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.

[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.

[Jetstream_Fox]

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.*

Judah, being from Jenova. You and I both know this system will fail on our server. We already have a very blurred line between end game raiders wanting to help people plus crafters and gathers not wanting too help establish more players into that community.

This system which is supposed to help players learn from other established vet players has so many glaring holes it's not hard pick it apart. Look at our server again for example we have Mint, probably one of the top players on our server, this system blocks Mint (temporarily) from being a mentor, but random guy over there in idyllshire who isn't half as skilled as Mint, Fate grinded their DPS and Healer class to 60 is the one teaching our new bloods.

How does this person have more knowledge as a player verse Mint who has cleared everything in this game and even has some server first clears under their belt.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

You clearly don't use DF often.

Maybe you got a bad data server group then. Only time I ever seem to run into bad players and drama is in raids. 4 man content I rarely get bads.

[AstralKaos]

snip

Sorry, I forgot to mention I wasn't sending information from the future in my post.

Making a estimation based on knowledge of experience with many, many DF runs of random players and their temperament toward accepting advice and so on, as well as the failure of the previous teaching activity, Guildhests, to get anything in the noggin of most players, that, and the general attitude toward improvement or even standards of an individual in a team game... is just that, an estimation, a theory, etc.

You know, like before a movie or game in a series comes out, you can theorize what to expect based on previous and current evidence. Don't get me wrong, I'm hoping it does good, but I really ain't expecting much, or anything from it... but hey, at least when two individual people meet in Mentor that are of a mind to utilize that system properly, they will get a lot from it I'm sure.

Edit: What do you mean I can participate... ?

[KinnisonArc]

I agree to this. For now we don't know how it works yet but I can always help anyone out anytime even without the mentor system. I guess it's fine if it's simply a convenient channel for veteran players to sincerely help out/communicate with new players. Just that I hope it better don't give out any goodies just for being a mentor, less we see jerks abusing newbies just so they can get their shinies.