Your mentor system is Horribly Horribly Flawed.

[Nights-Rune]

Mentors... The guys with crowns. They should be shining examples of players, they should help and encourage, support and well MENTOR others. So far this has not been my experience at all. Most of the people I have met with crowns are either dead silent while I mentor the newbies or are complete and utter bullies.

"I have a crown so shut up I can do what like!"
"I am a mentor so I am better than you"

A few of the examples that I have witnessed levied at my friends, myself and other players. I am sick of these people with crowns thinking they can be total jerks when they are meant to be the best of us.

There absolutely has to be checks and balances. A way to strip bad mentors of the status and reward the ones who do it justice so that players who abuse the crown are stopped, they make all players look bad when they behave the way they do.

Please please regulate the system a bit better?

[Clansman2016]

This is the problem when you include unique rewards for a particular system. Those that couldn't care less about being a mentor, want the rewards, so they go ahead and reluctantly sign up. One solution would be to include a separate vote option, so you can rate your mentor at the end of a dungeon. Too many bad ratings would remove your mentor status.

[Nyghtmarerobu]

One solution would be to include a separate vote option, so you can rate your mentor at the end of a dungeon. Too many bad ratings would remove your mentor status.

I am totally in favor of this. I'm not sure about removing the status, but also making this maybe work towards the mentor achievements if you get good ratings as well.

As a mentor, I'll be honest, I am one of those "quiet" people. But to be fair, if somebody has a legitamate question or concern, I can very easily give them the answer or guide them to the correct place that will have their answers. Does this mean I need to be helpful and cheerful and upbeat whenever I'm in a party all the time? Hell no I don't. People have bad days, and I am allowed to sit by myself. This doesn't give me or anyone a free pass to be a douche canoe, It just means, you shouldn't expect people with crowns to go out of their way to be ultra nice all the time.

[Sentaryuu]

I'll admit that I am one of those dead silent mentors. The only reason being is that I don't always have my keyboard on me and I'm not good at explaining fights especially if it is an extreme of some kind. And my mentor crown only shows during mentor roulette which I'm mainly doing for the mount. ^^; But I do try to stick around till we either clear or someone initiates the abandon. I have only left 2 mentor roulettes out of around 50 only because I just couldn't do it anymore and I wanted to get off. It was only from Titan Ex & Ramuh Ex however.

Extremes just can sometimes take almost the whole allotted time to even clear or abandon. It can take a lot out of you. ^^; I do what I can.

[Shikiseki]

Aren't we generalizing a bit here?
I wonder what people really expect mentors to act like, everyone seems to have a different opinion and you can never be a good enough mentor apparently.

What I do is greet as usual and then say if they have any questions they should ask, they have the whole dungeon to do so. I usually don't really give advice to someone who's not performing 100000%. If I see people screw up at a mechanic, I'll give them 2 more shots to figure it out on their own (because I'm not a fan of handing everything over on a silver platter, I think that lowers the learning effect) after those 2 tries, I give them small hints how to deal with that said mechanic.

On an ex trial, people usually say when they are new and are willing to listen. I briefly explain their role job mechanics and not the whole thing. Bare essentials to not make us wipe so I'm not talking for 10minutes where they could practice and see for themselves. There's nothing more satisfying seeing a team clear Shiva Ex for their first time after 40minutes of wiping - I was gladly willing to leave the duty and rejoin the duty directly as tank to help them out even more with a bit of my FC's help too!

And rating mentors can be good and bad at the same time so I can see why the devs haven't implemented this yet.
Also the rewards - no sane person will do 2k mentor roulettes just for that mount, they'll give up at 500 tops (and that's a very generous calculation).

(and yes I was slightly pissed cause it's rants like these what made lots of friendly and kind players don't want to be mentors anymore cause they looked down upon for not being perfect and all that where they in fact would make great mentors if they also had some encouragement and acknowledgement - and also if new players are mute mode 24/7, it doesn't help either, a simple "I'm good thanks" would be golden instead of insta ranting)

[Culfinrandir]

It's a crazy system that, in my opinion, is severely flawed. I can't become a 'battle' mentor as I only have a DPS & 2 Healers mentioned but I help players as much as possible & have zero expectation of a reward. A thank you would be great, but even that isn't essential as I know that some people don't even have keyboards initially.

I've seen what goes on in Novice Network Chat & I want nothing to do with it until it becomes a place used by those who genuinely want to help. I'd also like to see a separation of battle & craft/gather network chats as I there can be different mentalities involved.

[Deathgiver]

The entire system is broke af. The number of people sporting mentor tags who wouldn't be able to clear SSS: Basic is mind boggling. I think they should implement some sort of skill check before letting you be a mentor for a specific category. I.e. PVE mentors have to be able to clear the dps check on the current SSS primal, PVP mentors have to have X amount of wins in each pvp mode over the course of last 3 months, DoH mentors have to have crafted say 5 of the current highest tiered items in game hq, and have X number of red scrip turn ins done. It's not just PVE, mentors in all disciplines are lacking.

[Greydor]

Honestly, it just needs to go away. Please put the double-seated Pegasus in the cash shop and wipe your hands clean of this, SE.

[Cnidarian]

Mentors... The guys with crowns. They should be shining examples of players, they should help and encourage, support and well MENTOR others. So far this has not been my experience at all. Most of the people I have met with crowns are either dead silent while I mentor the newbies or are complete and utter bullies.

"I have a crown so shut up I can do what like!"
"I am a mentor so I am better than you"

A few of the examples that I have witnessed levied at my friends, myself and other players. I am sick of these people with crowns thinking they can be total jerks when they are meant to be the best of us.

There absolutely has to be checks and balances. A way to strip bad mentors of the status and reward the ones who do it justice so that players who abuse the crown are stopped, they make all players look bad when they behave the way they do.

Please please regulate the system a bit better?

Since you apparently like to over generalize things let me put this in a different perspective for you.

Your non mentor system is Horribly Horribly Flawed.

Non Mentors... The guys without crowns. They should be shining examples of players willing to learn. They should be open to criticism and take advice to heart while Mentors attempt to MENTOR them. So far this has not been my experience at all. Most of the people I have met without crowns flat out refuse to listen to advice and tend to retort with statements such as "It's my $15 I play how I want" or act completely toxic to any players attempting to give them advice.

"You have a crown STFU noobtard"
"Lol, it's a Mentor explaining mechanics, I say screw it and let's all YOLO at this Extreme Primal for an hour before we all rage quit!"
"If you have a crown then you have to put up with our abuse because that's what you signed up for. We don't have to listen to anything you say and then still blame you for a wipe because we failed mechanics that you explained to us"

A few examples that I have witnessed levied at my friends, myself, and other players. I am sick of these people without crowns thinking they can be total jerks when they are meant to listen to those of us putting forth an effort to assist them.

There absolutely has to be checks and balances. A way to stop toxic players from playing with others and reward the ones who are truly attempting to learn the game to do justice to those who adorn a crown that are abused by the crownless as they make all players regardless of crown status look bad.

Please please regulate the toxic players better.

See how overgeneralizing things can completely change the viewpoint on the same topic. While I agree there is a large number of players out there who have a crown on that wear it just for the crown, there are also a large population of us who assist players as often as we are available and who take the time to explain mechanics of fights for first timers. Just because we wear a crown, does not mean we are your slaves and that we should do things your way.

Often times when I end up in places like EX Primals for DR Mentor, I'll let people experience the fight a few times before explaining the mechanics. I do this because throwing a wall of text at people (many of which have not watch a video for years old content) does not help in any way. Let them see the mechanics first and then explain how to do it. This method often results in more clears than throwing a wall of text upon entry and expecting them to memorize it all in a few minutes and then execute the general strategy flawlessly on the first attempt.

I find the problem lies in people who have a similar tone to you and end up getting impatient and will decide to pull the boss again while I was explaining what caused the wipe and how to avoid it. Ultimately the early pull results in another wipe and the person who pulled automatically begins to blame the Mentor. I've even had someone blame me because they couldn't dodge landslides in Titan EX and another person tried to blame me for them not being able to avoid Levi's dives.

I personally have had very few encounters with the so called "Mentors" everyone appears to encounter in every DF. I can easily count those times on both hands while the encounters of total jerks I've encountered without a crown are extremely high in number that I lost count months ago.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

I am a mentor, and for reasons of being judged by my actions, not my status, I don't wear my crown.

The day before Patch 3.2, I was in Gridania, going around looking for funny/interesting NPC conversations (of which there are plenty), and a random lv 16 player asked me in a tell what the quickest way to lv 20 is. I could've just said "do dungeons" and left him to his own devices, but I asked if he'd run Sastasha yet. He said no, he didn't know where it was. So I invited him to a party, led him to Aleport, and literally brought him to Sastasha, discussing his class and leveling options along the way. As a parting note, I added him as a friend to help in the future. I also told him about the Hall of the Novice being added the next day and suggested he try it, if at least for the free gear that would be good til around lv 20. . .

THAT is mentorship. Hell, that's just being a decent player. And I did that, I've been doing that without a crown for a very long time now. You don't need the crown or the status to do the right thing. And if you can't be bothered to even be willing to do that, you shouldn't be a mentor.


As an addendum, please understand that mentors are there to help, IF needed. Not arbitrarily. This was a day 1 issue with mentors running around adding new players to the novice network, leaving them confused as to what they were added to and why. Worse still, the attitude of "I'm a mentor so you HAVE to listen to me" is detrimental. They don't have to listen. And you don't HAVE to force help on them. Sometimes experience is the best teacher. I lead an FC of mostly newer players now, and I've told them they can ask me for help anytime, from gear, to directions, to partying with them for older content it's tougher to get parties for. I'm quite happy that they're pretty self-sufficient, and there are times where struggling or failing will teach someone better than an explaination can. So yes, be willing to help, but know when it is or isn't needed.