The title might throw some people, but this is going to be controversial anyway so here goes nothing...

I'd like to see the mentor roulette removed and instead folded into a Duty Finder Setting option, just like "Join Party in Progress," "Undersized Party," etc. Something like "Mentor When Available," where if you want to deal with new players, first-time dungeon runners, or get the bonus more often, you can sign up for it and it can be in each of the other roulettes you've unlocked. That way if you want to deal with it, you can easily do so and get that bonus more frequently.

However, if you're like me and don't like it when you explain a fight and people still ignore you, then you can opt out of it as much as possible and deal with getting the bonus much less frequently. You get less reward, but you also keep your temper and sanity.


With the requirement of HW EX-Primals added in, we've seen a massive decrease of people running the mentor roulette anyway. So instead, people who want to just do roulettes as quickly as possibly are routinely leaving DF parties (voluntarily or not) within two minutes of loading into something. If someone is willing to sign up for suffering through something like Aurum Vale with all those new players trying to get their GC quests done or trying to bridge that gap between 46 and 50, we should reward them for doing so, and keep those of us who would rather ditch it upon load-in who could be put to better use in the queue by doing dailies with the thousands of others who are also just trying to do dailies.

I don't know if it would speed up queue times for sure, but I would think a roulette that just pulls from the other roulettes if nobody is signing up for its own queue slows things down by making more and more people have to leave a duty and re-queue because their tank or healer recognized the starting room in Aurum Vale or saw Steps of Faith (normal) and didn't want to deal with it. It also breeds a sort of resentment against those players because if you didn't queue up for mentor roulette and you're stuck in the position of having to explain everything, you're only getting the Bonus for a new adventurer, but not the additional bonuses of the Mentor Roulette. So you're doing the work of the Mentor Roulette WITHOUT getting the reward, and that further discourages people from putting up with the extra time and effort required.

And I know somebody is going to say "well if you do Mentor Roulette X amount of times, you get a title/mount, so that's why it's a separate roulette to encourage you to queue for it." My counter is "why not also get credit towards the mount/title when you're grabbed by the mentor roulette ANYWAY?" Just make it a Duty Setting and you'll see people turning it on just to get that title/mount and speed up all the queue times when they'd never touch the Mentor Roulette otherwise. If they want the mount bad enough, they'll keep the Duty Setting turned on. (Downside might be them leaving a duty BECAUSE there's no bonus, but the odds are really against that being a systemic problem)

"But," you may say "how do you KNOW it'll speed up the other queues? Not everything in the Mentor Roulette is reflected in the other roulettes."

My answer to that is "You're already queued for Expert Roulette and it's Ala Mhigo (ALWAYS!!!) with someone who is aiming to make the dungeon take 45+ minutes. You've been in the queue for 20 minutes, and you know if you leave you're looking at another 20 minute queue. Leaving and re-queueing after the 30 minute penalty means you're only looking at maybe a 5 minute delay, which you'll probably delay because your FC-mates/friends logged on and you will just run it with them to speed it up. That way you also decrease (You'll never fully eliminate it) the odds of someone new slowing things down by removing the number of slots left for the roulette to assign a random person to. It'll also cut down on the number of groups that abandon and have to re-queue if you were the tank or healer and just bailed."

"Well, but what about the Weekly Tails? New players give you either a shuffle or retry, so that's worthwhile." But my counter argument is "I could use (AND HAVE USED) all 9 stacks of my Weekly Tails bonuses in two minutes and be back at 9 stacks by the end of the day." If I wanted that shuffle or retry bad enough, I'd do Mentor Roulette because that's a guaranteed Weekly Tail bonus, but if I don't care about it I get it anyway just by doing my normal roulettes on a regular basis. To me and others, there's no point to actively seeking out that bonus when it just comes to you in the course of the day.


TL : DR - Get rid of the Mentor Roulette by making it a Duty Setting instead of a roulette.