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*)

[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)

[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).

[Dmhlucky]

I like those ideas.

Def like the idea of it being mainly tied to Sprouts and first time runs. (which i have been seeing a lot more of recently)

I work in Customer service, so a thought would be to have a Survey (although it then makes the game like work XD) But if they could do it in a fun way, for the new player, could be something like rate player X from 1-5 based on how helpful they were. And the Sprout then gets to choose 1 item from a loot pool for the dungeon/instance, or choose between extra gold/exp/tele tickets for guildhests as a reward for participating.

I did leveling roulette the other day and had a healer who was very new, depsite being level 37, they were still Conjurer and had all int/Vit accessories, but did have level 32-35 regular gear. It was Titan, and they literally had no clue what they were doing. The 3 of us who had done it before were giving pointers the whole time, we wiped about 15 times, it was a disaster, but in that instance, letting them choose from a weapon from that run would only help them, as well as giving feedback on the mentors in the group would encourage better mentoring.

I am glad they have commendations and mentors, but i think it is something they should invest more time into.
Part of what made FFXI a Great game was the community and the willingness to help others. XIV has so many aspects where you Need to group, but due to the random nature or DF, there isn't a connection with any of the people you group with. They need something to encourage the comradery in this game.

[Kalise]

I am glad they have commendations and mentors, but i think it is something they should invest more time into.
Part of what made FFXI a Great game was the community and the willingness to help others. XIV has so many aspects where you Need to group, but due to the random nature or DF, there isn't a connection with any of the people you group with. They need something to encourage the comradery in this game.

Yeah, ensuring that the community is good is vital for longevity of a game. It's also the major downfall that DF type systems always succumb to, where they want to use DF to make getting groups less hassle, but then the random nature as well as the cross-server pool of players always deteriorates the community, giving birth to a generation of players that are all "Me, me, me, rush, rush, rush" with little to no regard for newer, less experienced players.

Part of the reason why the Mentor system being so lenient for its availability is a concern, because there are additional rewards to be had for doing Mentor roulettes and much less concern about actually being a good Mentor in the process..

Encouraging both commending and good mentoring would be a very good way to enable people to have less anxiety about performing in dungeons (Including the dreaded "Tankxiety" that oft deters players from trying out the typically unpopular role...) as well as enable people to work at building a better community.

It merely needs to be done in a way that isn't obtrusive (So no like, 50 page essay on what made the mentor good/bad and why...) but at the same time feels rewarding to participate in (Such as your suggestion to allow someone new to be able to get bonus items for rating a mentor) without being exploitable (So, try and limit it to sprouts/first timers potentially even returners for current content).

Of course, one of the issues is that sometimes it can be hard to be a good mentor, if you get a party that doesn't all speak English (Or whatever your primary language happens to be) because there's only so much you can do without being able to talk. You can like mark up enemies but if people don't know about them or pay attention to them it can be tricky still (Not to mention when you use marks for other things, such as Diablos where people like to mark the pairs of doors)