What’s the point of the mentor system?

[StriderShinryu]

In theory a mentor system is a really good thing. Sure you can find a lot of the info online with a quick search, but many people don't learn by just reading a guide or watching a video. Actually getting hands on experience with someone showing you the ropes can be of massive importance, especially in a complicated fight where they can point out exactly what you're doing wrong. Having actually present, human helpers also helps a lot for being able to explain things or answer direct followup questions. It might be easy to find a guide that tells you Do X To Beat Y, but what if you want to know why that works or what if you've tried that and it didn't work for you? What if you want to know what the next step is after Beating Y? A google search might not help much for that but an actual live person can.

The problem is, as others have pointed out, specifically applying special rewards to being a mentor. Having a crown icon, a mount and what is, for all intents and purposes, a special private chat channel, encourages people to just sign up and go through the motions. The requirements for being a mentor, and staying a mentor, are too lenient. If someone really wants to be a mentor they should have to do more than farm commedations, and if they want to stay a mentor they should undergo some form of actual review. It's a lot harder to do, yes, but it's necessary if they really want to have a designated mentor role.

[Welsper59]

The problem is, as others have pointed out, specifically applying special rewards to being a mentor. Having a crown icon, a mount and what is, for all intents and purposes, a special private chat channel, encourages people to just sign up and go through the motions. The requirements for being a mentor, and staying a mentor, are too lenient. If someone really wants to be a mentor they should have to do more than farm commedations, and if they want to stay a mentor they should undergo some form of actual review. It's a lot harder to do, yes, but it's necessary if they really want to have a designated mentor role.

And that's the problem. People who intend to do good already do. Add a system with some stupid reward or for e-peen folks to flex (more often with bad advice), you're gonna get exactly what's logically coming... which is exactly what happened when the mentor function was introduced and for years later. I don't know how it is now, but I can't imagine it's not the cesspool of stupid that it was before. A handful of sprouts getting actual help, while others are being flooded by mentors looking to flex or talk about stuff they shouldn't on the channel (e.g. spoilers). The average lot of mentors historically aren't very smart people.

I recall seeing WoW put in something that's basically being a mentor. https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/mentor...ld-of-warcraft

That's actually really funny and way too late. Might have been handy back in Cata.