It's time to revaluate paper crown battlementors

[Kaurhz]

One other thought I had is that you don't get the sprout title removed until either you have 200 hours of game played at max level plus 200 instances completed on a max level job or completing a current tier savage fight.

That's just equally pointless. It puts far too much focus on 1 facet of the game. Simply playing through the course of the game is enough to suffice to stop being a sprout. Nothing they can do can really put the mentor program in line with what it should be, or how they wanted it to play in actuality. All this post really does is trades 1 poor system for another equally poor and arbitrary guideline.

Several very significant issues come into play regarding the mentor program. The first is that your skill within the game is not a validation of your ability to mentor - I've seen people try to mentor in this game and for the love of god it is absolutely appalling. The second issue is that encounters and 'mechanics' in this game are fairly vast. So there's no real system that could be an accurate measure of your ability; e.g., You can clear P1S-P4S but it doesn't automatically validate knowledge in other areas of the game.

[Yeastyloins]

That's just equally pointless. It puts far too much focus on 1 facet of the game. Simply playing through the course of the game is enough to suffice to stop being a sprout. Nothing they can do can really put the mentor program in line with what it should be, or how they wanted it to play in actuality. All this post really does is trades 1 poor system for another equally poor and arbitrary guideline.

Several very significant issues come into play regarding the mentor program. The first is that your skill within the game is not a validation of your ability to mentor - I've seen people try to mentor in this game and for the love of god it is absolutely appalling. The second issue is that encounters and 'mechanics' in this game are fairly vast. So there's no real system that could be an accurate measure of your ability; e.g., You can clear P1S-P4S but it doesn't automatically validate knowledge in other areas of the game.

Sure but I'm willing to argue that somebody that is actively doing savage can give accurate information about an ARR dungeon such as "make sure you do mit" or "use AoE if there's 3 mobs". Not expecting battle mentors to tell some new player SAM what the optimal opener is at level 70, but surely they can tell a WHM if they feel comfortable that Holy is good to use in AoE packs and help your tank out with damage due to the stun.

Likewise, if that's the case, then I'd say just get rid of it then and actually put in things that teach the players basic game mechanics that are required to participate in before they can get frolic in group content.

[MilkieTea]

Sure but I'm willing to argue that somebody that is actively doing savage can give accurate information about an ARR dungeon such as "make sure you do mit". Not expecting battle mentors to tell some new player SAM what the optimal opener on 70, but surely they can tell a WHM if they feel comfortable that Holy is good to use in AoE packs and help your tank out with damage due to the stun.

Likewise, if that's the case, then I'd say just get rid of it then and actually put in things that teach the players basic game mechanics that are required to participate in before they can get frolic in group content.

People already do this. Your problem seems to not be with mentors/the mentor system, but with players not taking advice.

You can sit there till you're blue in the face telling a healer to do damage and all you'll get in response is "But mah heals!!!". It's not worth it, when you've had that response a dozen times in a row, to try again. This is the result of players not understanding how to take criticism, not of mentors not saying *anything*.

[Yeastyloins]

People already do this. Your problem seems to not be with mentors/the mentor system, but with players not taking advice.

You can sit there till you're blue in the face telling a healer to do damage and all you'll get in response is "But mah heals!!!". It's not worth it, when you've had that response a dozen times in a row, to try again. This is the result of players not understanding how to take criticism, not of mentors not saying *anything*.

No doubt, but my thought is that if the game actually found a way to designate players as people who you can trust to give good information then players would be more willing to take advice.
However, based on the responses in this thread though that doesn't seem to be the case which is kinda unfortunate because the game really does need a way to explain a lot of basic things.

[Kaurhz]

Sure but I'm willing to argue that somebody that is actively doing savage can give accurate information about an ARR dungeon such as "make sure you do mit". Not expecting battle mentors to tell some new player SAM what the optimal opener on 70, but surely they can tell a WHM if they feel comfortable that Holy is good to use in AoE packs and help your tank out with damage due to the stun.

Likewise, if that's the case, then I'd say just get rid of it then and actually put in things that teach the players basic game mechanics that are required to participate in before they can get frolic in group content.

That is a player issue and not a system issue, honestly. The game expects that beyond that point you have the fundamentals nailed out. To put your point in perspective it ultimately comes down to the little proverb; "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot force it to drink" - In other words, you can create the chance to learn, and it is something that is expected of you beyond a certain point in the game. But you cannot really force them to take it. What you would expect players to do, and what players do in actuality are 2 entirely different things, which will be an issue regardless of their competence.

They should get rid of it yes, and substitute it more for system-related features, be it a hall of the advance, or just expanding on the active help window more.

[MilkieTea]

No doubt, but my thought is that if the game actually found a way to designate players as people who you can trust to give good information then players would be more willing to take advice.
However, based on the responses in this thread though that doesn't seem to be the case which is kinda unfortunate because the game really does need a way to explain a lot of basic things.

This is the internet lol. As mellow as FFXIV is compared to other online spaces, we're still online. Giving mentors more to do/juggle, or taking away any incentives, isn't going to make non-mentors more receptive to criticism. It's just going to further widen the perceived gap between mentors and non-mentors. You're still going to have crappers who can't take criticism regardless of how it's phrased, you're still going to have the few crummy mentors that "spoil the bunch."

And if you remove the mentor system, those problems will still be there because you can't force people to listen to criticism. Healers who want to spam cure 1 will spam cure 1 regardless of what system you put in place to tell them how that's bad. Tanks that don't want to use mitigation won't use mitigation regardless of who tells them - be it the game or other players. DPS that don't want to AOE/don't want to do their basic 123 rotation won't. Nothing anyone says will change that, as much as we want to. All anyone can do is have that information put out there, and if the other person takes it it's fine. If not, like Kaurhz said, there's a saying that goes "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot force it to drink."

We can drizzle that water over their face even, try to force it down it's throat but that still won't work.

[Yeastyloins]

That is a player issue and not a system issue, honestly. The game expects that beyond that point you have the fundamentals nailed out. To put your point in perspective it ultimately comes down to the little proverb; "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot force it to drink" - In other words, you can create the chance to learn, and it is something that is expected of you beyond a certain point in the game. But you cannot really force them to take it. What you would expect players to do, and what players do in actuality are 2 entirely different things, which will be an issue regardless of their competence.

They should get rid of it yes, and substitute it more for system-related features, be it a hall of the advance, or just expanding on the active help window more.

I think it would be nice if you had to do a tutorial dungeon with NPCs, similar to how some role-quests work like with healers where they had you switch between dpsing and healing specific targets. Like they could do one before you first do Sastasha on whatever role you are playing before you could queue into it and a similar sort of thing before your first trial/8-man content. Do story thing where you need to help out the Yellow Jackets with clearing out a bandit hideout and set the encounters and pulls to various situations that may come up like pulling a mob with a range ability, a situation where you need to take a tank buster and need to use mit with an explanation for it or a bunch mobs coming in suddenly and using rampart to survive the onslaught. For healers, it could be something like needing to heal multiple targets and maybe some line like "if we're all healthy then feel free to help us pummel the enemy too!" or something like that. It still baffles me that a lot of opportunities like that haven't been baked into the MSQ. As dumb as it was on replays, I remember FFX had set encounters where they showed how different characters worked with different monsters like Wakka being able to accurately hit flying enemies, Auron being able to do pierce damage, Rikku being able to one-shot mechanical enemies with steal. Something like that in MSQ would go a long way in helping new players that haven't played an MMO before learning these sorts of things feel comfortable early on.

[AmiableApkallu]

I think it would be nice if you had to do a tutorial dungeon with NPCs…

What you've described there is basically an improved and required version of the Hall of the Novice.

[Yeastyloins]

What you've described there is basically an improved and required version of the Hall of the Novice.

It honestly just needs to be required.

[Bukachu]

I think y'all should stop looking at word "mentor" as some kind of godly creatures

its just someone who has played more game than new player.

it doesnt even have to be about difficuclt content, it could be someone who collects minions and can answer your questions about minions, gathering, glamour, or actual gameplay content like dungeons or trials etc.

most people wont be able to full cover all of those topics, that's why you have 50 "mentors" in a chat room so when someone has a question about the game, one of those 50 can potentially answer it, that's it really.