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?