The Mentoring Requirements... *Rant Style*

[Serilda]

I personally think the rules will be adjusted later, until the number of mentors across the various worlds is at a level the developers are happy with - they can calculate how many people would be eligible easily enough but they won't know how many people actually plan to participate until the new system is live.

However, having one of each role at 60 should remain and any alternate routes for the dungeon requirement should be at least as difficult and time-consuming to obtain as that one is. Three level 60s is a trivial request and it's absolutely true that the experience you get playing various roles is like gold. It's all very well to say "I can learn from YouTube or guides or my own natural intelligence" but the weight of evidence shows that most people are not as good as they think in that respect. I have had enough gruelling experiences with novice tanks/DPS/healers who made it to level 60 without learning good teamwork to doubt any sweeping claims of competence posted on the Internet. I'm still learning stuff myself, even about my main job, and not all of that wisdom is limited to level 60 play. To assume that you already know everything there is to know seems awfully overconfident.

Understanding the challenges of levelling each type of job is important for giving out advice. I have several level 60s but no tanks (I don't enjoy tanking) and I know that for all of my experience healing across dozens of games and situations I can't give the detailed tanking advice I'd like to be able to. While I have stayed up for hours with my real-life partner (tank main) and discussed strategy so I think I'm probably better on the theory than most, investing a little time into actually putting things into action and feeling how the abilities interact and other players treat you as a tank is something that studying alone can't give you. The tank is often the default leader of any party and sets the pace, too. You can't learn the necessary social skills to be a great tank by running a few levequests to grab your cross-class skills then switching to something else.

And besides, as people have said it's simply logical to ensure that the mentor roulette has a good population of jobs available so there are never any troubles making parties. People can just pick whichever job is in need and compatible with their student at any time since there won't be any bottlenecks with players who have only got a DPS job levelled. I see no problem with this and don't mind having to do a tank job if that's what it takes.

The dungeons one is a bit harder for me as it's a chicken/egg issue. The main reason I would want to be a mentor is that I primarily want to play with new people; I don't enjoy joining roulettes with a bunch of other 60s and stomping familiar content at all. It's extremely efficient and safe, and it gets me the rewards in the least amount of time, but what I actually play MMOs for is a more social experience. Kind of like a mentor experience, in fact. Ironically, this means that I'm stuck in a situation where I don't want to repeatedly grind old dungeons/trials with other experienced players so I won't actually make the target for becoming eligible to focus on new ones for a long, long time (will FFXIV even still exist then?)

It's a shame my server is so small as opportunities to meet newcomers or join 'new player' learning groups in PF are limited and I'd hoped mentor roulette would have made things easier; still, if it means more new players will be doing content then I could benefit as a non-mentor too. I'd totally join mentor roulette for no reward of any kind other than the experience of being able to play with newbies too shy to come find me in PF.

(The commendations paranoia in the OP was fun too. If you do enough content you'll have enough commendations regardless of job - I originally mained BLM and did fine with them - so I don't even know why this requirement exists. It's pretty obvious to me why people get commendations and I imagine it's similar on English-speaking servers rather than them being full of horny guys desperate to reward cute girls. People who make funny jokes, look cool, play well or do something helpful get commendations. As a healer I sometimes give out guilt-commendations when I screwed up and didn't take good care of someone. Heck, sometimes I have just picked someone with a name I liked when all of the players were equally good.)

[Toguro]

To assume that you already know everything there is to know seems awfully overconfident.

Not sure if this is directed towards me but if it was, I definitely don't know everything. I cannot teach people how to play their jobs thoroughly and to the point compared to someone who knows has the job as their career job or something. But I can still teach the basics that a newbie should learn in their first 40hrs. No newbie should be lv45 in 40hrs. They had to have been getting help somewhere.

Were the fundamentals I listed wrong though? Will those not be helpful during the first 40hrs of play?

[Tint]

i have a bigger problem with the crafting and gathering mentoring. these are 2 completly different things. and not only that: i am an endgame fisher. i know a lot about fishing. but i have no idea about the other gatherers. why put all of them together? i can understand this for PVE, but crafting and gathering?

and what should i teach a newbie about gathering in his first 40 hours of playtime? "click that tree, click the item you want, go to the next tree" i don't understand this. crafting okay, but who needs a mentor for gathering? the interesting part about gathering starts only at lvl 50. and of course new players MUST play their battle class first for unlocking all the stuff with the main scenario. that will take a while. i don't think any new player will reach endgame gathering in his first 40 hours...

[Serilda]

i have a bigger problem with the crafting and gathering mentoring. these are 2 completly different things. and not only that: i am an endgame fisher. i know a lot about fishing. but i have no idea about the other gatherers. why put all of them together?

I guess that the logic is that no matter what you've been doing, to meet the DoH/DoL requirements takes a lots of time and effort so you're presumed to be reasonably well-rounded and knowledgeable about the game in general by the point you qualify. Except it kind of flies against the justification for the battle class requirements in every way. I'm sort of the opposite of you as I love gathering but can't stand fishing, and everything you say in this post makes perfect sense. I think the only questions I had when I started fishing (botany and mining are so self-evident that there were none) were just about finding specific low level fish which isn't really something a mentor is required for :s

[Toguro]

.

Because the fundamentals of fishing....

nvm..

For crafting I hear you need cross-class skills and rotations to create high-end items. That's completely useless though because you wont be makin' nuffin' at a low level. Them being 60 does not help you in the slightest at that level..

For Gathering, maybe they can tell you what a cordial is or which Gathering Up/HQ Up to use? Dunno..

[CUTS3R]

I was hoping i could get my friend who mainly spend his time crafting and gathering as mentor for DoL/DoH.
I havent crafted in almost a year since i got my Lucis and then HW happened. I completely stopped crafting to focus on battle jobs and now i forgot rotations and stuff. With him as my mentor, he could have been able to teach me how to craft efficiently again AND be rewarded for it, but nope...
I have the requirement to be a mentor myself so i cant get one for me.

I iz sad.

[Yitan]

Playing a healer and a DPS class is almost imperative to tank properly, and viceversa. You need to understand how healers cooldowns and abilities work to take the most benefit from them, like waiting for Protect, SS II, change to Defiance for an adlo in between phases in a boss fight, or position accordingly to receive a Medica in time. And also to know when the healer needs you to pop a cooldown and when it's not necessary.
And also don't move the enemies at all unless necessary, to not fuck up MNK's positionals or NIN's trick attacks.

Everyone think they can teach new players, but only those with that much experience actually should.

[LaylaTsarra]

No matter what the requirements someone was going to be unhappy. I suspect they'll adjust this at some point, perhaps adding specialists at higher levels and perhaps more. A mentor should be someone with experience and the requirements as set at the moment seem fine to me. i'm sure there are those who don't meet the requirements who'd be excellent teachers and some who do who won't be. One has to hope that those who do elect to help will in fact be helpful.

I'm curious about the crafting mentor system because I'd like a mentor.

[Dgsoil]

You don't fit the requirements but claim you want to help people. My question is: What, exactly, is stopping you from doing this WITHOUT using this system in the first place? If someone needs help/advice, you can still do it without being a part of the system.

[Chiramu]

OP, if you don't play all roles in the game you have a VERY skewed perception of how fights and gameplay works. You need to know how to play all three roles to properly give assistance to players, go back in game and level what you're missing and see how wrong you are.