Should commendations be revised?

[TheForce]

Commendations as they are are dumb. Its a system that doesnt actually do what it should, because it prevents you from giving them to people who would have earned them.

If I group with 2 of my friends and we run a 4man, the only person we can give them to is the more-likely-than-not deaf mute dps we're carrying through whatever we're in. Did they leave a good impression? Who cares, they're the only person who can be comm'd! Grats on your useless number +3'd because you got lucky in getting a pre-made who can ONLY comm you. Did I queue with 3 other people cause one of them needed help? Guess nobody can get a comm, even though by the definition of the comm system, it should have gone to 3 of us!

I end up not giving them at times I want to, because if I'm on a level 80, its actually a detriment to me to give the 5th in a week on a level capped class, and that 5th falls during raids and tomestone farming days (the days I actually bother to do instances anymore, because the only thing i want from any dungeon is a couple orchestrion rolls and tomestones that I can cap in a day).


Requiring 1500 for mentors is nonsense, and I'm going to start just comming anyone who mentions they need a few more to unlock the new mentor amount rather than anyone i think might possibly deserve it. And ill roll a dice if its more than 1 saying it.


There are significantly MORE things I would expect of a 'Mentor' that are accomplished outside of a duty than things I would expect from them inside it, and those will NEVER be reflected in the system.

Rolling my eyes because you automatically assume that just because said dps isn't in your group, you're carrying them. Come on dude.

[linay]

I'd say the challenge log to give commendations should stay. It at least gives people some sort of incentive to commend their fellow party members. Can't go wrong with free XP and gil after all.

While nice to have, exp and gil are easy enough to get. The incentive to commend fellow party members should be coming from those party members themselves.

[thrashette]

I mean... would you give your comm to a toxic player or someone who is blatantly giving 0 effort, even if they have a really cool name or glamour? Just don't be a butthead, at least look like you're trying, and you have a chance to receive a comm. If everyone in the group is just performing their job correctly and remaining quiet, then the comm will be given out due to some subjective, arbitrary criteria. And what's wrong with that? In my eyes, the system is meant to further discourage people from being doo-doo heads (seriously can't remember if bad words are frowned upon on this forum or not), especially if they're not committing a reportable offense, not necessarily to award those who are truly amazing at the game.

[Ronduwil]

2. If possible, allow commendation to be given to people who have left the duty as long as they left the duty after it is done.

I honestly don't know why it wasn't that way to begin with. I've learned that the easiest way to get commendations is to simply be the last to leave. I've benefited tremendously by gaming this system, but I still think it's dumb. Once the final boss dies and the duty is complete, everyone still in the party at that point should be eligible.

[RyuSaarva]

As a full-time DPS who is continually frustrated by the lack of commends dps receive, there are a few things they need to change about the way commendations are handed out to make it more fair and consistent.

1. Randomize the order of players on the commendation list. Right now it always goes Tanks>Healers>DPS, which is part of the (but not the only) reason people just blindly commend the tanks no matter what. It's like the game is telling you "commend the tank first, healer if you're the tank, and just say eff u to the dps who poured his heart out for you." Too many people just don't care and select the first name on the list and split.

2. Allow people to commend those who have already left at the end of a duty, as has been mentioned a bunch already. Too many people are in such a ridiculous hurry to leave it really gets annoying when you WANT to commend a great player but all that's left are the terrible ones who are still hanging around like a bad odor.

3. Require people to make a choice at the end of a dungeon. WAY WAY too many people leave without giving a commendation for no other reason than they want to save the literally 2 seconds it takes to throw one out. I can't think of anything more selfish than a person who thinks 2 seconds of their time is more important than giving the tiniest of consideration to the other 3-7 people in their group. Instead of making the commendation list a little box that pops up in the corner you have to manually switch to and open, make it a box that automatically pops up upon completion and must be closed out to leave. You cannot leave the duty until you select a player from the list or actually select the choice to not commend anyone. This way you can still choose to not commend anyone but you have to make that choice, instead of rushing out the door to "save time".

commendations are not participation rewards, a lot of times nobody deserves one.

[Barraind]

Rolling my eyes because you automatically assume that just because said dps isn't in your group, you're carrying them.

and yet, when you're an odd man out dps in a group with a tank, healer and dps, you're usually being carried.

I'm happy to com good dps. I wont ever com someone we are pretty sure is a bot, which is pretty much what we end up with when we 3 man queue. But the other 2 will.

[ctcc42]

It's vague about what is meant by "positive impression". .

I think it should remain vague. No matter what people are told to com people for, people are still going to give them out for whatever reason they want. In some cases it will be because they didn't read the blurb about them. In other cases it will be because they don't care.

Sure some people will do as they are told, but changing the instruction is just going to give those people the false impression that their own lack of coms is in some way indicative of poor play, when it could be because no one likes their name and glamour.

The com system is just fine. What is broken is the Mentor system. It's the presentation of Mentor's as knowledgeable and experienced which should change. Some mentors know their stuff. Some mentors want to be helpful, a small number just want prestige, and some want to help but really don't know all that much or play any better then others.

As long as players are told that a symbol by someone's name indicates they know their stuff, its going to cause problems. Every time a player fails a mechanic, stands in bad, or plays their role in a way that is different to how some one else plays it, the person with the icon is going to attract more attention and judgment then some one without the icon. The expectations created by the icon generate jealousy, resentment and negativity.

What we need to do is stop calling mentors and start calling them helpers. We also need to stop describing them as examples to emulate, and start describing them as 'people choosing to wear an icon to let people know they would like to help and answer questions.' Finally we need to remove restrictions on who can ware said icon. If its not exclusive then there will be no reason to believe that people are wearing it to satisfy their vanity.

The Commendation System is fine as is. Its the presentation of the mentor system that needs adjustment.

[hynaku]

I think it's fine as it is.
Be impressive, be bold, win the admiration of your peers!

You do know most only give them based on persons glamour and looks not on how well they did. So system to it is broken and need to be fixed.

[LauraAdalena]

It's vague about what is meant by "positive impression".

Commendations get awarded for random reasons because a "positive impression" can be different things to different players.

The idea of a Mentor isn't just a "person who helps out the new player." it's been stated they also want them to be like a role model. So someone whose making jokes and making your experience positive would, in fact, be a good mentor so commending them and rewarding this behavior through essentially what is Reddit's Karma system but in FFXIV is good. While this does mean that people who are mentors shouldn't be jerks and many do act that way, it's still something to keep in mind.

It can be awkward when you think more than one person in the group deserves a commendation or the person you wanted to give it to leaves the group before you can assign it.

I agree and this is something that should be addressed. Especially because Commendations are anonymous it's very easy to tell who gave you their one com just by who is talking and who is not and how they spoke to you. Giving multiple commendations per duty (I'm thinking 2 for 4-person, 3-4 for 8 person and 24 man, less if # of people are pre-formed) could help, but I doubt this would be a solution that everyone would agree with. However, what I think there definitely should be are more rewards for commendations past the 3k mark given once you get past that you stop getting incentive to act like a model player. But that's just me.

Does the commendation system need to be changed in some way to address the problem?

Changed? no. Revised or added to? Maybe. But this is a minor thing. I think what they should do instead is revise the Mentor status requirements more, or make slightly stricter Mentor guidelines.

I think while the current commendations could stay as is for the achievement based rewards, a separate commendation system should be added for those who want to become or already are mentors.

I like this idea, but I'm not sure if it should be implemented. I also don't think the part I struckthrough should be in there.

A "Yes" response would then add a special commendation to the recipient's tally needed to obtain/retain mentor status. A "No" response would have no effect (making trolling with a No pointless). Players who queue with the mentor/mentor applicant would not get the second notice just as we are unable to assign current commendations to those we queue with.

Except, they will. What I think should happen is if this is implemented have like a small subset of GMs review these and have responses required on yes and no responses. However, that could cost man power they wouldn't have due to the main heads at SE basically treating the FFXIV team as vestigial despite Yoshida being a head. At least, that's my understanding of it.

A system like this could solve some of the issues players have with the mentor system and allow SE to reduce the number of commendations needed to get certification since those commendations would be specific to mentoring instead of just "being nice".

As much as I like your ideas, I'd argue it wouldn't. Mostly because people are/will be misinformed and jerks regardless of this. This is a very nuanced situation and changing the commendation system instead of the Mentor system itself is targeting the wrong problem. As much as not everyone agrees that the coms needed to be increased as I think, and agree with SE, there is one underlying factor that not all of the problems are being addressed.

While coms is one factor, and many disagree with their decision, the fact is that a lot of mentors even with coms and whatever else: have bad attitudes toward new players and not being helpful, bad attitudes in general, even when they do have a good attitude they often don't know what they are talking about and give bad/lazy advice because "it's what I do", and they sometimes can give misinformation. An example being that I was talking to a new player saying how Ruin II is a useful spell for when you need to move and/or weave in other spells. Another mentor came in and told me that's not true and that "after you get Broil it's useless because it's a loss" or something and then told the player to sit in aoes and heal themselves through it. While this does work, it's bad advice to give to a new player. Your fixes don't address these issues because someone could be quiet or nice and still get a "yes" with those "special coms".

[OrangeCrystarium]

How about no? Earn your commendations like everyone else did; you don't need a special system made just for aspiring mentors to do that.