The mentor system sucks, and here's how I would fix it.

[HyoMinPark]

It depends on the person as a lot of people stated a lot of people just become mentors for the mount rewards and not for helping others. Honestly I'm my case I don't even have mentor roulette unlocked since I cannot do ultimate or most savage content, and I just help out people whenever I come across them in my other roulettes and in the world when someone asks for help.

For what it is worth, it's unlikely that any Savage or Ultimate content will ever be available via Mentor Roulette. You can't get Coil or Alexander Savage currently, so I doubt they'll suddenly start adding them; and I think the developers are well aware Ultimate is not something one can clear in a single 120-minute lockout - it's designed explicitly with the 1% in mind, so they won't subject a Roulette to it.

The only fights you would have to know are the Extreme primals - and, generally, if you forget a mechanic, a disclaimer at the start can help mitigate backlash. (Ex: I haven't done the ARR EX primals synced in years, despite clearing all of them as a level 50 job. So when I get one, until I remember the mechanics, I just say, "Gonna be honest, I haven't been in here in 3+ years so I may be a bit rusty". I haven't had anyone get mad at me yet for errors I make with mechanics or explanations.)

[Halivel]

IMO, mentor system doesn't work because it has rewards locked behind it. Most mentors aren't doing the mentor roulette because they want to help people, most are doing it because it's a grind to a reward that they want.

If you really want to help people learn, a mount shouldn't be that push that you need to actually do it.

Now, I sure that most people who get into becoming a mentor think "I'll help people, and I'll get a mount - it's a win-win." and don't solely want to get in, and get out for that reward - but a grind is a grind, and I'm sure that attitude changes over time, which is why mentors are a running joke.

It's 4.56 and I personally did "Mentor Roulette" only 2 times.

[Feidam]

Agreeing with HyoMinPark here. Just because someone is a mentor doesn’t mean they will be flawless all the time. There are a lot fights in the game and we are all human can forget. Being up front about or he’ll even saying hi how are y’all at the start of a fight in my experience takes care of most hiccups.

[Derio]

Just because they are a mentor doesnt mean they are flawless.

You are putting artificial pressure on mentor status. That is like expecting the tank in mentor roulette to know all the mechanics from all roles in all content. You are setting unreal expectations.

If anything the mentor roulette adventurer in need bonus needs to be improved

[Astrus]

No. Just no.
Do with the mentor roulette what you will but leave the actual bulk of the system, the Novice Network, alone.
I became a mentor to pay the community back for all the nice people who answered my beginner questions back in the day, not because of a silly crown or a grindy mount.*
I'm trying to go out of my way to answer questions and offer assistance in my server's NN and I can't do that without the mentor system in place because then we wouldn't have a global chat for people to ask questions.
"Petition a mentor" is not going to work because not every mentor knows about every facet of the game, even if they are within the mentors "area of expertise", having a chat where multiple people can see and answer questions they can answer is the much better solution.

I really wish folks would stop reducing the whole mentor system to the roulette because that's just one optional part of it. The system works, the roulette more often than not does not. If you think you can fix the roulette, fine, but suggesting to tear down the whole system and essentially only leaving the part that alledgedly doesn't work in place is not a solution.

A simple solution for people just looking to farm the roulette for the mount and bailing on anything that's too much effort could be just deducting one completed duty from the achievement every time you decide to leave and incur the penalty using Mentor Roulette.

Please don't make it harder for me to try and be helpful just because there are people who look at mentor roulette as a mount farm and the burger king crown as a status symbol.

*I don't have my crown displayed because I can help with the things I can help with just fine without it and don't run mentor roulette because I'm not confident I'd be of any help in Ex Primals I may have cleared once ages ago

[LineageRazor]

So I'm sure there is no disagreement that the mentor system doesn't do anything to promote positive behavior and is essentially just a roulette anyone with this status can do for extra rewards and that a lot of people complain about the bad behavior they see in some mentors.

Welp, you lost me already. I very much disagree with this establishing statement, and you can see in this thread that I'm far from alone.

Every day, I see countless instances of new and returning players receiving help and advice from Mentors on the Novice Network. Is there chatter apart from this help? Certainly - but that, too, is part of the process of easing new players into the game, as the Network additionally operates as a "starter FC" of sorts.

Mentor Roulette can be a mixed bag - especially when it comes to challenging content like Ex Primals - but for every Mentor that bails, there are two or three that STAY. It is unfair to measure Mentors as a whole by the bad egg minority.

The Mentor system is not perfect, but to say that it does NOTHING to promote positive behavior is hyperbole of the worst kind.

[Nora_of_Mira]

I spent whole 120 minutes explaining The Orbonne Monastery at 1st week in Alliance chat because people asked about it

i wouldnt waste my time mentoring lvl 70's. they know how the game works, they can figure out a 24man. Im not even a mentor but most of my time spent helping others is helping people understand how the game works as a fresh newbie. Help the people in your FC first, maybe someone isnt comfortable with something and you can be the bridge for them. I wouldnt bother trying to help randoms in a duty that you'll likely never see again.

[rachcouture]

I would like to see system improved. Maybe not in this exact shape, but yes.

Though, we should at first change people mindset, because I don't know about other mentors, but I'm tired.

I spent whole 120 minutes explaining The Orbonne Monastery at 1st week in Alliance chat because people asked about it (while I was able to leave, wait 30 minutes penalty and then find new duty almost immediately because I'm Tank). We finally cleared it 3 minutes before the end. And I didn't recieve nor commend, nor even "thanks" in the chat, just nothing. Only thing people did is "Vote Abandon" initialiaze (at 1st week) and complain that mentors do nothing, when there was actually only me with crown and I explained everything and was calm, polite and tried to cheer those who was sad about fails. I don't know, what was I supposed to do really. Play for them the whole game? And it's not the first time when it was like this, it's like this every time in any new (and not new) content. I removed my mentor crown and don't really plan to use it again for while. Maybe at some day, but not now.

So it's not only about mentors, it's about players too: as long as there are people who treat mentors as free servants, there will not be mentors who really want to help others get better. Because who in the world will want to help to people who can't even write "Thank you" in chat?

I have these same sentiments. I’m not someone who cares about the rewards—I’ve had Mentor Roulette unlocked almost since the system was put in place back in 3.2 (?), but only started doing it recently because I’m bored and revisiting old content is fun sometimes. A lot of the times, there’s no need to explain any mechanics: I tend to get a lot of Guildhests and baby dungeons or leveling dungeons in my roulettes, and people rarely ask questions. However, when the odd EX primal pops up, I can spend the entire 60 minutes explaining how to do the fight for people to just... not listen. And that is the most frustrating part. I’m reminded of a Shiva EX I had where me (WHM) and one of the tanks were the only people who knew the fight. And the other 6 players just would not listen to our explanations, despite us using waymarks and everything. And then they would wonder why they kept dying...People also don’t like being criticized. You can offer constructive criticism in the nicest way possible, and someone will still bite your head off over it. For some reason, they see it as a personal attack on their character if you offer advice like, “Try using X skill—it increases the damage you deal” or “When there are 3+ mobs, try pressing X AOE SKILL because things will die faster”. Or even mechanical things—I had a person in Orbonne whine at me when they failed Divine Retribution during Agrias (didn’t have a tether, but stood with the tethers and did not use the shield Duty Action), and when I told them they did the mechanic incorrectly and that was why they died (i.e., it was not a healing problem like they insisted it was), they whined some more (and then died twice more because they were too busy whining).

Not getting thanked for explanations can be a bit grating, but I got used to that a long time ago just though playing healing jobs. You can carry an entire alliance through a 24-man, healing and raising and dealing damage, and still the people who ate AOEs and died 5 times each boss won’t bother saying “Thanks for all those Raises you gave me!”

However, changing mindsets is a really hard thing to do. The Mentor system apparently works well in Japan, but they have a more collective mindset compared to Western countries. I won’t get into debates about which is a better mindset, and I don’t think the West should be “more like JP”—I’m just agreeing with the above poster that mindset is important. So long as “Mentors” just want the shinies and “Non-Mentors” don’t want to listen to the advice actual Mentors are giving out, nothing will really change.

My experience mirrors these two.

I don't care about the mount. I don't even have Mentor Roulette unlocked because it requires everything cleared to be available, something I'm never going to be able to keep up with.

Most of the people I get paired with in Duty Finder just... refuse to listen, no matter how courteous I try to be about it. They have no respect for the players around them, even when I'm at the point of outright carrying a party or alliance because no one will dodge, ask about mechanics, and/or the off healer is tunnel-visioned into DPS. No amount of explanation is going to make a difference when it goes in one ear and out the other (and sometimes intentionally).

Do you even understand how incredibly frustrating and discouraging it is to not even receive a single 'thank you' or commendation after all of the above?

I would imagine that of the mentors that care, most are completely burnt-out at this point. That includes me. It's not the system that's failing; it's the people it's designed to help that refuse to meet us halfway.

[Gula]

Novice Network is a mess. I hate being in it (disable it with every alt), and often mentors belittle sprouts because they think the person to be an idiot who couldn't possibly correct them more often than not. Talk to grown people like children learning elementary schooling. It would be a lot of time and resources to devote to a fact check, but it'd be awesome to have. A screening process to weed out the people just in it for the mount or to be awful people waving a crown around.

[JackHatchet]

They need a way to let anyone become a sprout and join the Novice Network. I absolutely loathe the idea that the game literally forces me out of the Novice Network just because I've played too many hours. I only got mentor to talk with my friends in Novice Network, and now I'm randomly being held to a higher standard simply because I want to participate in the global chat channel.

Please let me be a sprout again.