The problem with the mentor system

[RajNish]

And how many do you meet that aren't like this? I bet you have no idea, because it isn't noteworthy to get someone who isn't acting like this. Moreover, someone can be a mentor and not be displaying their crown.

I already answered in another thread. No more than 10, probably less. People who do not do mechanics, standing in the AOE and pull before the tank. People kicking newbies because they didn't like something. People talking rude and insulting. Sadly, most of them were mentors.

Something about shiny crown, by the way. From Reddit.

[EaMett]

I already answered in another thread. No more than 10, probably less. People who do not do mechanics, standing in the AOE and pull before the tank. People kicking newbies because they didn't like something. People talking rude and insulting. Sadly, most of them were mentors.

In my years on this game I probably played with a good thousand mentors, only a handful of which were an issue. If you keep running into bad mentors, maybe mentors aren't the issue.
Also, so what if a few players farm the crown? It doesn't automatically make them bad mentors. Exacerbated mentors in alliance roulette doesn't mean anything, especially given how hard it is to tell tone over text.
Furthermore, random posts from people on reddit or the forums here also mean absolutely nothing, it's just survivor bias.

The mentor system is absolutely fine as is, NN is fine as is although it may be a little spammy; all questions get answered and mentors regularly go assist sprouts in dungeons etc. Fact is, several sprouts are in this very thread saying it worked great for them.

I wish people could just let this mentorship "failure" fallacy rest in peace.

[SieyaM]

In my years on this game I probably played with a good thousand mentors, only a handful of which were an issue. If you keep running into bad mentors, maybe mentors aren't the issue.
Also, so what if a few players farm the crown? It doesn't automatically make them bad mentors. Exacerbated mentors in alliance roulette doesn't mean anything, especially given how hard it is to tell tone over text.
Furthermore, random posts from people on reddit or the forums here also mean absolutely nothing, it's just survivor bias.

The mentor system is absolutely fine as is, NN is fine as is although it may be a little spammy; all questions get answered and mentors regularly go assist sprouts in dungeons etc. Fact is, several sprouts are in this very thread saying it worked great for them.

I wish people could just let this mentorship "failure" fallacy rest in peace.

So what makes you're experience with mentors more valuable or truthful to the situation than people who have had bad experiences with mentors? Both are just personal interactions with people on their data center, neither seems to have any more fact behind it than another.

[EaMett]

So what makes you're experience with mentors more valuable or truthful to the situation than people who have had bad experiences with mentors? Both are just personal interactions with people on their data center, neither seems to have any more fact behind it than another.

Because unlike many I've actually been keeping tabs since I started. I always take note of who's wearing a crown when I enter content and what people say. Have been doing it since the first couple of months I started playing, 3+ years ago now since I saw a similar post back then and was questioning whether or not I wanted to enter the program. I've played with a good thousand (and that's an underestimation, more like thousands since it was probably around a thousand by the time I even qualified for mentorship 2 years ago) of mentors in that period and the VAST VAST VAST majority of mentors are just silent in content. They don't say anything unless someone asks or there's an obvious issue in the content being run. The reason for this is that often times if you ask others if they want advice they will just say no.
It's absolutely ignorant and ridiculous to claim that a majority of mentors are an issue as many of the people complaining in here or other posts/threads are doing. Full stop.

Survivor bias on this one is strong. People complain about mentors standing in aoes and playing poorly as if mentors aren't allowed to learn new jobs and tunnel vision like everyone else. People complain about players becoming mentors for the crown like there's some kind of correlation between that and being a terrible toxic (to quote others) mentor. Completely unrelated.

Yes there might be some NN with a base of bad mentors on some server that I may not know of, yes there are definitely some mentors that should be stripped of their title. I've witnessed only a handful myself but willing to concede my experience on aether may be a little better than others (little being the key word since I doubt any delta would be significantly wide, though euro servers with diff languages may have it differently). But anyone claiming a majority of mentors are bad, or claiming that the mentor system is full of toxicity should not be taken seriously. And that's a good chunk of people complaining.

Not saying the game wouldn't benefit from a change. Just saying people need to stop crying wolf.

[RajNish]

But anyone claiming a majority of mentors are bad, or claiming that the mentor system is full of toxicity should not be taken seriously. And that's a good chunk of people complaining.

Sorry, but you cannot tell people what to take seriously. Your experience or their own. We do not want to turn a blind eye to the problem, that's all.

Not saying the game wouldn't benefit from a change. Just saying people need to stop crying wolf.

These topics arise regularly, year after year, for several years. This means that there is a problem. The fact that the developers changed the number of recommendations means that they have already tried to solve this problem. We are trying to help them with this, at the beginning of the thread, adequate measures were proposed by OP and other people. You have discounted all of this, calling it a wolf’s cry.

[Thamorian]

Sorry, but you cannot tell people what to take seriously. Your experience or their own. We do not want to turn a blind eye to the problem, that's all.



These topics arise regularly, year after year, for several years. This means that there is a problem. The fact that the developers changed the number of recommendations means that they have already tried to solve this problem. We are trying to help them with this, at the beginning of the thread, adequate measures were proposed by OP and other people. You have discounted all of this, calling it a wolf’s cry.

These threads keep popping up because FF14 is a very popular MMO with a very large player base. This coupled with the fact that people in general are far more likely to complain about something versus giving a compliment. This is just human nature. So yeah it's more likely we see threads from a few individuals complaining about mentors, but we don't hear about people peoples positive experience with mentors being posted as often even though people do have positive experiences more often, whether they realize it or not. Probably easier to recognize the bad over the good. That and there's no curated barrier from becoming a mentor. Someone who just plays the game regularly, especially if they primarily player as a healer or a tank who also leveled one of each role for something other than mentor purposes such as having the ability to fill any role in a raid or so they could get role quests done, or maybe so they could the all jobs 80 mount, or maybe they just like seeing all their jobs at 80. Anyone can become a mentor given enough time, you don't have to work for it specifically and most mentors didn't work for mentor specifically, they just played the game regularly and happened to meet the requirements. The small percentage who worked specially for mentor is not the normal, but even from this small percentage of people, I would think most came out to be ok mentors, as in not bad/rude mentors. There are more people who meet the requirements for mentor than you probably realize, and many of them choose to not wear the crown.

Also, something extra I keep having to comment on, why is it when we get these types of threads and OP runs into a couple bad mentors, that somehow those one or two experiences represents all mentors and mentors are treated as a monolith (even though we can be sure they ran into mentors they had no issue with and took no notice of, because nothing negative happened) but anyone not a mentor gets a free pass for their attitude relatively? If I run into a toxic samurai, can I treat everyone who mains Samurai as a toxic monolith? Same thing, no one is curating who can and cannot become a samurai. What if I ran into a toxic raider? Are all raiders toxic now? What about high ranking feast pvpers? Again, no one is curating these groups, it's only their own work. You may think it sounds silly and stupid but it's the exact same principle being applied.

[EaMett]

Sorry, but you cannot tell people what to take seriously.

I can suggest people listen to those with more objective opinions rather than those that over-inflate issues and appeal to hasty generalization and bandwagon fallacies. And I do.

Also, SE haven't tried to fix anything. First off, it's rare to not have the commendations required by the time you have the dungeon requirement, that change was pretty useless by itself. Furthermore, with this expansion we will have roughly triple (at least double) the amount of content than we had back when the old system was set up. At best the change was just readjusting to make sure mentors had an equivalent ratio of experience-to-content than before.

These topics arise regularly, year after year, for several years. This means that there is a problem

It means there's a problem in each individual case. At best you can argument that issues arise at a certain frequency which is consistent with the reality that some mentors aren't fit, and that, absolutely nobody is contesting. It, however, doesn't mean there's a systemic problem as people keep claiming.

And at no point have I discounted that the system could be improved.

[RajNish]

These threads keep popping up because FF14 is a very popular MMO with a very large player base. This coupled with the fact that people in general are far more likely to complain about something versus giving a compliment. This is just human nature.

Now you yourself are inclined to generalize and see the bad, even in those messages that are constructive and where there are suggestions for improving the system. I'm not even talking about your systematic depreciation of all the above theses that speak about why people want to change this situation.

SE haven't tried to fix anything. First off, it's rare to not have the commendations required by the time you have the dungeon requirement, that change was pretty useless by itself. Furthermore, with this expansion we will have roughly triple (at least double) the amount of content than we had back when the old system was set up. At best the change was just readjusting to make sure mentors had an equivalent ratio of experience-to-content than before.

Numerical correlation makes me doubt this thesis. The number of recommendations required for the status of a mentor has increased to 1500 (5 times). This was probably an attempt to defend against players who farm recommendations only for the crown.

It, however, doesn't mean there's a systemic problem as people keep claiming.

And at no point have I discounted that the system could be improved.

And again, logically does not converge. You say that there is no problem, but do not deny that the system needs to be improved. But, as we know "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".