Idea for more relevant Mentor Icons for Mentors

[Fynlar]

People don't need a crown icon in order to think they're superior, but sure, go ahead and pretend like this will "solve" the "problem"

[Reinha]

I have never heard of a player who wears the crown as a status symbol since this feature was implemented. Not once. I have seen many players state they don't wear the crown because being associated with the evil mentor boogeyman gives them poorer status. This problem is imaginary and fueled by people who themselves place unnecessary value on a crown icon they either can't have or are ashamed to wear because of peer pressure.

All this change would do is make players not wearing the icon feel better about themselves. It won't remove mentors who dislike helping, impatient mentors or rude mentors. You just get to feel better about not wearing an icon when it looks less desirable, or perhaps feel better about picking on people who volunteer to help when their icon turns into "fertilizer". How noble.

This icon discussion is a thinly veiled attempt to criticize the whole mentor system, but in any case, the system is here to stay. We will keep offering help, advertising our willingness to do so, correcting people's mistakes, speeding up hundreds of dungeon queues beyond the daily reward and inviting sprouts to the novice network community no matter how much others hate it. It's nothing new that teaching is a thankless job.

[Lumivyory]

And exactly how do you know? Have you been keeping track of all mentors you've been encountering in content? For how long? It's very likely that you just don't notice mentors that aren't bad.

I've posted this before but I'll do so again. I've been tracking this for a while now on the Aether DC.

If you guys want to claim that mentors are bad. Show me your numbers. Survivor bias is a thing, and nobody is immune to it.

Well good for you, YOUR datacenter has a good amount of decent mentors. Doesn't mean every datacenter is like that.
And silent mentors are also not great when there are OBVIOUSLY things to be said. When the whole party knows what they're doing then sure, they can be silent.

Nobody here is saying that all mentors are bad, obviously there are good mentors out there. But a good amount of the ones I saw weren't helpful.


Such mentors include:

- Healer mentors that DPS instead of healing and leave it to their co-healer to do most of the job ("green DPS")

- Mentors who stand in AoE just to get better placement in the DPS list

- Mentors who whine when there is not enough "DPS" on a trash pull, and then complain that you are "not doing your job" even as they themselves, for example, can't even silence a raid-wide attack several times in a row, or let a DPS tank on purpose, or can't even Esuna/Heal

- Mentors who see a party member die several times to the same mechanic, yet don't bother explaining the mechanic to that person even after the fight is over because "watch guides"

This icon discussion is a thinly veiled attempt to criticize the whole mentor system, but in any case, the system is here to stay. We will keep offering help, advertising our willingness to do so, correcting people's mistakes, speeding up hundreds of dungeon queues beyond the daily reward and inviting sprouts to the novice network community no matter how much others hate it. It's nothing new that teaching is a thankless job.

It was already said in this thread that mentor system is fine. People that just want a crown/rewards and don't want to help are not.

[HeulGDarian]

I have never heard of a player who wears the crown as a status symbol since this feature was implemented. Not once. I have seen many players state they don't wear the crown because being associated with the evil mentor boogeyman gives them poorer status. This problem is imaginary and fueled by people who themselves place unnecessary value on a crown icon they either can't have or are ashamed to wear because of peer pressure.

only reason i know of this is cause zepla had done a joke video, apparently people consider it a documentary.

[Malik-Angura]

I think the mentor system is a lose, lose situation. Sure there are bad mentors out there,but there are also good ones. I've seen mentors be yelled at or just flat out ignored by sprouts. In the The Sunken Temple of Qarn for example, We had a white mage mentor and the sprout was a bard. They kept dying to the doom mechanic even though the mentor told them twice what to do. They still wouldn't listen, after the third time the bard yelled "STOP TELLING ME HOW TO PLAY! This is just one example and I'm sure it happens fairly often.That's why I feel it's a lose, lose you get yelled at if you try and yelled out if you don't (and no I'm NOT a mentor)

[Zwipp]

who the heck become mentor because of the icon?

I have never heard of a player who wears the crown as a status symbol since this feature was implemented. Not once.

More people then you might think, I've had multiple players, most often sprouts, ask me how they can get that crown just because "it looks cool".

I have seen many players state they don't wear the crown because being associated with the evil mentor boogeyman gives them poorer status.

Hence I'm not a mentor, even though I always try helping sprouts and players in any way I can.

People don't need a crown icon in order to think they're superior, but sure, go ahead and pretend like this will "solve" the "problem"

I want the icon to say: Hey, I can help you! Instead of; Hey, I'm better then you. Regardless if it will change who becomes mentors and who doesn't. Because even if a icon change wouldn't make the mentor system much better in general, it might make it a bit less hated. Because as I mentioned before, many seems to get annoyed by the crown itself.

[MPK]

As long as it's not a stupid crown.

[MomomiMomi]

More people then you might think, I've had multiple players, most often sprouts, ask me how they can get that crown just because "it looks cool".

Changing the icon will likely not change this though. Just that there is an icon will catch some people's interest.

I started the game at the same time that the sprout system was first introduced. Back then, sprout icon was not automatic, you had to turn it on manually. I was the only sprout I ever saw back then. I had quite a few people with multiple max level jobs asking me what my icon was and how they could get it.

Same thing with FFXI. The icon was quite neutral and otherwise pretty ugly, but you still had people who wanted it.

Also, it's my opinion that people who refuse to be mentors just because of the stigma attached to it, which it seems you seem to be doing, are really missing out on doing greater good. You can help magnitudes more people with the help of tools provided as a mentor. Who cares if people think mentors are evil puppy kickers? You get to be the one who proves them wrong.

[EaMett]

Well good for you, YOUR datacenter has a good amount of decent mentors. Doesn't mean every datacenter is like that.
And silent mentors are also not great when there are OBVIOUSLY things to be said. When the whole party knows what they're doing then sure, they can be silent.

Nobody here is saying that all mentors are bad, obviously there are good mentors out there. But a good amount of the ones I saw weren't helpful.

You're saying exactly what people from my datacenter were saying. It was the reason I started tracking this in the first place, because I wasn't seeing it. Reality is, your datacenter most likely isn't special, it most likely isn't the exception. It's way more likely that, just like people on my datacenter, you're falling prey to survivor bias. All I'm saying is that you can't make claims on the amount of mentors or the severity of the issue without actually collecting data. Especially when those that do, find that it's actually the opposite of your claims.

Also, while we're at it.

Players standing in AoE to do extra damage is justified if that allows the party to do more damage. aka the dps loss from the healer healing is < to the dps gained by standing in the AoE. In a lot of cases there's nothing wrong with a melee not moving away from the boss for their burst or a caster staying put. Actually, good healers who can be bothered, will tell their groups to eat stuff on purpose in order to get the boss down faster. (tethers in grand cosmos final boss where everyone stays in melee; Hands in anamnesis anyder where everyone just takes the hits instead of running, etc etc. the list goes on)

And green dps is an incredibly tricky issue since 1) The right amount of healing is actually really low, it's easy for unoptimized healers to feel like it's not enough and heavily overheal + feel alone. 2) less experienced healers tend to heal damage after it hits instead of doing it before the next damage burst occurs.
These 2 points are actually so frequent that I outright don't use HoTs in non-savage content. There's no point since the co healer heals over them.
This leads to the more experienced healer either overhealing (and it feels like they aren't doing anything) or more likely just not healing at all since chances are they were waiting for a weaving window but by the time it came no more healing was required.
Can this result in the death of people sometimes? Yeah, maybe the first healer has a weak moment and the second healer takes too long to realize, or already used his/her ressources.. but those are the woes of healing dynamics in random non synchronized content.
Reality is that nobody really cares enough about "being higher on the dps list" in content other than savage, and potentially ex trials. Chances are it's something else at play.

On the topic of silent mentors. They are, in part, a byproduct of people getting extremely defensive when you give advice. If there's one thing I've learned as a mentor for example, it's to never help someone doing single target damage in packs (and teach them their AoE rotation). It's just not worth it unless they're a tank, I've never once had it go right no matter how polite I was. At best I'll be ignored, or someone will just say "not interested" if I ask them if they want advice. Worst case scenario I get an earful.
Besides, lets get things clear, being a mentor doesn't oblige you to go out and help everyone. It means you're there to answer questions if people have them. If someone is learning mechanics and dies repeatedly, it's normal and they don't necessarily need your input. Can you ask if someone needs clarification after a fight ends or before a re-pull? sure. Do you have to? Absolutely not, the crown is right there and the player can come to you or the party for advice whenever, or like you said, check a guide.

All that to say that maybe people's expectations of what mentors are also needs to be in the right place.

[Lumivyory]

snip

What's the point of collecting such data? Especially since there is absolutely NO way to be able to encounter every single mentor on the DC to be able to tell whether they are a good mentor or not.

Standing in AOE to maximize damage is such an elitist behaviour. I hate having to heal people that can't be bothered to move a little because of that tiny bit of DPS. Don't know how it is in Savage content but doing this in any other content is just ridiculous. And yes, people seem to care about this even in casual content. A dead DPS will do even less damage than DPS that had to move.

I'm a healer main. And I started this game as a healer main and have been healing since 2.0. I CANNOT accept healers DPSing while there are people in a party that aren't at 100% HP. The next hit for those people can be lethal.
The amount of times I've been left to heal alone while all I see from my co-healer is Glare/Boil/Malefic is insane. Multiple times I tried to just slow down on healing so the co-healer gets to do something but most of the time they just do one skill that doesn't even top people off or don't bother at all.
Sometimes they are even so blinded by their goddamn DPSing that they only realize that I died to some mechanic when people start dropping in our team.

Mentors that don't heal/don't dodge/ect are a bad example for new people.

As for silent mentors and defensive replies - I'm not sure what people that became mentors expected? There will always be people that refuse help. I don't see why people let past experiences with yelling newbies get in a way of giving advice to someone else.

Changing the icon will likely not change this though. Just that there is an icon will catch some people's interest.

I'm sure it will at least lessen the amount of people wanting it for the looks. Quite less people would like to use, for example, a watering can icon. Having a bloody crown next to your name on the other hand is way more attractive to people that just want the cool icon.