Mentor Roulette's Achievement Grind Harms New Players' Experiences

[SturmChurro]

Solution is, of course, to remove the "incentive" and watch as the mentor system crumbles as nobody cares anymore. Ugh...

That is the best solution there is.

[Eien713]

if it was contained in one thread, then yes the responses would also be contained in one thread.
You didn't really think this one through did ya xD

Thank you! Glad to see someone has logic, as opposed to the people liking that post -.-

[Ishe-P]

Mentor Roulette is the funnest and best roulette in the game. I run it unironically.

[Jennah]

They should frankly remove the Extreme trials from duty finder, period.
Leaving it in there just gives a mix of people who don't have enough experience to know that doesn't work, and mentors who do NOT want to be there.

If they don't want to go that far, there should at least be a big display in game pointing out that "Hey, Party Finder exists, why don't you try that instead?"

[angienessyo]

I got the mentor mount about a year ago and still do the roulette daily so I've done my share of EX trials with sprouts. (which I don't mind doing, it's not that hard 90% of the time) And I think the new player experience would go up significantly if they just removed the EX trial quests from ARR and make them unlock by talking to an NPC like later EX trials. Most the time I get an EX in my mentor roulette, the sprouts are there just because they wanted to complete the quest that's been sitting in their log and not because they really wanted to do something harder. So the poor sprouts end up in content they might not be prepared for just because they're tired of seeing a quest sit on their log and the game didn't properly communicate the difficulty. Yes, they're called Extreme trials but the "hard" versions of fights aren't exactly hard so I don't blame a new player for not expecting an EX to be a challenge.

Obviously there would still be the occasional player on the free trial queuing for them through DF that does really want to do something harder, but I think how often you see an EX in the roulette would go down significantly without those quests.

[Azuri]

Isn't part of the problem that NA/EU players approach Party Finder and Duty Finder differently from JP players when it comes to EX?

My understanding is that JP expect players to use Party Finder for learning then only use Duty Finder once mechanics are known. Veteran NA/EU players expect players to use only Party Finder for EX while new players have been used to Duty Finder for getting a party so naturally they turn to it when wanting to do EX.

I doubt SE is going to adjust Mentor Roulette if it is working for the JP worlds. I also doubt they would ever impose more stringent penalties on mentors who abandon duties. It seems like the best thing for everyone to do is encourage new players to explore Party Finder and let them know when the community expects them to use that to find parties for higher end content over queuing via Duty Finder.

If you are supposed to only join EX through DF if you already know what you are doing what is the point of having mentors there?

[angienessyo]

If you are supposed to only join EX through DF if you already know what you are doing what is the point of having mentors there?

Mentor roulette basically only functions as a roulette to throw players wherever a body is needed. I regularly get tossed into guildhests or random optional level 80/90 dungeons where no one is new. I wish that wasn't the case as I do enjoy helping new people out and it sucks to zone into something where not a single person was new.

[Deveryn]

Isn't part of the problem that NA/EU players approach Party Finder and Duty Finder differently from JP players when it comes to EX?

My understanding is that JP expect players to use Party Finder for learning then only use Duty Finder once mechanics are known. Veteran NA/EU players expect players to use only Party Finder for EX while new players have been used to Duty Finder for getting a party so naturally they turn to it when wanting to do EX.

I doubt SE is going to adjust Mentor Roulette if it is working for the JP worlds. I also doubt they would ever impose more stringent penalties on mentors who abandon duties. It seems like the best thing for everyone to do is encourage new players to explore Party Finder and let them know when the community expects them to use that to find parties for higher end content over queuing via Duty Finder.

I agree with this. PF should be more for learning. The problem here is the questing that unlocks the earlier EX trials requires completion to do them, so people approach it as they would any other content. This is where a change needs to happen. I ran these again on an alt recently and I wonder if they could just delete the quests. We learn little of value other than it's more ascian meddling.

[Xirean]

It really comes down to what the rewards are meant to actually be for. I'd be totally fine running mentor roulette with no reward, but not if extremes are on it. I'd also like for there be a roulette that is exclusively extremes as there's very clearly an audience for that sort of thing. In my experience I have found a lot of varying reasons for sprouts being in Extremes on duty finder. "The quest told me to run this, I didn't know what it was, I'm farming, I just want a clear" etc.

My go to strategy is to always ask why people are there. A good amount of the time I get people with the quest or who just want a clear to which I inform them of unsyncing it and offer to unsync clear it with them (depending on which one it is). The vast majority of the time I'm pulled into Extreme and ask those questions I get people who start flaming me in chat. The very suggestion of not doing the fight right then and there synced is like an attack on their soul. I get this kind of flak from sprouts and mentors but I also get support from sprouts and mentors in the other scenarios. There is no consistency.

I understand that a lot of people have the opinion that mentors HAVE to teach people Extremes which I thoroughly disagree with. Mentor does not equate to raider. I will however agree that a good expectation of a Mentor is instruction on systems within the game. Basic to moderate complexity of mechanics being explained. I've had my fair share of having to drag parties through normal content that they just cannot get right. I don't want to do the same thing for Extremes where the demand is much MUCH higher. Extremes also put excessive weight on the Mentor roulette because it's the only one that contains them. Which is why I suggest having an Extreme roulette in addition to or more preferably instead of the Mentor.

There's a large amount of people that have had a bad experience with Mentors and therefor hate the system or the individuals entirely. I myself have never had a bad experience that I tied entirely to that aside from people harassing me for being one. I think there is entirely too much expectation on the Mentor system and it should be redesigned to better reflect what can both be achieved and expected from it. Even if that means different regions have entirely different versions of that system.

[Amelia_Everheart]

I absolutely understand the people saying the rewards aren't supposed to be the reason why you're doing the roulette, and I agree. I like the roulette for its own sake and I enjoy helping new players out, that's why I stick around always, but the fact is that I'm seeing many cases where players are not. It might be something to do with the differences in culture where this is more of a problem in NA DF than JP, but as it stands, whether or not SE wants players to hunt for that grind or not, the reality is that they are and because players are incentivized to behave poorly, when they do behave poorly because they're only there for the grind, that's a problem with design.

Removing the reward from the roulette and placing it elsewhere would definitely do a lot to cull this kind of behavior, but as others have mentioned, you'd see a huge swathe of the actual potential of mentor roulette to fill low pop content crumble because there's just way fewer people running it. I think mentor roulette has the potential to be an actual positive for new players, but doing that involves actually making it feel rewarding and incentivizing players who aren't naturally going to act altruistically to act that way anyway for some other reason. You can condemn the players who act badly for being selfish all you want, but if you can align their selfish interests with something that helps other players rather than harming their experience, you can get something good out of it.

That's what the talk of incentives is about. It is definitely possible to align players' self interest with helping new players, and this is something which the game already does in other areas. The new player bonus when completing a duty leads to some PF groups being put up specifically advertising the bonus tomes that people will get from helping them out. It's possible to encourage this kind of helpful behavior where you create a win-win scenario between players, rather than as it is, where it's something of a win-lose and you are expecting people to behave honorably. As long as the situation stays that way, it's going to lead to more bad behavior.