Suggestion: Revoke Mentorship Status

[van_arn]

Unlocking all of mentor roulette duties is not a requirement for battle mentor.

It honestly should be. Crafting mentor should require a high completion of the crafting logs, as well.

There’s no way Square would put such a limitation on mentors, though, since they get so much blowback for trivial limitations like commendations.

[Erendis]

Then who would tell people how to find delivery moogle?...

[Vahlnir]

Then who would tell people how to find delivery moogle?...

lol

Just helped someone with this today in NN, actually. They were in Gridania but were having trouble locating it. Gave them a map flag and they found it not a minute later.

[AngelCheese77]

Mentors are not on your payroll. The only thing a mentor agrees to do is guide people on basic game functions. It's not a mentor's job to know every dungeon or every raid or every single aspect of this game. That's not what mentors are for. A mentor is not going to stop the party in the middle of a dungeon and teach you how to play. Mentors don't have time for that.

https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...3d2c4227dfdc2e

The mentor system provides more experienced players a means to offer advice and guidance to newer players.

- What is a mentor?
Mentors are veteran players who chose to offer their time and experience to help guide new adventurers. To facilitate their assistance, mentors will gain access to a special chat channel as well as a means to easily register for duties and trials with new players.

https://blog.playstation.com/2016/02...mentor-system/

Q: The mentor system is going to be introduced in Patch 3.2, which hits the FFXIV servers on the February 23rd. Can you tell us roughly what the mentor system is and why you have chosen to implement this feature?

FFXIV: Naoki Yoshida

A: “Mentor” is a special status for experienced players, who are only able to call themselves mentors after obtaining certain achievements and meeting certain criteria. Mentors are players who support beginners who have just started their adventures in-game and answer their questions from the standpoint of a seasoned veteran. Mentorship is also a new element to help those who role play and to further enhance the player community. With the arrival of Patch 3.2, a special chat channel called the Novice Network will be added to each world. This chat channel can only be used by mentors and new players who have played the game for less than 40 hours. The purpose of this channel is to offer a place for new players to ask mentors about the game and for mentors to give answers to their questions. To eliminate the prospect of any malicious RMT (Real Money Traders) from invading the chat channel, we made it so only mentors can invite new players into it. On top of that, when a mentor and new player form a party, they will both receive an experience point bonus. In addition to this, a special duty roulette called “Duty Roulette: Mentor” that is only available for mentors will be added. This roulette will grant a priority on matching mentors with new players or players who haven’t beaten the specific dungeon or trial yet.

MMORPGs offer a huge amount of content and gameplay systems, so I can imagine how playing one could potentially be overwhelming for some players, especially when they play an MMORPG or online game for the first time. However, the introduction of the mentor system with this new patch enables veteran players to proactively support those who have started the game recently, creating an opportunity for both veteran players and rookies to meet and get to know each other. Now is a very good time for anyone who hasn’t played the game before to begin! To any experienced players out there, I’d love for you all to support our new players. I’m also ready to be a mentor on my personal character.

[MicahZerrshia]

I honestly think they should just change mentor to veteran.

People expect way too much from mentors, yet can get so upset when someone tries to help them out that being banned for giving advice got so bad, ppl do not even do it anymore. The crown means nothing. If you want ppl to help, stop reporting them for helping then trying to get those who you feel are obligated to help you, due to a worthless icon by their name, disciplined in some way for not helping. It's literally a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation here.

[KageTokage]

When it comes to trade mentors, you most definitely do not need to be a "seasoned veteran" when it all it demands is being level 80 and acquiring X number of collectables with zero regard to their actual quality.

Granted, there's no guarantees that combat mentors will be knowledgeable either, though I'd like to hope someone is at least reasonably good at the game after the countless hours it takes to amass 1.5K commendations.

[Vahlnir]

I honestly think they should just change mentor to veteran.

People expect way too much from mentors, yet can get so upset when someone tries to help them out that being banned for giving advice got so bad, ppl do not even do it anymore. The crown means nothing. If you want ppl to help, stop reporting them for helping then trying to get those who you feel are obligated to help you, due to a worthless icon by their name, disciplined in some way for not helping. It's literally a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation here.

In FF XIV, the average player needs to tread carefully when it comes to what they say in chat. Obviously some don't give a hoot, but they probably should. This is especially true for Mentors, given the current state of the system. There are those that genuinely do want to help but are hesitant to speak up. I am one of those people. If someone asks I will happily answer, but it would take a lot for me to actually say something without permission. Helping in the NN is one thing. Questions pop up left and right there. I am comfortable with answering those if I can. That is what NN is for. Helping a random player in a dungeon is another story. Even the slightest mention of someone doing something wrong, no matter how civil, can escalate things quickly even if you aren't a Mentor. Being a Mentor can make a bad situation even worse in that respect, just because of the symbol beside our character names. I am speaking from experience.

[Packetdancer]

It honestly should be. Crafting mentor should require a high completion of the crafting logs, as well.

I mean, it comes down to what you want 'Mentor' to represent.

Is a Mentor just someone who has been in the game a long time and done a lot of different things, so may know the answer to a question (or where to go to look for the answer)? Then that's what you go for: a long playtime, and a broad spectrum of content done. In which case, arguably the current mentor system is sufficient.

But if a Mentor should be someone who knows a given system deeply and can provide meaningful advice? Then you need to have tests for it.

If that's the case, then a battle mentor should need to pass a reasonably-difficult solo instance for a given job in order to get certification on that job; hey, this person is certified as a White Mage mentor, and this one as a Gunbreaker. This one's got certification for every single caster; they probably know their stuff when it comes to casters in general! And if there's a DPS who's certified as a White Mage mentor telling the sprout healer that no, Freecure is a trap, whereas the tank saying "Cure I is totally better, you should just spam it, it costs less MP" has no healer jobs certified at all, it'd be easier for a sprout to know who to listen to.

You'd probably also want to rework commendations, because the current commendation system is gratifying ("Yay I got comms!") but largely meaningless ("...because I was the last person standing there when the sprout was out of the cutscene.").

(But then again, I've got Strong Opinions™ on how you could rework commendations as it is.)

And similarly, if a mentor is meant to be someone who knows the system really deeply, then a crafting mentor should need to complete some challenges along the line of Ishgardian Reconstruction expert crafts. Albeit probably with a higher difficulty and a range of potential quality/progress/durability combinations, so you don't have people coming up with a macro that can just do it for you (as people have still managed to do with Expert crafting). That way, you know someone actually knows the crafting system reasonably well, not just "yeah so you go to the Balance Discord and ask for a macro".

The problem, I suspect, arises because the system is designed for the former (mentors being long-term players who've done a wide variety of content and can help point people in the right direction), people keep expecting it to be the latter (mentors being people who know a particular system really deeply and well), and the disparity between those two leads to a third impression (that mentors are all BK crown wearing incompetents).

(And most of the actual mentors I know who really work hard to help sprouts never actually wear the crown on their nameplate because of that reputation... which certainly doesn't help to counter the 'if someone's wearing a crown it's not a good thing' reputation they have.)

So either the system needs to be re-aligned with what people expect from it, or we players need to re-align what we think the 'good' mentors are supposed to be. The former would probably be ideal.

[Packetdancer]

Granted, there's no guarantees that combat mentors will be knowledgeable either, though I'd like to hope someone is at least reasonably good at the game after the countless hours it takes to amass 1.5K commendations.

Except commendations are really broad and can mean all kinds of things. Sure, they can mean "holy potatoes you're an amazing tank/healer/DPS" or "I was feeling a little lost in this duty but you helped out with great advice", which are excellent criteria for a mentor.

But they can also mean "I really love your glam game" or "you made quips during this dungeon that made me laugh". It could mean "even though you don't play your caster well, you rezzed a bunch of people, and the healer sees and appreciates that". It can mean "everyone else in this alliance raid was part of some premade party of trolling jackasses except you and me, so I'm comming you." It can mean "three of us were a pre-made running roulettes together, so enjoy everyone else's comm!" It can even mean "you were the last one left in the instance when I finished the cutscene." It can mean "you're the healer, so I'm giving you my comm."

And those ones aren't necessarily so relevant; it's possible to not be a great player mechanically and yet still collect many comms through that alone given enough time.

[Vahlnir]

Except commendations are really broad and can mean all kinds of things. Sure, they can mean "holy potatoes you're an amazing tank/healer/DPS" or "I was feeling a little lost in this duty but you helped out with great advice", which are excellent criteria for a mentor.

But they can also mean "I really love your glam game" or "you made quips during this dungeon that made me laugh". It could mean "even though you don't play your caster well, you rezzed a bunch of people, and the healer sees and appreciates that". It can mean "everyone else in this alliance raid was part of some premade party of trolling jackasses except you and me, so I'm comming you." It can mean "three of us were a pre-made running roulettes together, so enjoy everyone else's comm!" It can even mean "you were the last one left in the instance when I finished the cutscene." It can mean "you're the healer, so I'm giving you my comm."

And those ones aren't necessarily so relevant; it's possible to not be a great player mechanically and yet still collect many comms through that alone given enough time.

Yeah. Commendations aren't really an accurate gauge of player performance. I usually throw one to my healer or other tank as a tank, and to a fellow dps as a dps. Certain factors determine who gets what sometimes, but...it's more of a habit than anything at this point. Some people just don't give them out at all.