Do you think the Mentor system could be fixed by lifting most restrictions to it?

[Machka]

Rewards can be a good incentive. If you had a mentor roulette for ex trials with an amazing reward you can bet that mentors would be putting in a lot of effort to teach sprouts the fights. The problem is neither the rewards nor the mentors. It's the way the current mentor roulette is setup. There's such a huge delta in time spent for reward in the current roulette that it highly promotes dropping some content. We could completely ignore human psychology and just go with the "all mentors should be a flawless image of selflessness" or we could just implement a better set of roulettes.

Ultimately roulettes just aren't a great fit for any content that requires actual coordination, time, and effort to clear. It's not a matter of rewards, but incentive.

As you mentioned, human psychology can't be ignored. Having great rewards for an ex trial roulette will simply result in people dropping from any actually challenging ex primals in hopes of getting one of the easier ones. Why would someone slog through a lockout of wipes in say, Thordan EX, where there is a real possibility of a typical group not completing duty, when you could just eat penalty and try for something like Lakshmi EX where clearing within one or two pulls is a reasonable expectation with a little instruction and maybe voice comms?

It's not about trying to set some kind of standard that mentors need to be flawless and selfless either. The fact of the matter is that a lot of the gripes people have about the mentor system are due to a small percentage of "bad" mentors/behavior you mentioned in your earlier post. Said 'bad' mentors and behavior more often than not involve people who are in the mentor system specifically for its rewards (be they concrete or imagined). Simply increasing rewards would not change that.

Imo the mentor system doesn't need greater rewards, and could benefit from having none/less. The people who would mentor others without rewards are more likely to be the sort of players you'd want mentoring new players anyways. While this wouldn't address all the issues with the mentor system, simply not having special rewards could go a long way in weeding out the source of the problem/bad reputation you mentioned.

[Fynlar]

1.5 k comms may be hard to get for a new person just starting to play the game but for anyone who's been around 5+ years if you don't have 1.5k comms by now you've really done something wrong.

That really depends on how much you group with randoms. I have friends who almost never DF anything, and if you premade/PF stuff most of the time, you won't be getting commendations.

[Vahlnir]

That really depends on how much you group with randoms. I have friends who almost never DF anything, and if you premade/PF stuff most of the time, you won't be getting commendations.

Yeah, the number of comms someone has depends entirely on the person (and what they do) and who one gets grouped with. Some people don't ever bother to throw a commendation out. I'm about 7 years into this game and I went over 2.5k not too long ago. But I tend to do a little bit of everything when it suits me outside of Savage and Ultimate.

[EaMett]

Ultimately roulettes just aren't a great fit for any content that requires actual coordination, time, and effort to clear. It's not a matter of rewards, but incentive.

As you mentioned, human psychology can't be ignored. Having great rewards for an ex trial roulette will simply result in people dropping from any actually challenging ex primals in hopes of getting one of the easier ones. Why would someone slog through a lockout of wipes in say, Thordan EX, where there is a real possibility of a typical group not completing duty, when you could just eat penalty and try for something like Lakshmi EX where clearing within one or two pulls is a reasonable expectation with a little instruction and maybe voice comms?

It's not about trying to set some kind of standard that mentors need to be flawless and selfless either. The fact of the matter is that a lot of the gripes people have about the mentor system are due to a small percentage of "bad" mentors/behavior you mentioned in your earlier post. Said 'bad' mentors and behavior more often than not involve people who are in the mentor system specifically for its rewards (be they concrete or imagined). Simply increasing rewards would not change that.

Imo the mentor system doesn't need greater rewards, and could benefit from having none/less. The people who would mentor others without rewards are more likely to be the sort of players you'd want mentoring new players anyways. While this wouldn't address all the issues with the mentor system, simply not having special rewards could go a long way in weeding out the source of the problem/bad reputation you mentioned.

That's fair, but in reality the likelihood of people dropping the harder ex fights would most likely be significantly lower. Most people who drop ex fights currently actually help sprouts in other content. They just justify dropping ex fights because it's not "roulette" content and should be DFed. This goes completely out the window if it's an ex trial roulette. Will some people still do it? Of course, but I would argue that it would be negligible.

[Nayout]

The system cannot be fixed
Removing the crown is not going to change anything, because any type of symbol that you put to identify it would be attractive, in the same way that the crown is attractive. The mount attracted a lot of bad mentors and I think it was a mistake but other than that there is nothing else to fix this system without having to remove it.

The quickest improvements is to make the Gathering / Crafting and PVP mentors have their own requirements.

[ForteNightshade]

More people having access to mentorship isn't what's going to fix it, since the core of the problem is essentially two things: the crown and the mount. It's far, far less the "prestige" of being a mentor and more about slapping glam next to their names and having a shiny flying horse to boot. Remove those and watch people drop out of it like flies.

This is precisely the problem. I remember getting into an argument with someone way back when Mentor replaced over the mount. He insisted Mentor Roulette needed something to reward the people who put in effort to help and it's unfair they get nothing. Which misses the entire point of the system. It shouldn't ever be able rewarding you but you just generally wanting to be helpful.

Rewards can be a good incentive. If you had a mentor roulette for ex trials with an amazing reward you can bet that mentors would be putting in a lot of effort to teach sprouts the fights. The problem is neither the rewards nor the mentors. It's the way the current mentor roulette is setup. There's such a huge delta in time spent for reward in the current roulette that it highly promotes dropping some content. We could completely ignore human psychology and just go with the "all mentors should be a flawless image of selflessness" or we could just implement a better set of roulettes.

They would not. I guarantee many people who kick new players who aren't getting the mechanics—possibly after a single attempt. Because people rarely queue into EX primals directly, it'd be absurdly easy to kick someone and then have their friend snipe the queue.

[EaMett]

They would not. I guarantee many people who kick new players who aren't getting the mechanics—possibly after a single attempt. Because people rarely queue into EX primals directly, it'd be absurdly easy to kick someone and then have their friend snipe the queue.

This sounds really extreme. You would need to be able to vote someone out for one. Then have someone willing to hop into your instance whenever. Then be able to rinse and repeat this enough to make it a trend. And this would only be a subset of the current 1% of mentors that drop ex fights anyways. That's even more unlikely than people dropping and taking the 30mn penalty.
In reality, a vast majority of Ex trials in mentor roulette are ARR instances (~80%). The great hunt which is pretty easy is also a good chunk (~10%). You occasionally get HW stuff. And usually, it's the likes of Ravana, Thordan and Nidhogg. Very rarely do you get anything else because players know to use DF by then. Almost all of these can be carried with echo. Even more so if you have multiple mentors. I wouldn't expect this to change, drop rates would in effect be lower than they currently are imo.

[Reinha]

I stopped flagging myself as a mentor specifically because of all the people who are only there for exactly these reasons. If the mentor status became a thing where you were known as a person who is actually willing to help with no reward, I'd consider actually getting my status back again. But as is, when you have people who just want a crown, and who are trying to farm the mount (and drop from the roulette when its anything harder than a levequest or leveling dungeon) I don't want to be associated.

Ironically, this is treating the mentor icon as a status symbol. Something which people wearing the crown are often accused of doing despite them being well aware of how much people look down upon mentors.

[Machka]

That's fair, but in reality the likelihood of people dropping the harder ex fights would most likely be significantly lower. Most people who drop ex fights currently actually help sprouts in other content. They just justify dropping ex fights because it's not "roulette" content and should be DFed. This goes completely out the window if it's an ex trial roulette. Will some people still do it? Of course, but I would argue that it would be negligible.

Yeah that's fair too. Having a separate roulette for ex primals could be a good thing, and I'm all for there being more options/tools for matching up mentors with newer players in a more effective way. My point was just about the problem with having extra special rewards for it. Nothing wrong with simply segmenting certain duties in mentor roulette though, that I agree.

[KDSilver]

Yeah that's fair too. Having a separate roulette for ex primals could be a good thing.

Honestly?
Yes. I want a separate roulette for EX primals.
Because personnaly, that's what I prefer and... at least, we won't have to wait for new player each time 2 or 3 mentors leaves the duty because they don't want to do EX.

I won't bring the debate again wheter you should mentor EX or not. But at least, any mentor who queue for this roulette will know where they'll end up.
Leaving because the group isn't willing to listen to your advices/explanation of the strat is another problem on its own.