Should commendations be revised?

[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".