Mentors...please!

[NanaWiloh]

Then don't ready up for the mentor roulette. If you are so worried about getting things like that just don't do it. That's the whole point, you shouldn't be doing it if you are so frightened to get extremes. There are those who want to learn and I see it very often, more often than not.

Not everyone in Europe speaks dutch or French. The British speak English and British players do play on European servers cause after all they are basically apart of Europe.

[LittleImp]

The only DF extreme I've ever run into issues with consistently is Ramuh because of the tanking requirements. It's pretty rare to see a party fail to clear anything else since Echo is so ridiculous, and the total delight of the newbies when it's killed makes it super worth it.

Most of the time parties end up having to disband not because of the content, but because of the utterly useless mentors that immediately leave and then queue back in 3 times in a row only to leave again each time. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you're a PVE mentor and die 5 times consecutively on Alte Roite normal, maybe it's time to ditch the crown!

If you can't handle the content in the roulette and aren't willing to teach it, do us all a favor and just stop queuing.

[lolicon09]

This is the problem we have when roulettes are forced upon players to progress MSQ (they should be removed from the MSQ in my opinion). Make dungeons and trials "optional" content that sets it apart from the "casual". SE needs to have some form of intro for the various levels of this content - maybe an idea for them to replace guildheists with something meaningful there.

POTD and similar does not help this situation - people learn very, very bad habits there that simply do not translate into real dungeon and trial content.

As for the Mentor system - yes it is by and large broken. That is not the fault of the mentors though - its the fault of SE for not bothering to expand upon Hall of the Novice when they should have. It should have been the go to place for intros to new levels of content - it should have been forced and not optional.

Most dungeons, and all normal trials, aren't hard at all. The problem are the Extreme Trials; Those ask more from players than any normal Duty, and require way more explanations about all the things that happen during the fight. Those are the only things that should be removed from Mentor roulette, since it's 100% optional content that doesn't affect the MSQ progress.



About PotD, i think it should just give a small amount of XP, or give nothing at all. For some (stupid) reason, all players act like DPS there, no matter their role

[Rairai]

Not everyone in Europe speaks dutch or French. The British speak English and British players do play on European servers cause after all they are basically apart of Europe.

I never said anything about this or the different languages and that isn't the issue that is being brought up. I do appreciate your input tho.

[RokkuEkkusu]

This. How many times have I had sprouts just chain pull and completely ignore chat in ex trials. Can't teach anyone in these conditions. That or I'll ask if anyone has read a guide, get met with silence, explain stuff and have them not follow anything for 30mn straight before some other mentor triggers (rightfully so) a vote abandon. The content shouldn't be unsynched but in NA it should be PFed and I definitely remind people of this when I get a chance.

With that said. I barely do mentor roulette anymore because I've started getting MSQ roulette and I hate it. Not sure if it was always like that and I got lucky or if they added that in recently.. But there's nothing to teach and it's just a huge boring time sink.

For Mentor Roulettes, I end up favoring and doing much better on the MSQ Roulette dungeons with the unskippable cutscenes than the EX Trials synced because of the reasons you stated. I can at least "Clear" the dungeons with the unskippable cutscenes, instead of risking going into an EX Primal instance where there is at least one person who doesn't follow any advice typed out and the high chances of party wipes with much lower chances of clearing.

[Lufir]

During my time doing mentor roulettes, most of the players were queuing through Duty Finder for extreme trials because they had a quest and didn't know about Party Finder. These players also seemed to lack decent gear while ignoring chat log and avoid any tips for the fights. It was extremely rare that I got a party that wanted to do the fight learning it the original, synced way (even though they have been severely nerfed and accompanied by echo).

Teaching players to use the Party Finder for extremes instead of going blind in a duty is actually a lot of help.

[DarkMasamune]

Whilst I certainly understand that the mentor system needs rework, mentors atm are thrown into a situation when they get extremes where:

A) People don't listen
B) People don't understand extreme content requires certain knowledge that is not communicated
C) People rejecting advice
and Most importantly D) Being put into a group full of people who do not speak the same language as you. Being on a european data center, if I go into a mentor roullete and am met with a bunch of F and D players who clearly cannot understand english despite having it ticked, I'm gonna eat the penalty at that point if there's new people in the party, no one can reasonably be expected to mentor in that scenario, and honestly, its the most common situation myself and other people on EU I speak to seem to find themself in.

All the above leaves a sour taste in anyones mouth, and despite people saying "well its your job to mentor them", you cannot reasonably expect people to want to stay in those conditions. In the ideal world you would get parties full of sprouts eager to learn, in reality you get a confused mess.

Basically, yep.

I remember once ended up on Thordan EX. Got blamed for being a shitty mentor because even thought I did try to explain the mechanics times and times again, we kept wiping and of course, since I was the mentor in the room, I was blamed for 'not explaining properly'.

Don't get me wrong, they are plenty of dumb and useless mentors out there getting the title just for the heck of it or as a trophy or something, but some of us do try to help out sprouts and newcomers in dungeons, and it dosen't always turn right.

I can't count the numbers of times I ended up with "Don't spoil the mechanics, I want to see for myself", "It's my sub, I can play however I want", "You don't need good gears for a MSQ dungeon/trial, it's unfair" (Yes I got that one a few times, especially on Shinryu), "I know how to play my job" (When playing a BLM casting only Ice on a pseudo-fire based monster, sure buddy) and etc.
Sometimes it's just tiring and I just let it go because hey, if you don't want to listen to someone who's more used to the game than you and truly wants to help, then what's the point.

[Jojoya]

So I want to put this out there and it has been mentioned before, but mentors need another re-work. Just because a person gets commendations does not mean you are suitable to be a mentor. I cannot tell you how many countless times I have joined a roulette or party and I see the mentors go. "You should just go in unsynched." or they just leave. There should be a counter for how many times they just up and abandon a duty that way if they do it many times their mentor roulette becomes suspended. There should also be a report mentor function that needs to be reviewed so that if someone is abusive to other players as a mentor it should be taken away.

As someone who enjoys teaching people how to do a fight and learning as we go, it is horrible to see someone join in and say "Just do it unsynched." What great mentor advice! This is a major issue for a healthy community and the future growth of this game. Mentor status should be an honor and a chance to show your skills to help others achieve a great goal! So please FFXIV reword the mentor status again and make it to where being a mentor isn't just something to get a roulette and rewards. Make it for people who want to help.

Perhaps it would be better if SE publicly posted what the role of Mentor is intended to cover since there's so much confusion and disagreement among players.

To me, the intention seems to be for Mentors to help out new players understand game basics and where to find things. It's not supposed to be hand holding veteran players through end game content.

That said, it's been pretty amusing at times when I'm on my alt on another data center. Novice Network is the Mentors talking about gambling on FFT bot games on Twitch, discussing incest in anime and arguing politics while it's left to the sprouts to help each other out when someone has a question or needs assistance.

[shibeouya]

I am convinced that most if not all the mentor issues come from the mount rewards for 2k mentor roulettes. 2 issues with that:

1. The number of clears required is insanely high - encouraging mentors to go after quantity over quality.
2. Every duty is treated as the same "progress" towards the mount. So a 2 minutes guildhest is worth the same as a 1-2 hours ex primal.

There's ways to solve it but SE has refused to look at the problem. This leads to a lot of mentors abandoning ex primals because they are not worth the effort - even if you end up clearing after an hour (which is optimistic) it is less progress than leaving instantly, eating the 30 mins penalty and possibly ending up in a guildhest.

Some possible solutions:

1. Stop considering number of clears as the unit towards the mount. Instead, count the time spent inside a cleared duty. So if you spend 2 minutes in a guildhest it is worth much less progress than spending 2 hours in an ex primal that you end up clearing.
2. Split the ex primals into a separate mentor roulette, and give it greater rewards. This would ensure only mentors who want to help for this specific content are there, and that they are rewarded in consequence.

[Sheli54]

B) People don't understand extreme content requires certain knowledge that is not communicated.

To be honest, I don't even know why they put EX contents in the mentor roulettes. Like you said, it requires knowledge and novices don't understand it (or should I say, don't WANT to understand it).

I often got ARR EX in mentor roulettes, nowaday, it's easy to clear them even with sync lvl. But lvl 60 EX and more ... Ugh. Just once. Only once I got Thordan EX and people in the party were patient and careful with mechanics. I explained after each wipe, and we finally cleared it.

Otherwise, and most of the time, there are only issues, and these are the ones you mentioned.