Duty Roulette : Extreme? Mentor?

[Kalise]

Tell your friend to stop crying and level up, next expansion is around the corner and no one will be running Stormblood soon.

To be honest, this is a pretty depressing certainty.

That, as soon as an expansion comes out all previous content becomes irrelevant. It's such a waste.

Like, there's a wealth of content that exists in the game but without support it ceases to exist outside maybe some people soloing it unsync'd to farm ponies or wonderous tails. Content that new players will never get to experience properly, or could be used to help long time players break up the monotony of farming only the current content and/or revisit some of their favourite past content.

All left to rot, for no good reason. Given that level syncing exists and that roulettes are a thing to let people queue up for unspecified content. The only thing that would be needed in order to make all this content suddenly relevant again, is the creation of the roulette to make groups and the implementation of a reward that would entice people to do them (Whilst also not just abandoning less favoured EX content *Cough*Titan EX*Cough*)

[Kurando]

That, as soon as an expansion comes out all previous content becomes irrelevant. It's such a waste.

Just like it happened with the release of the Stormblood, the Mentor Roulette actually had new requirements in order to access it. Any Mentor that did not complete all Extreme primals in Heavensward needed to do this (along with up to date Stormblood content) to keep access to the Roulette. For many months afterwards it was common to see PFs up of players asking for help to get the Ex clear so they could get the Roulette. The same thing is very likely to happen with Shadowbringers and players that still have yet to finish any Ex primals at that point will again be asking for assistance so I don't think it will actually become that irrelevant for some time. I imagine it will keep some life there but will gradually decline again.

[Dmhlucky]

Negative things, like dropping from a Duty, or Vote abandon, can happen for various reasons tho, they aren't necessarily anyone's fault.
If someone loses internet/pc crashes etc, and enough time passes, and there is no replacement, it will typically end up vote abandon. And if you as the mentor have a problem like this, its clearly not intentional.

There is no perfect system, as somehow it can always be exploited.
I do feel that maybe there should be a "refresher" or "renewal" on Mentor Status. Somewhat like you need to renew your Drivers license every few years. Aside from the addition of duties for the duty roulette.

Sadly i think this gets lumped with Chocobo companions in that SE doesn't invest too much time into them, because there is not a lot of attention paid to it.

[Kalise]

Negative things, like dropping from a Duty, or Vote abandon, can happen for various reasons tho, they aren't necessarily anyone's fault.
If someone loses internet/pc crashes etc, and enough time passes, and there is no replacement, it will typically end up vote abandon. And if you as the mentor have a problem like this, its clearly not intentional.

I do feel that maybe there should be a "refresher" or "renewal" on Mentor Status. Somewhat like you need to renew your Drivers license every few years. Aside from the addition of duties for the duty roulette.

Well, there are ways to mitigate this.

Such as, if someone just gets an unfortunate DC every now and then, they'll easily regain their Mentor Points by just doing more Mentoring. It shouldn't be so bad as to where a single drop out would heavily punish you, more focus on "Mentors" who would repeatedly do such a thing.

Same as if someone else leaves and a Vote Abandon occurs, you could have it so that the Mentor isn't penalized (Or is less harshly penalized) if a Vote Abandon happens with less than a full party.

The aim would be to try and target repeat offenders. The people who are just farming Mentor roulette for extra rewards and so just want to skip any content they face that might actually need them to mentor. While actual mentors would be largely unaffected especially given they're more likely to get through content via actually mentoring.

I suppose another potential is having "Mentor Points" tied to Commendations, but specifically those from players who are running the duty for the first time. Again, reducing the potential exploitation from friends (Outside of the previously mentioned rerolling alts).

[NocturniaUzuki]

Unfortunately, MMOs are full of people who only care about the new shiny things. Finding groups for old content (much of which is amazing, and even more fun than the newest stuff) is frustratingly difficult.

My advice would be to join a dedicated group, of which there are actually quite a few.

Off the top of my head, I know these ones (at least on Aether).

Sync or Bust (focus on synced old content)

StarBreaker Network (focus on MinIL old content)

I also run one called Eccentricity, which is focused on anything unusual, which also includes old content. But in terms of high-activity groups, I'd recommend the two above.

[NocturniaUzuki]

And @Kalise

I agree completely. They really need to add a roulette and/or a reward for old content.

Personally, I'd like to see the WT amd totem systems changed and merged together. WT already encourages interaction with old content, except it had some issues:

1) Unsynced counts for as much as Synced or MinIL.

2) You can easily reset and spam the same easy dungeon for all 9 tags.

I'd like to see WT changed to have ranked stickers. You get small stickers for Unsynced, medium for synced, and large for MinIL. Lines of small stickers give very little reward. Whereas a line of large stickers would give the largest reward. Resetting something wouldn't be allowed anymore either.

Also, the totem system from primals would be consolidated into a single totem. Running Unsynced primals would not yield a totem. Synced would yield a 50% chance, and MinIL a 100% chance. WT would reward new special currencies that can purchase items such as totems from any primal you have cleared. A line of small stickers might reward small coins, used for simple rewards. Medium coins could be used on totems, and Large coins on anything you like, plus the rarest of rewards.

Locking material rewards behind WT locks it behind a randomized system. Which old content you have to interact with on a weekly basis changes every week, and in order to get the best rewards, you need to engage with it on synced or MinIL.

I think there should probably be a way to allow small coins to get totems eventually by working up to it, but it should be slower by an age. The idea is to coax speedfarmers into doing synced or MinIL. It's not like most of them can't even handle synced. They just choose not to.

The new system would reward players for having knowledge of many fights in the game. Obviously, new content needs to be popular initially, so certainly, they could add temporary buffs to interacting with it. And of course, gear comes from the latest raids, and that won't change. New primals could perhaps have a 100% totem drop for 2-3 weeks, plus people do them for the dog that can't be obtained via totems yet, and the weapons.

[Dmhlucky]

I don't know of a way to measure being an effective Mentor. Its like Commendations, can be skewed if people take the time to manip the system, or like Gold Saucer card and Minion tournaments, where people use alts or friends to get "cheap" victories to guarantee themselves Wins.

Honestly i think for GS Content, you should have the option up front to Choose whether you will be be battling PCs or NPCs, and you are restricted by that for that given tournament, so that people who abuse "cheap" methods aren't grouped with people who just do NPC battles.

Anything is able to be manipulated. A person could write a macro to "explain" a dungeon mechanics if they instituted something where if "key words" were said in the run, it would count as 1 point towards being a mentor. Or if fast response/lack of AFK/Kill credit was all part of it, it would be a bit more challenging for an idle person to get credit.

I think the commendation systems needs to have a bit more reward also. I am sure i am not alone in this either. But the first 5 instances i do a week, i am about 10 times more likely to give a commendation than i am the rest of the week due to the challenge log. But i also know its a rough balance. Give something too good, and people will just spam easy stuff to build up their commendations.

All in all, it boils down to an Honor system, and Luck. Sometimes you get the players who want to actually help, Other times, and sadly more often, you get the players who just shout "Mush" and want to speed through stuff without regards for others.
I am not saying either is wrong. Its just perspective. Everyone pays the same amount, so there is no "wrong" thing here. Just perceptions of morally right and wrong.

[Kalise]

I don't know of a way to measure being an effective Mentor. Its like Commendations, can be skewed if people take the time to manip the system, or like Gold Saucer card and Minion tournaments, where people use alts or friends to get "cheap" victories to guarantee themselves Wins.

The only thing I thought of, is actually just based on a penalty system...

Wherein you lose "Mentor Points" if you drop out of a duty, or a vote abandon goes through.

Only being able to gain them by completing a duty with first timers (So you'd be less able to cheese it with friends, outside people making a bunch of alts, but if people feel the need to go through all the effort of continually leveling up new alts just to gain mentor points to allow them to "Save time" by ducking out of "Bad" duties... Then let them wallow in their own stupidity...)

It's not a perfect system, and it's based around a negative aspect where it isn't so much gauging an "Effective" mentor, but rather gauging how "Toxic" a mentor is (I.e. Leaving either because they can't carry through the duty, or they can't be bothered to actually teach the newbies how to complete it)

[van_arn]

Sorry buddy, you're late to the party. Five year old content isn't going to be an easy sell no matter how you package it into a roulette, especially if it's on the more mechanical side of the spectrum.

What would be ideal is simply removing the msq requirement of anything that effectively requires an unsynced party in a reasonable amount of time. You're not really going to be able to sync a trial until you're well into Stormblood, so you really shouldn't be required to run them in 2.x.

[van_arn]

*ex trial


Also stop using mentors as a catch-all solution.