Shrinking the gap by raising the floor | brainstorming skill incentives

[linayar]

The problem is the system doesn't measure how well you play the game, which should be a main factor for mentorship. Comms are given out for all sorts of reasons, but a well designed in-game scoring system would only judge based on player ability and knowledge.

I'd keep a player comm system separate, which only allows you to flag others for friendly or helpful behavior and maybe has a title or such reward for high points. Sort of a community badge which shows others like and respect you.

I don't think the system has to measure how well you play the game. It's a subjective scoring, so it'd be a pretty poor system if it's meant to measure how well you play the game. If you want something more, you can look to add other things to the mentor requirement (though I doubt SE is looking to do that), not try to think of the commendation system as something other than what it is and then judging it for failing to be that other thing you want.

To be fair Mentor means: "to support and advise someone with less experience to help them develop in their work". Sort of a teacher or someone who can help you learn, rather than queue filler and free exp.
We don't need a mentor system to fill queues. We could simply make a Duty in Need roulette with high rewards that prioritizes Duties with longer queue times.

That may or may not be true, but regardless, mentors do have the ability to fill queues and to help with gaining exp.

I'm not certain where you're going with this thought. How are the tank mount achievements not an indication of how much someone has played the game?

If you're circling back to they don't indicate the quality of a player's game knowledge, I'd agree but that wasn't what I was responding to. I was responding to the thought that comms are meant to indicate how much someone plays when they do a poor job of even that.

I'm just clarifying my initial comment. As I said before, it's about how much you play the game with random players. Tank mount achievement could be done solo on an unsynced duty or with a preformed party.

[Veis_Alveare]

That may or may not be true, but regardless, mentors do have the ability to fill queues and to help with gaining exp.

But it is objectively true, like that is the definition of the word.

A queue that is functionally mentor roulette but called something else (perhaps Duty in Need as Liam suggests) would allow for the continuation of queue help by people who have everything unlocked but would detach that (as well as the related mount) from mentorship. This would likely lead to less people disinterested in mentoring from doing it but only for the carrot on the end of the stick.

I think Burger King crown mentors are enough of a meme at this point. It'd be nice to see less of that.

[linayar]

But it is objectively true, like that is the definition of the word.

I'm talking about whether we need mentor to fill queues. What is also objectively true is that the function is part of mentorship right now, and the commendation system reflects that.

A queue that is functionally mentor roulette but called something else (perhaps Duty in Need as Liam suggests) would allow for the continuation of queue help by people who have everything unlocked but would detach that (as well as the related mount) from mentorship. This would likely lead to less people disinterested in mentoring from doing it but only for the carrot on the end of the stick.

I think Burger King crown mentors are enough of a meme at this point. It'd be nice to see less of that.

Well, the reason why I'm not concerned about those so-called "BK" mentors is because of what I called the passive effect of mentors. Even if you're not actually interested in actively mentoring someone, you could still benefit them just by being in their party.

Anything beyond that would be the same regardless if you're a mentor or not. You could still be a jerk or give wrong advice or quit if you don't like the duty or whatever regardless if you have the crown.

Meme or not, I think the mentorship system is fine as is. People would just have to judge each mentor individually, but also understand the purpose of mentors. Mentors do not have to be someone who has ever entered any content more difficult than Hard mode. (You may need to know Extreme for the roulette, but that's a separate issue for the roulette itself.)

[HyperiusUltima]

Meme or not, I think the mentorship system is fine as is. People would just have to judge each mentor individually, but also understand the purpose of mentors. Mentors do not have to be someone who has ever entered any content more difficult than Hard mode. (You may need to know Extreme for the roulette, but that's a separate issue for the roulette itself.)

No, it's not. The mentorship system is skewed at the moment due to how you simply can just buy 3 Lv 70s in Mog Station and then whiz all the way to 80 after you already have an 80. Though, that's only the most extreme of examples; the most common ones are people not having the experience that's required of their job(for combat) and general idea of the role, as most people will put Tanks as "Takes hits, gets hate" and not talk about using CDs in rotation. There's also the handbasket that says "Healers only heal" and DPS that just press one button and not much else. If anything, I am on board about Combat Mentorship having a Solo Trial of sorts to at least show you know basic mechanics for each role as mentioned(a la Hall of the Novice style). For DPS in particular, it'd be meeting a DPS Check or Healers keeping their party alive for an extended amount of time with raid-wides and stacks(which should be taxing on resources somewhat in design so they know to use Lucid and MP Management).

We also need a Hall of Adventure to show the person various mechanics that otherwise they may never understand, as the current Hall of the Novice is partially outdated due to only showing basic AoEs, not any of the other markers that are all prevalent in Stormblood and beyond.

The Hall of Adventure should at least be shown at around Lv 50 since that's when Stack Markers start to become more prevalent, I believe; but that's only off of what I can remember.

[linayar]

No, it's not. The mentorship system is skewed at the moment due to how you simply can just buy 3 Lv 70s in Mog Station and then whiz all the way to 80 after you already have an 80.

But what does that get you? That's the easy part. You might as well level manually and work toward getting commendations and the required amount of duties done along the way instead of having to start fresh after paying for boost. On the other hand, not boosting wouldn't change much regarding the type of mentor it is.