New Mentor requirements

[Buzzwords]

so you want 5 people to be in novice chat and there is a high chance that they don't actually want to even help anyone.

i'd be cool with that.

i've been a mentor, active in my servers NN for a few years... most of my fellow mentors are worthless. some are actively bad. as in; new players would be BETTER players WITHOUT their advice.

most of my time spent mentoring is having to COUNTER bad advice. yes gear does in fact matter. yes healers DO deal damage. no rampart/lustrate/whatever else is not "just for an emergency" and god don't even get me started on tank stance and diversion back when those were things...

at least the 5 people would be qualified, and silence is preferable to a bad player giving bad advice to justify their own bad habits.


this doesn't even touch on the handful of wierdos that are only in the novice network to get a "captive audience" so they can spew the same inane drivel that ensures they have no friends AT some people. and it's like you WANNA just blacklist them but sometimes they're outright abusive or obscene and you have to see them to kick them, or at least to /tell the new guy "sorry about him, we can't get rid of him. the NN is fucked."

[RyuSaarva]

i'd be cool with that.

i've been a mentor, active in my servers NN for a few years... most of my fellow mentors are worthless. some are actively bad. as in; new players would be BETTER players WITHOUT their advice.

most of my time spent mentoring is having to COUNTER bad advice. yes gear does in fact matter. yes healers DO deal damage. no rampart/lustrate/whatever else is not "just for an emergency" and god don't even get me started on tank stance and diversion back when those were things...

at least the 5 people would be qualified, and silence is preferable to a bad player giving bad advice to justify their own bad habits.


this doesn't even touch on the handful of wierdos that are only in the novice network to get a "captive audience" so they can spew the same inane drivel that ensures they have no friends AT some people. and it's like you WANNA just blacklist them but sometimes they're outright abusive or obscene and you have to see them to kick them, or at least to /tell the new guy "sorry about him, we can't get rid of him. the NN is fucked."

sounds like a problem that is only on your server.

[Buzzwords]

sounds like a problem that is only on your server.

i guess i couldn't really say, i only ever play on the one server.

but my memory of here and reddit involves a lot more "mentors suck" threads than "mentors are so great" threads so i feel like it's PROBABLY not just my server?

i guess confirmation bias is a thing and nobody goes on yelp to rave about a pretty good meal but you know what i'm saying. mines rough, and the general tone of the internet is that they all suck.

[HyperiusUltima]

Imo Mentor Requiriments still easy, it should be at least:

- PVE Mentor: all combat jobs at Lv80 + 3000 Commendations + All Extreme and Savage Cleared.

- Craft/Gather Mentor: All Craft/Gathering Jobs at Lv80 + 5000 Collectables + All Master Recipes/Folklore + All Job Quests and NPCs deliveries done ( including Crystallium ).

- PVP Mentor: 1000 Frontline + 1000 Feast + 1000 Rival Wings.

Most of Mentors in this game are useless and know nothing about what mentoring they stand for, over 90% people just become Mentors to use Novice Network ( where 5 out 100 Mentors interact with people there, talking, socializing and answering questions, while the another 95 not even say "Hi" when Log in and loves to kick random people for nonsense and trivial reasons ) or because the Crown is "cute" to use at your nick name.

The problem with this is you’re taking it to hardcore. It is not meant to be that way. Also, if you saying most are bad, I’ve seen some good mentors who give advice often in the NN, but by raising requirements to high-end, there would be about only 3 or 4 mentors in the network. 3k Comms is also about 6 years of work with how it is right now.

What they’re changing it to works since it moves the goalpost away from where most can’t even play their job correctly.

[Ilyrian]

3k Comms is also about 6 years of work with how it is right now.

It really isn't.

There is an argument to be made that it really is quicker on a healer or tank, but getting 3k is not in any way difficult for someone who regularly does their roulettes.

[Shougun]

i guess i couldn't really say, i only ever play on the one server.

but my memory of here and reddit involves a lot more "mentors suck" threads than "mentors are so great" threads so i feel like it's PROBABLY not just my server?

i guess confirmation bias is a thing and nobody goes on yelp to rave about a pretty good meal but you know what i'm saying. mines rough, and the general tone of the internet is that they all suck.

I think this is where mentor tiers might be helpful, water cans are just helpful people to go talk to and mostly about general stuff (msq/dungeons, help Satasha queues lol). While crowns would have strict requirements that require you to prove your skill and would be placed into everything basically. For the crowns I think even bothering with leveled jobs is not that important, or number of dungeons or commendations (after a certain point). After a certain point all those stats say is "I play A L O T" and I don't think for general stuff you need to have that many hours, besides even if you play a lot that doesn't mean you're any good (as we already know this).

So I think it would help in a few ways for tiers. One of the more important parts being we move away this idea that most mentors need to be gods of content, I see a lot of complaints (not saying in this thread but my general experience reading complaints) where it's like "ThEY DiDnT UsE ThE PeRfEcT RoTaTiOn!1!! /kick this mentor" (hyperbolic for fun ).

But a second part is we could actually make, or greatly help promote, the mentor that some people want to see from the crown- that person who is actually "good" at the game more than just helpful. We can encourage high skill players in the mentor system by actually requiring to do something skillful- some sort of test that is difficult to bypass without skill. Like passing a solo expert hall with certain achievements (like how in blue mage you can pass content and then also get extra bonuses, like WoW's job specific solo battle areas, here it could be you need to pass the expert hall with flying colors and not just scrape by). Requiring content that cant be unsynced or certain ultimate content can help too (though I feel ultimate should be an optional bypass, like you are able to pass expert and have a certain number of savage/ex content done or you're able to pass expert and have completed an ultimate). If you're on a job / job group you've not met the requirements on then you're also a watering can (so if you passed the expert hall for healers but can't on DD you're not currently crowned when playing on DD).

Watering can == MSQ / general questions / filling up old dead content, general game concepts like how a job may feel. May go further than that, but not necessarily true.
Crown == Teaches and helps pass expert and savage content, also can give fairly accurate tips on rotations / deeper job details.

For the chat part I imagine what might help is adding a new chat network, like regional chats in WoW (so people can chat to chat, with strangers- lessening the value of being in novice), and then removing the ability to easily kick people in novice. Like if you want to kick someone not only does it require a vote from a set number of available mentors in the room but a GM will review the vote kicks (vote kicking acts as a report), and if it wasn't for a clear violation and more like "they said something I don't like, I was helping first, ERP in here if I'd like" you'll then gain a chat strike (which I imagine is going to quickly weed out those who can't handle the room). Each chat strike preventing you from using the kick feature progressively and more depending on what GM determines(like 7 days, 40, 160, and if bad enough up to permanent removal from the whole chat group). Novice chat will occasionally cycle a message reminding people the chat is for helping new players.

Also might be getting a bit too feature rich or may work for that new fellowship system SE is working on but I think it could be cute if there were occasional events, like if a certain number of seedlings and mentors were on at once the system might flip a switch and trigger an invite to the group triggering some sort of social event. A wealth of options for that, including using SE's own systems like inviting players to go to the Golden Saucer and chocobo race together for greatly enhanced racing exp for a short period of time or giving notice and triggering one of those super FATEs that come with tokens- that are within the level bracket of sprouts, so like Odin and Behemoth, maybe Ixon, definitely none of the ShB ones. Wouldn't suggest these things are exclusive to the system, just announced and generated based on some variable trips. Like it notices a number of sprout players without Odin gear on and see's it can send out a notice that it'll spawn in 10 minutes and give sprouts and mentors a free invite/teleport and a specially auto-generated party finder, with perhaps a slightly lower requirements for "gold" status on the fate just in case the group is super sprout like lol.

At least personally I think there is room for people who want to help sprouts in content they can handle, to fill up queues where possible, to be of general help and have a bit of a sign pointing at them "ask me questions" (watering can), and also room for more skilled mentors of all players with the crowns. Those players who can easily maneuver in end game scenes while also completing the duty of their job, and hopefully are tested on it like the concept of the expert hall. I don't think greatly exaggerating the menial achievement requirements will be that helpful, except maybe to just make less mentors in general (but doesn't mean they're any better- just because you play something a lot doesn't mean you're actually any good lol). Menial achievements like number of dungeons or commendations, where I do agree they have a slight correlation to what SE wants but it's still very very heavy handed solution since it trims out a lot of people who succeed and even keeps in a lot of people who don't meet what's wanted (although it's also one that doesn't require them to spend a lot of resources, so I'm not trying to insult SE- certainly I can see it being a not so hard addressment).

[TaranTatsuuchi]

I'd certainly fit into the role of the watering-can mentor.

I know a lot of General things about the game, and though I may not be knowledgeable about all the jobs I do know where the information can be found, and can point someone in that direction.

[Saintly]

Imo Mentor Requiriments still easy, it should be at least:

- PVE Mentor: all combat jobs at Lv80 + 3000 Commendations + All Extreme and Savage Cleared.

- Craft/Gather Mentor: All Craft/Gathering Jobs at Lv80 + 5000 Collectables + All Master Recipes/Folklore + All Job Quests and NPCs deliveries done ( including Crystallium ).

- PVP Mentor: 1000 Frontline + 1000 Feast + 1000 Rival Wings.

Most of Mentors in this game are useless and know nothing about what mentoring they stand for, over 90% people just become Mentors to use Novice Network ( where 5 out 100 Mentors interact with people there, talking, socializing and answering questions, while the another 95 not even say "Hi" when Log in and loves to kick random people for nonsense and trivial reasons ) or because the Crown is "cute" to use at your nick name.

Even tho i agree with you in general i think you might want to adjust some numbers to find a middle ground that does not let every and his mother be mentor like now, but have enough mentors so that at least a couple of mentors are available most of the time.

Some suggestion's i'd make are:

PvE: Replace savage with "Clear all EX thru DF solo/synced."

Crafting: Seems a bit much for the current system, yet we should wait and see how much they gonna ruin/casuallise crafting/gathering on 5.1.

PvP: I think that's downright extreme and is affected to the extreme by the DC you play on.
I'd suggest giving mentor status to top XX Feast players for the rest of the season.

Yes, win-trading/buying is a thing but the top places are usually legit good players.

[Crushnight]

they just need to change the mentor crown to a poop emoji

Lets not bring Patrick Steward into this :P

[Buzzwords]

a lot of stuff.

i would LOVE to see some kind of qualification that isn't passed by "literally everybody EVENTUALLY" which is all the current system is. i think we completely agree on that point: current mentor requirements are not a measure of skill or even personality, they are a measure of character age MODIFIED by skill or personality. everybody gets commended EVENTUALLY, even by accident.

i do remember hearing the idea that: "NN doesn't have to be FFXIV school, sometimes it's just the welcome wagon" and i don't hate that sentiment. (these people would be like your watering cans) but i dunno how effective splitting the mentors into tiers would work in reality. as is now i've seen a couple mentors openly talk about cheesing their mentor status one minute, complain about how hard 24 mans are the next, then still tell sprouts that rotations are for tryhards? we all already know they're not meeting the games CURRENT qualifications, doesn't shut them up now why would it THEN, you know?

i completely agree that there should be some kind of global chat. even if it is just to draw certain people away from the NN. too many people join to use it as a clubhouse, and while most are benign, some of them really make me think: "why don't you go have this monologue at your friends... and if you don't have any friends to have this monologue at; maybe take that as a hint?"

i had read somewhere that kicking someone from novice automatically filed a GM report. i guess i dunno if that's true but honestly, people just report each other if they get kicked, so the GMs know what's happening. it feels like squeenix is pretty hands off. maybe they don't have a formal policy on what the NNs are "supposed" to be? or maybe my opinion of what it should be is totally wrong. the shitpost and bad advice emporium could be "working as intended" cuz... the shitposters are still around too?

your last bit sounds cool but it also sounds like a lot of effort on SEs part that i don't see getting done. not to mention i dunno how i feel about the prospect of adding in "special events" for being a mentor. as we've discussed we already have too many people becoming mentors for the wrong reasons. the idea of a special world fate or saucer event "for them" (even if they are open to the server, people will feel like it's "for sprouts and mentors") seems like it just becomes a fresh magnet. it would be cool but: "this is why we can't have nice things"

i'd settle for just a GM who's job it was to read NNs for a few hours. absorb the context and remove some people's crowns as per common sense. obviously they couldn't be everywhere all the time but get a couple of them in different time zones and languages and have them just move around. i feel like a small amount of human oversight would go a long way.