Mentoring: perhaps we're better off without it

[mirta000]

Late night A4 never goes right. However today I've seen a special case of special. Party composition with two Paladins that can't even rotate CDs properly, party is low on DPS. I'm healing on WHM my co-healer is SCH. I'm jumping in and out of cleric stance, not seeing SCH cast anything nor dots on bosses legs I check what they're doing. Every 10-20 seconds (I kid you not), this person casts a physic. Besides that he is literally jumping up and down. Just standing there. Jumping. Never seen so little effort put in. We wipe. It's late night. The party isn't the best. I poke the scholar a bit about it. "Never seen a scholar that chooses to do 0 DPS". Answer comes with "cause ur doing nothing" and a kick proceeds.
Worst thing of it all? This person qualifies to mentor due to the sheer amount of 60s that they have. I do not. I do no want to know what a person like this could teach to new players.

There's two things incoming in 3.2 that should make the situation better, but it won't. "Stone, Sky and Sea", this won't help, because you're not enforced to take a dummy parse exercise to enter content. and mentoring to better prepare the new players, but what will the new players be like if this is the kind of people that will mentor?

TLDR suggestion: make SSS forced to do instances, or at least to mentor. As right now the way that I see, some advises can be outright harmful to new players and I don't trust people that qualify to become advisers.

[AstralKaos]

This community can barely even tolerate a single wipe in DF runs when there's a new player without raging or rage quitting, and rarely is it a thing that people can be bothered to explain stuff... myself included nowadays because you give simple, clean and to the point advice* and you get ignored, or worse you get the good old "you don't pay my sub!" and so on, or you have one guy that can't wait and rushes in as you explain stuff to the new guy, or in some cases new guy is the rusher which then proceeds to get snarky afterwards for not carrying them.

Umm... *ahem* yeah, I can see this going down well, and being sooooo useful...

* No, nothing is wrong with how advice is given, mine or others in most cases, it's not threatening, condescending, agitated or anything to cause an ignoring fingers in ears or anything common... it's literally just people refusing to listen or being obnoxious.

Edit: And yeah, these requirements don't mean anything, I've got horror tales of people that exceed the requirement for being Mentor that are not suitable to teach people how to pass even the first Guildhest, yet alone anything else.

[Jetstream_Fox]

No way, nooooo all those level 60s means those players are the best of the best of the best of the best.

You're absolutely right level 60 doesn't equal full knowledge.

[therpgfanatic]

No way, nooooo all those level 60s means those players are the best of the best of the best of the best.

You're absolutely right level 60 doesn't equal full knowledge.

Good thing the mentor system also requires players to have commendations -- votes from other players that they did well in a party. And 1,000 dungeon runs to ensure the player has a lot of experience running the game dungeons.

The main problem I forsee is the people who are going to want to blow through it just for the rewards. I know they said they aren't implementing too much in the way of rewards just yet but it will be later down the line. But I still see the people who only care about the rewards and not actually teaching new players to ruin the experience with the "gimmie gimmie" attitude.

I suspect the main "reward" will be giving more experienced players a more streamlined way to recruit new players into their FCs than spamming starting area chat.

[Jetstream_Fox]

Good thing the mentor system also requires players to have commendations -- votes from other players that they did well in a party. And 1,000 dungeon runs to ensure the player has a lot of experience running the game dungeons

1000 instances ran doesn't mean you exactly know what to do in every instance, I have upwards to 2000 and if you asked me how to do The Dragon's Neck you're sol because I one and done that fight.

Also commendations aren't a good thing to measure either as tanks and healers are basically guaranteed them. Plus not to mention the times you get stuck with a group all leveling together and they commend you because they can't give themselves one.

These are examples that show flaws that further prove why the system is flawed from the start.

[Pells]

1000 instances ran doesn't mean you exactly know what to do in every instance, I have upwards to 2000 and if you asked me how to do The Dragon's Neck you're sol because I one and done that fight.

Also commendations aren't a good thing to measure either as tanks and healers are basically guaranteed them. Plus not to mention the times you get stuck with a group all leveling together and they commend you because they can't give themselves one.

These are examples that show flaws that further prove why the system is flawed from the start.

If you're even halfway competent, by the time you get both a tank and healer to 60, you should already have the commendations.

[Jetstream_Fox]

If you're even halfway competent, by the time you get both a tank and healer to 60, you should already have the commendations.

Did...? Did you not read? I said examples of why commendations don't equate to skill. You can join a DF in progress as a DPS first time running a dungeon, clear the final boss and only the final boss and get commendations. I've had instances where I joined in progress as a tank and the group was already in the middle of the final boss because they felt they could beat it and got a commendation for watching 2 DPS and a Healer win the fight. People throw commendations around all the time because they hold no true merit outside of glamour items and a mount.

[Judah_Brandt]

Hey everybody. Your obscure sample size of the entire playerbase clearly dictates that this system will fail before it even launches. Thank you for your due diligence in discovering how....oh wait.

Stop nitpicking a system that you can't even participate in that hasn't even launched yet. It's ridiculous. That's like my daughter pointing at a sandwich and saying it's bad because it has ham on it. She hasn't tried it, what the hell does she know.

*Edit: Sophitia can participate.*

[mirta000]

snip because I'm over the character limit

I can foresee issues with it, hence I made a proposal.

SSS is not enforced to participate in content, nor to mentor said content. Meaning the only people to use SSS will be those that would have already tried to improve themselves otherwise. Does this player define the whole player base that will get the mentor status? No. Should we be concerned that suck players can get a mentor status? Yes. The same way that you don't want an ice BLM teaching new guys. So why not make SSS useful and make mentors pass a simplistic DPS, heal or holding aggro check to bbe able to mentor? Sure they won't teach new players about healer DPS or tank DPS, however we could be sure that at least they are able to perform their classes primary function.

[Sicno]

Hey everybody. Your obscure sample size of the entire playerbase clearly dictates that this system will fail before it even launches. Thank you for your due diligence in discovering how....oh wait.

Stop nitpicking a system that you can't even participate in that hasn't even launched yet. It's ridiculous. That's like my daughter pointing at a sandwich and saying it's bad because it has ham on it. She hasn't tried it, what the hell does she know.

*Edit: Sophitia can participate.*

You clearly don't use DF often.