Mentor needs to mean something again

[Taybat]

Once again I have dealt with someone with a mentor crown who was less than helpful. While I have played this game for five years and love to help new players. I keep running into mentors with crowns that are less than so. This particular one refused to put regen on a struggling tank and even had the nerve to slow ress me at the end of a fight.
Earlier I had a mentor insisting on pulling huge mobs and when we kept dying, he said it was because our gear was too low. When it was a leveling dungeon.

I apologize for ranting. But I feel like simply running a certain amount of dungeons and getting a certain amount of comms. Isn't enough to prove whether someone is meant to be a mentor. I feel like the crown should be taken away if the player is proved less than satisfactory.
There just needs to be a better system for this.

Best idea is to change the crown into an ugly watering can symbol. So people don't get it just for the "ooh shiny"

[EaMett]

I can't speak for your experience here but just want to point out two things:

There's nothing wrong with asking people to pull large and then wiping. It could very well be because of gear and it's fine mentioning that. Again nothing wrong with either of these things. It's only an issue if you insist on keeping it up, or if you start giving other people a hard time for it.
The regen on a tank thing. Need more info. What is a struggling tank? did he die? struggling tanks generally means they have a hard time getting mob aggro at times. Not putting a gcd regen on those tanks is something many a healer will do. If the healer keeps letting the tank die though that's another issue.
Same with the slow rez, not sure what the issue is? Did he leave you dead for the entire fight or something?

Basically, I'm not getting a clear picture of the issue from your post. Not saying there isn't one.

[Skivvy]

Honestly, I feel like they should never have attached rewards to being a mentor, or even the crown.

My friend group is quite minimal these days, but out of the ones who wear their mentor crown, they just like the crown by their name, they're not interested in helping others. Change it to something more mundane and I doubt as many would be wearing it because they think it looks cool. :3

People who want to help others in game WILL do so..even if they're not rewarded for it.

[Makeda]

Honestly, I feel like they should never have attached rewards to being a mentor, or even the crown.

My friend group is quite minimal these days, but out of the ones who wear their mentor crown, they just like the crown by their name, they're not interested in helping others. Change it to something more mundane and I doubt as many would be wearing it because they think it looks cool. :3

People who want to help others in game WILL do so..even if they're not rewarded for it.

My suggestion:

1. No visible indicator by your name except when a green leaf is looking at you.
2. Keep the chat channel - no ability to leave or mute it without giving up mentor status for 30 days.
3. Puts your name on a list any green leaf above level 10 can see - and whisper you if you're online.
4. green leaf's able to queue for content can send you invites using that list.

5. Give green leafs below 50 a 'training hall' that can also be reached by a mentor. This would be an instanced building with level 15, 30, 40, and 50 training dummies that mentors cannot use, but see the 'output' of a DPS like meter of any green leaf using them that they 'pair with' to mentor. A mentor could only enter this place on the invite of a greenleaf, and only stay as long as they're paired and only communicate with their paired leaf or with people outside the instance.


6. The mentor roulette would still exist, but it would replace your "level X/Y/Z" roulette but work as leveling does - but with the "level X/Y/Z" reward.

Do that and anyone looking for perks would flee from it. People actually looking to mentor would flock to it.


I'm actually working towards mentor, and with these changes I would keep doing so. In fact I would be MORE motivated to do so if I knew it actually meant mentoring folks.

[Arillyn]

My suggestion:

1. No visible indicator by your name except when a green leaf is looking at you.
2. Keep the chat channel - no ability to leave or mute it without giving up mentor status for 30 days.
3. Puts your name on a list any green leaf above level 10 can see - and whisper you if you're online.
4. green leaf's able to queue for content can send you invites using that list.

5. Give green leafs below 50 a 'training hall' that can also be reached by a mentor. This would be an instanced building with level 15, 30, 40, and 50 training dummies that mentors cannot use, but see the 'output' of a DPS like meter of any green leaf using them that they 'pair with' to mentor. A mentor could only enter this place on the invite of a greenleaf, and only stay as long as they're paired and only communicate with their paired leaf or with people outside the instance.


6. The mentor roulette would still exist, but it would replace your "level X/Y/Z" roulette but work as leveling does - but with the "level X/Y/Z" reward.

Do that and anyone looking for perks would flee from it. People actually looking to mentor would flock to it.


I'm actually working towards mentor, and with these changes I would keep doing so. In fact I would be MORE motivated to do so if I knew it actually meant mentoring folks.

These are really good ideas. I would just add that there should be a "turn off" your mentorship mode for times when you don't have time to answer questions, but can turn it back on so that greenleafs can see it and can whisper you if need help when you do have the time.

I don't think SE would add seeing the dps even in this instance, though I think it's a nice idea to help out new people if they are looking for that.

I agree, people who really want to help would definitely do this. And yes, no rewards needed.

[Makeda]

I don't think SE would add seeing the dps even in this instance, though I think it's a nice idea to help out new people if they are looking for that.

Yeah. I'd be OK with them even letting me see the icon+name of their actions and the amount of time between each - as they went off.
- That would actually be MORE useful than the DPS. So see the rotation charted out.

Frankly I could use that kind of help myself... :P

But if seeing that and giving feedback on it was what mentors did... we'd have a working system.

I agree, people who really want to help would definitely do this. And yes, no rewards needed.

And I think that's what they need to think about in some future redesign.

Make it something people who want to help will flock to, and people who don't will flee from in terror.

[Leareaux]

Make it so 'mentor comms' are a thing when in a mentor roulette scenario. Sprouts can approve/disapprove of a mentor and after x amount of disapprove over y time period the mentor can't mentor roulette for z amount of time.

[E4EO]

Dying during big pulls is part of life is leveling dungeons, it’s a good way to gauge if your healer is up to task. If you fail then no biggie, a minor delay that results in either trying again or pulling smaller, and if your in a dungeon with multiple smaller pulls and not the 2 maximum in Shb, then you don’t pull wall to wall, it’s also to important to remember that the tank is also responsible for of the pull secedes or fails, perhaps the tank you mentioned didn’t mitigate enough, perhaps not. And not using a regen willingly is just a healer failing at doing their job, regens are very powerful so omitting then on purpose is silly.

But yeah, SE needs to do something to clean up mentors and their reputation, I’ve also encountered god awful mentors, just a few weeks ago in Eureka Pagos there was this Viera mumbling gibberish in chat because we didn’t insta pull Notorious Monsters (Eureka FATEs, main focus of it. It’s common courtesy to wait a few minutes for people to come to the NM as they can take a little bit to spawn and missing out can be a setback but some people insist on pulling instantly) going off about how they’re not pulling “because I let you wait”, and when confronted about their crown they just said they want it cause it’s a well, crown, and don’t care about being a mentor.

That’s the main issue, the crown, it attracts stupid people to a role that’s designed to be helpful, you said yourself that a good way to stop terribad mentors from appearing would be to just take away the crown and replace it with something like a watering can or tree, something with more association with a sprout/sapling. Doing that would not only get unhelpful people to stop being a mentor, but signal to new players that mentors are there to help, even without a tooltip explaining the mentor system, some people would be able to figure out that trees/watering cans are there to help out sprouts/saplings just by association. Maybe they could also add a “report mentor” function so people could report mentors who are being rude, deliberately unhelpful and SE could take away their mentorship rights, not sure how that’d work though.

But the unfortunate thing is with development being slowed because of Coronavirus, the mentorship program is likely the last thing on SE’s mind, first thing is likely their safety and well being, then their job and if they’ll have it when this is all done, and lastly when they’ll get 5.3 out, but I hope to god that once this is all done they do something about the mentorship program. I can’t tell you how happy I would be to see it changed for the better, above all my issued for this game the mentor program is one I really, really want changed.

[LittleImp]

The problem isn't so much people seeking prestige from the icon, it's a lot scarier than that. It's the power dynamic.

People are attracted to the novice network because it's a captive audience. Spend some time getting to know the major players in you're local NN and you'll quickly realize why they're there. They're generally unlikable outcast types who have 0 content knowledge and are just there to use the NN as a social linkshell so they can pretend they have interpersonal relationships. A lot of them are in solo-fcs, and constantly gripe about other players. A lot of these players are well known, and WIDELY disliked on their respective servers.

Usually the ones that are the most vocal about complaining about other players are, in fact, exactly what they complain about. I watched the most outspoken mentor on my server chain die 5 times in one pull of O1 normal as a dps xD. They're also known to mostly afk through their dungeon roulettes, but complain about people in the run DURING THE RUN WHILE THEY AFK.

It's a wild place and a failed system, and should honestly just be removed from the game. I've spent 100s of hours teaching learning parties for content and run discords, but couldn't even become a PVE mentor under the new reqs because you can't get commendations in the types of preformed parties where I spend the majority of my time.

A short list of just a few pieces of advice I've seen given by PVE mentors in the NN:

•Dance partner your tank if the other DPS is a caster
•Piety makes your heals do more
•BRD has an aoe dot in SHB
•Never use upheaval outside of IR during SB
•Dance partner matters more for espirit generation than buffing your partner
•Stacking two adds is pointless because AOE is only good at 3+
•Direct hit is useless on tanks, tenacity is a stat designed specifically for them.

And this isn't even addressing how extremely inappropriate some of the conversations are for a newbie channel in game rated 13+....

[dinnertime]

Mentors should be curated by Idk...community reps or GMs.