New Mentor requirements

[Bewhatever]

There's the common misconception. While of course people with low frustration tolerance exist in all skill levels, learning and clearing high end content requires more patience and the ability to keep cool per se. Helpers that already cleared are usually not the ones that ragequit, it's often the people that didn't clear yet and who are making the mistakes that disband without a word after 3 wipes, leaving the helpers behind with nothing but time wasted ^^

Much respect to you, your playstyle, and your professionalism. Regrettably there is a visible subset of mentors on my server who return from both successful and unsuccessful endgame runs raging to NN chat about the people they were just playing with. Toxic: causes new players to fear attempting higher level content.

Sharing knowledge does in no way require memory of what it ws like when you didn't have that knowledge. I can teach people how to read without remembering how I felt while learning to read in Kindergarden.

Regrettably on my server, in NN, there is a subset of mentors who are extremely high skill in endgame, who utterly lack the ability to answer a question in a level appropriate way. I chose the example of a level 20 sprout trying to understand their first materia meld for a reason, because it is a common question with a 50% chance of receiving an endgame answer utterly incomprehensible to the sprout in NN on my server.

And this is a mentor who's engaged and trying. This is not a hypothetical, it's a repeated observation.

People who are deep into endgame most likely won't run a lot of random PUGs, so their commendation count should probably be a lot lower than that of non endgame players who does daily roulette and DF content on a daily basis.

The thesis that the longer you are in endgame the more likely you are to be "toxic" is something you made up and has zero ground in reality.

I wish I had made it up. That would be much better. The problem is I have observed it repeatedly in NN on my server. Removing those of us closer to the new player experience, as the 1500 commendation threshold will remove me, will increase the probability on my server of a sprout getting only the endgame-centric complex response to the new player's question, which is utterly incomprehensible to the new player.

Thank you again for (1) engaging in this discussion, (2) bringing a valid viewpoint and a better experience, and (3) your patience with my not always clear statements.

BTW I support the suggestion about 8 pages above on this thread, that sprout mentoring (watering can icon) be separated from endgame mentoring (crown). It's an intuitive change, and would have to be tested because it probably needs refinement before being executed, but I think it would mitigate much of what I'm seeing go awry.

[LalaRu]

...The new system won't necessarily solve the problem and may make it worse...

The horror stories I did read about Mentors in NN (and never witnessed in my server) are all and everyone worth of a report to SE, and if proven, they may lead to the offensive Mentors lose permanently the status.
Maybe another problem is people never reporting those issues to SE?

[RoyalBeef]

I wish I had made it up. That would be much better. The problem is I have observed it repeatedly in NN on my server. Removing those of us closer to the new player experience, as the 1500 commendation threshold will remove me, will increase the probability on my server of a sprout getting only the endgame-centric complex response to the new player's question, which is utterly incomprehensible to the new player.

There's a quote by someone probably famous (too lazy to research ^^): "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

That's a general issue you see in all areas of life. People talking about stuff based on someone else's explanation of it which they don't fully understand themselves, so they have no way to adapt their answer to the knowledge level of the person they are talking to.

[MeowingKittens]

At this point in time, the amount of commendations are often just a reflection of how long someone has been playing a tank and/or healer in PuGs. Awards for showing up. Often has nothing to do with knowledge, willingness or ability to help.

While there may be truth to that, I have yet to see anyone actually suggest a solution.

Is this an issue SE can address, or is this a player problem?


SE can't fix people giving them for arbitrary reasons; people need to be the change they want to see instead of just complaining and making excuses. People are talking about how slighted they feel, but don't talk about the reasons THEY give (or don't) comms to others. Is there even hard data to back up the claim what heals and tanks get more, or is that an assumption made because that's what people have been doing this whole time themselves? If tanks and healers are the ones constantly racking up the comms for simply showing up, that's because the PLAYERS are the ones giving it to them. Have you all thought of asking WHY?

I have 8,000 instances and nearly 7,000 comms. I have my Amraro, and received a roughly equal amount of comms spread between tanks, healers, and DPS, AND have an inflated instance count from trusts and solo unsync'd. Maybe I'm just lucky, but even if 75% of my comms were given for silly reasons, I STILL would be eligible. People will spend all day talking about how its easy to notice a tank/healer doing a good or poor job, but not a DPS. But assuming that to be true, that's not a game problem; that's a you not being educated and aware problem. There are ways to gauge general performance WITHOUT a parser.

But regardless, maybe SE CAN help.

-Perhaps randomize the order of the commendation list.
-Allow for 2 comms in 8 man groups, since your one allowed comm is split between 7 people instead of 3
-Maybe allow for cross-alliance comms for 24 man duties, and allow for 3
-Do we need a Hall the Intermediate or updates to current job guides, so good DPS gets noticed more easily?
-Do we remove it from the challenge log, so people don't commend because of a reward attached with no thought?

I've said this in another topic already, but to repeat it here: SE can't tell who is a good teacher and who isn't, so they need to make their requirements the next best thing: people with lots of experience, lots of variety in that experience (at least in regards to unlocking mentor roulette itself), and a good amount of people taking the time to give them a high five when they weren't asked to do so. Not everyone with knowledge is cut out to teach, but a teacher without knowledge is no teacher at all, and that knowledge without experience means little.


People get unlucky with comms, it happens. But instead of complaining that there IS a problem, we should discuss how the players themselves may or may not be contributing to it, what can SE do to help, and what role WE can play in addressing it.

[HyperiusUltima]

There's a quote by someone probably famous (too lazy to research ^^): "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

That's a general issue you see in all areas of life. People talking about stuff based on someone else's explanation of it which they don't fully understand themselves, so they have no way to adapt their answer to the knowledge level of the person they are talking to.

Whenever there’s a question in NN I try to answer it to the best of my ability, and if they don’t understand, then I don’t just say “Meld Crit/DH” because they don’t know how Materia affects their stats. I try to be thorough until they get it since I have to do this at my workplace too.

[hynaku]

One thing they need to do is get rid of player commendations. System is very unfair to dps and tanks. Notice every time play as a healer I get about 100% of all the commendations. That means dps and tanks never got any which isn't right because they all do equal in the duty. To me needs to be done away with. For mentor should only be based on amount of dungeons they have done, amount of collectables they done, and amount of pvp matches they have done. Commendations should be left out of the requirements.

[Vidu]

One thing they need to do is get rid of player commendations. System is very unfair to dps and tanks. Notice every time play as a healer I get about 100% of all the commendations. That means dps and tanks never got any which isn't right because they all do equal in the duty. To me needs to be done away with. For mentor should only be based on amount of dungeons they have done, amount of collectables they done, and amount of pvp matches they have done. Commendations should be left out of the requirements.

I can assure it isnt "very unfair to tanks and dps" - I do most of the content as bard or tank and I've got slightly over 5k commendations. Its probably easier to get commendations as tank or healer instead of dps, but I've gotten plenty as bard so far as well.

At the end of the day I dont consider them "unfair" for two reasons: First of all they're not a tool to judge someones performance or even character (so one can actually discuss wether or not they're good mentor-criteria), they're just something another player can give out if they feel you deserve a commendation for any reason whatsoever (from performing well, to being the job they've waited in queue for 30+ minutes, to being nice, to at least saying "Hello", to having a cute/cool glamour, for being a certain race/gender-combination or just to finish the weekly challenge log by giving them out as random - I've read all reasons so far) and secondly even if they were perfomance based the chances are that not everyone did do equal in that duty. If the tank cant hold aggro, mobs are all over the place and the healer still manages to keep everyone alive and finish the run in a timely fashion that healer did a lot better than the tank. If one DPS deals twice the amount of damage the other one does, the first DPS clearly did better. Just because they all clear the dungeon together doesnt mean that they all contributed equally - they might have, but its totally possible and even likely that they didnt.

Some people read to much into those commendations and they need to get over the idea that they're an objective measurement of skill. I dont think the system really needs to change, because its working as intended. The german description asks you to play with the person you most enjoyed playing with. As a tank I might have enjoyed the most that the healer was able to keep me up through my pulls - or that the samurai was a beautiful FemRoe.
People also need to get the idea out of their heads that they "deserve" commendations for some reason - they're not something you "earn" by ticking of boxes on a set-in-stone checklist. To me they've always been this small token of "hey, its been nice playing with you" and I dont see how thats unfair or something they'd have to do away with. (The only "unfair" thing might be that you can always only pick one person...)

[LalaRu]

System is very unfair to dps and tanks

Aside that tanks likely won't find it so much unfair, you cannot blame a system for the player's average behavior. It is not the system that gives comms.

[hynaku]

I know in less than year playing as a healer got another 1000 comms on top of the 4000+ already had. Notice when tank if there 4 in party get maybe one but when play as healer get 3 to 4 comms each time when in party on 4. tells me needs fixed like needs fix where if in premade party can't give any to other members. Took me years of playing a dps to get 3000 comms. I hear most give them just based on persons glamour.

[Shougun]

I've gotten plenty as bard so far as well.

Lol :P

On the whole should we change commendations thing, I think we could improve some things if we wanted but I believe the general system is good enough not to remove (I tend to think it's cute and like it, even if sometimes I wish I could comm everyone or something). I think it has a vague correlation that it "gets the job... kinda.. sort of.. done" for SE (and doesn't require developing anything new). Though I still feel like a hall of intermediate / expert (/mage tower/solo arena/personal tests) would have better value in doing what is intended than really making high commendation, dungeon counts, or level requirements.