements / associated rewards from mentor roulette, would the number of people doing it drop a lot? Hell yes it would.

Taking your example of helpers, if said helper desperately needed 300 scripture for an upgrade 2 hours before weekly reset, do you think they'd still spend those 2 hours in that learning party? For the overwhelming majority of qualified helpers, hell no they wouldn't. However, if they got 300 scripture for teaching that party effectively, would they join? I would. I'm sure a lot of people would. At that point, it just comes down to having a system in place that properly assesses the job a mentor has done.

We already see this happen with tomestone bonuses whenever tomestones are really needed for something. Unfortunately, because there is no real incentive to actually teach a player rather than just carry them outside of some fights like Sephirot EX, A11S, and other fights with restrictive assigned mechanics, people end up learning very little.

Imagine if you could bypass the weekly Savage book and chest restriction if 4-7 people in your group have newbie bonus. Would more helpers join groups? Hell yea. That's what rewards can do. Then it's just a matter of dealing with people exploiting the system and really finding a way to encourage education over carries. Fights with restrictive individual responsibilities like A11S already accomplish this.