Rework of unsynced system an mentor system

[Baxcel]

So an idea I've been thinking on over the past few weeks of a way to fix up the mentor system and the undersized party system that would make them both more enjoyable and also help with the issues of bad mentors and bad raiders.

It will require a few steps but nothing that would be hard for SE to do.

1)Reset every players clear status on all trails. (Normal and Extreme. If its in mentor roulette then it gets reset too..
This will see that everyone gets a fresh start on the new method an trials, it will also remove the effect of "duty complete" from party finder until you clear the trial again.

2)In order to unlock the unsync for a trail it must be cleared normally.
This will result in two changes in the player base, those being that new players will see mechincs of trails, which in a whole get repeated a lot. An secondly this will require mentors to actual learn the trails they get sent into to help with the roulette.

3)All mentors lose access to mentor roulette until they have completed these trails again an earned the clear checkmark.
Ensuring that the mentor actual cleared the trail and didn't just unscyned threw it with an over leveled class. This is will lower the number of bad mentors who yell at new players to "just do it unsycned" as the mentor had to clear it themselves theyll be more able to clear it with the new player and it will make sure they cant force the new player into unsycned.

4)Anyone with a mentor tag who gets kicked from a trial(only trials)or leaves themseleves(dungeons only) receives a stacking locked out timer.
This will ensure that mentors stay an do their job with the new players.. they agreed to help players clear content in exchange for the crown an access to the mentor roulette.
Time out starts at 30min like normal and doubles each time.. reseting at weekly reset each week.. if the timer would go past the reset it still resets for the week giving them access to roulettes again.

I'm myself a mentor and a FC leader who new players who wants to clear trails normally for the first time and its not fair to them the new players to be forced to wait for more players after the bad mentors leave us.. or be forced to rely on the echo to make up for an afk mentor or player who dosnt want to be there an help.

[HeulGDarian]

So an idea I've been thinking on over the past few weeks of a way to fix up the mentor system and the undersized party system that would make them both more enjoyable and also help with the issues of bad mentors and bad raiders.

It will require a few steps but nothing that would be hard for SE to do.

1)Reset every players clear status on all trails. (Normal and Extreme. If its in mentor roulette then it gets reset too..
This will see that everyone gets a fresh start on the new method an trials, it will also remove the effect of "duty complete" from party finder until you clear the trial again.

2)In order to unlock the unsync for a trail it must be cleared normally.
This will result in two changes in the player base, those being that new players will see mechincs of trails, which in a whole get repeated a lot. An secondly this will require mentors to actual learn the trails they get sent into to help with the roulette.

3)All mentors lose access to mentor roulette until they have completed these trails again an earned the clear checkmark.
Ensuring that the mentor actual cleared the trail and didn't just unscyned threw it with an over leveled class. This is will lower the number of bad mentors who yell at new players to "just do it unsycned" as the mentor had to clear it themselves theyll be more able to clear it with the new player and it will make sure they cant force the new player into unsycned.

4)Anyone with a mentor tag who gets kicked from a trial(only trials)or leaves themseleves(dungeons only) receives a stacking locked out timer.
This will ensure that mentors stay an do their job with the new players.. they agreed to help players clear content in exchange for the crown an access to the mentor roulette.
Time out starts at 30min like normal and doubles each time.. reseting at weekly reset each week.. if the timer would go past the reset it still resets for the week giving them access to roulettes again.

I'm myself a mentor and a FC leader who new players who wants to clear trails normally for the first time and its not fair to them the new players to be forced to wait for more players after the bad mentors leave us.. or be forced to rely on the echo to make up for an afk mentor or player who dosnt want to be there an help.

So let me get this straight. You want every single mentor in the game , to repeat every single trial and ex in the game synced to reunlock the mentorship and mentor rlt. not only that you introduce a second punishment for mentors in case they get kicked from trials or leave dungeons.
That will also somehow fix bad raiders?

Do you need explanation as to why this is a bad idea?
1) not every mentor but some of them did clear them synced and were helpfull so youre basicly telling them go and re do it
2) Even though having to redo them might revitalise them heres a couple arguements why it wont.
i) people can simply pf them, or do them with their statics. Newer players who want to do them will go through df regardless. and since no mentor nn exists anymore there is none to tell them otherwise ,unless they specificly talk about wanting to do them with someone.
ii) You just killed the filler rlt
iii) People dont need the crown to help, so if you get a mentor who has finished astrope and simply dont feels the need to keep doing the rlt, then they dont have any reason to.
iv) The extreme trials are not that hard for those who know what to do. This doesnt dictate the quality of how good of a mentor someone is, it doesnt even qualify as a testament of their skill people can and will inevitable get carried.
3) Youre locking unsynced for everyone not just mentors, and this is something the community as a whole should accept happily?
4) In your opinion Mentors should be punished more harshly for misbehavior. heres another point of view:
I have finished the 2000 mentor rlts. i shall share with you why i have removed myself from the mentor system.
Getting mentorship i entered the novice network, at first i wasnt any different than a novice , i like many other novices ive encountered had done some of the arr primals synced but i was still a sprout i wasnt a good player , i couldnt guide people effectively , i didnt have the best memory to remember stuff and i sure as hell wasnt the one who could answer the fastest to newbies. In the novice network of moogle people did indeed speak with each other mostly chill, but unlike people keep saying no people didnt ignore newbies questions , in fact i struggled to be the first to answer for 2 reasons :
1) there was always someone faster than me to answer
2) alot of people didnt talk english, they talked french
Now i like talking i like sharing my experience, but people did tell me to talk less and so i did, even though there were alot of french people talking a lot. I quit after one of the mentors said we got enough mentors i dont mind kicking a couple of them for no reason and a newbie was going you all suck and even went political about leftists and rights. This is where one of the mentors came after me and since then we became best friends . This situation its pitch perfect accurate for the rest of my experience.
.
I still had the crown , i got some newbies talking to me mostly asking about how to play my main job and some where about how to get x mount . But i also met other kind of people , I remember specifically a guy telling me lol you suck why are you a mentor
after i got hit in the last boss of hells lid, and i hadnt even done anything, i got hit like once and didnt even die. After that i went to do mentor rlts , being quite green i didnt know of dc scams or why where people leaving , but i do remember 3 distinct instances.
i) I had gotten ramuh ex , i had tried to get people to clear before but with no avail . Thankfully i met a great mentor who managed to get the group to work together he put out marks he managed to get everyone to understand what needs to be done and people ofc rightfully commended him afterwards. A bit envious ofc but that guy was simply someone people should strive to be.
ii) This one had me red on shame after i understood it. So i got Good king moogle ex , I went ahead read a guide and tried to act on the best of my abilities to explain. Thankfully there was also another guy explaining . And i simply fcked up i didnt get that we had to kill the last wave at the same time , i thought we had to kill them as fast as possible, leading us to run out of time and without a clear.
iii) this one was just impossible. Got ifrit ex thankfully i actually knew what to do so i tried explaining, started putting out marks . But there was a newbie who just wasnt having it he was taking the marks in order to draw and arrow and was saying to simply do that , he also explained the chain mech incorrectly . I was trying to correct it but once again to no avail , people for some reason believed him instead of me leading us to yet another incomplete run.
.
And then i stopped for a bit. Trying to do 24/7 rlt ends up in quite a burn out. But i returned to it during shadowbringers and oh boy , after going through the forums it just makes you notice stuff so much more. Where to start . Ive met quite a lot of people who once again will go on the first mistake lol mentor, as a mentor i cant really answer back but the worst one was a guy who didnt follow me during the first pull of aurum vale and he died by pulling more mobs , me as a tank having assumed everyone followed i see him dead , so i ask him how did you die ? the answer you're the mentor you should know. adorable.
I also starting noticing all the people who did scam dc like seriously wtf. At least leave like normal people , i had to learn how to lead people through ex and i did simply cause i was left alone in alot of situations without another mentor to help. And thankfully i got good enough to be commended for my efforts both vocally and by commends by both mentors and sprouts. But then there were these types of sprouts.
i) Ultima ex. Had a newbie tank , thankfully i had another mentor with me so we could help each other had met him before as well great lad. We had problems with the last set of orbs , The sprouts werent quite getting the stack and run and the healers werent the best so we would get 2 orbs before wiping. So we told our tank to help and what was his reply? we got 4 dps why should i help. I proposed a compromise to simply tank lb the other mentor told him that he should help , he went fine ill carry our dps , mentor went lmao . And the fight ended with tank dieing not hitting the tank lb , or cooldowns for that matter... and saying i did my job the dpses job and the ots job. I told him to change his attitude , this was an easy fight.
ii) Zurvan ex . Group was merrily we had good mentors . So the people seem to have read a guide , however we had 50 out of 90 mins and hadnt managed to pass through the first soar. So the mentors had been calling for disband for awhile , i was saying yes but not really commenting on it. Until the mentors had to comment , "guys its obviously we cant clear can we disband we have other things to do" there was some tension more like light banter than fighting and in the end they did disband.
In this ill put my experience with the forums. The talks about how dungeons should be done, the elitism vs casualism , the mentor talks all that i have seen, is completely and utterly biased. It is clear to me from my experience That both mentors, sprouts and non categorized players , Can and have brought problems , something that should have been obvious in the first place , it is not the groups at fault but rather the individuals. However i have seen that people are quicker to dismiss people who are acting as a figure of authority in their "practice" , and the mentor crown is one such huge neon target for people to latch on.
After i met a plethora of people and helped many more i simply will not use the mentor system. It has simply become a detriment to what its supposed to be used for.

[Fynlar]

No.

Just stop expecting mentors to be gods that have memorized every single fight. They're just other players, like you. And most players will not wanna do Ramuh EX in the DF, period. Mentor or not.

I don't think EX trials should even be in the mentor roulette, but that's a whole other topic.

[Brightamethyst]

I don't think EX trials should even be in the mentor roulette

This is one of the biggest issues with Mentor Roulette. Don't want people to give up and leave? Then stop putting people into unwinnable situations. EX trials were never designed to be done with randoms in the DF. Some of them can be, this many years and ilevels later, but many still can't. You get Shinryu EX in roulette? 100% chance of agonizing failure.

[RajNish]

One of the biggest problem in the mentoring system is forcing mentors to do extreme versions of trials. It is assumed that people who try to do extreme are no longer beginners, so I don't understand why mentors are used here. And although the mentors I have met are not as good as they could be, they would be more useful in a group of newcomers for completing story dungeons and trials.

[Baxcel]

So let me get this straight. You want every single mentor in the game , to repeat every single trial and ex in the game synced to reunlock the mentorship and mentor rlt. not only that you introduce a second punishment for mentors in case they get kicked from trials or leave dungeons.
That will also somehow fix bad raiders?

no they don't have to reunlock mentor they keep their mentor status but inorder to use mentor roulette they have to recomplete the normal an ex trails

Do you need explanation as to why this is a bad idea?
1) not every mentor but some of them did clear them synced and were helpfull so youre basicly telling them go and re do it

Irrelevant just because a few did all the trials legeitmitly dosnt mean the majority did and its painfully obvious they didnt

2) Even though having to redo them might revitalise them heres a couple arguements why it wont
i) people can simply pf them, or do them with their statics. Newer players who want to do them will go through df regardless. and since no mentor nn exists anymore there is none to tell them otherwise ,unless they specificly talk about wanting to do them with someone

Yeah thats fine.. it will at least mean they did it legit and didnt force a clear unycned.

ii) You just killed the filler rlt

For about a month maybe but with the sheer number of people redoing them by PF or DF that wouldn't matter as they'd have players doing them.

iii) People dont need the crown to help, so if you get a mentor who has finished astrope and simply dont feels the need to keep doing the rlt, then they dont have any reason to.
iv) The extreme trials are not that hard for those who know what to do.

Agreed you dont need the crown to help and ex isnt that hard.. but if you have the crown you should be helping and not just yelling at new players to do it unycned.

3) Youre locking unsynced for everyone not just mentors, and this is something the community as a whole should accept happily?

Yes, unsycned should be reserved for after you cleared something and want to farm it.. if you havnt cleared it normally yet.. you have no right or need to be there in a farming group.

4) In your opinion Mentors should be punished more harshly for misbehavior. heres another point of view:

Yes mentors should be held to a strictor standing.. just like the agreement you clicked on said when you applied to be a mentor.


For every good story you could list about good mentors theres hundreds about bad ones.

Once again Im a mentor too.. and the pool is already stagnant with bad mentors.. just because you lose access to mentor roulette dosnt mean you lose your crown.. you can still help in NN you can still guide people but if you can clear ifirit Ex with a group synced without complaining or asking to be kicked.. then you dont need to be a mentor.

[HeulGDarian]

For every good story you could list about good mentors theres hundreds about bad ones.

You have this linked like it is something i said. I did not. Fix it.

[EaMett]

For every good story you could list about good mentors theres hundreds about bad ones.

This and your original post make a huge incorrect assumption. That mentors are bad (or a significant portion of them are). It's an age-old urban legend born from survivor bias and actually has no real-life correlation. At least none that anyone has been able to demonstrate.

I've been tracking mentor behavior and spreadsheeting it for a while now. The reality is that "bad" mentors represent only 1-1.5% of the mentor population (on Aether where I am at least). And when I say bad, I count every mentor who leaves ex fights, mentors who are mean/sassy/sarcastic, and even mentors who actively help others but have a bout of lack of patience for whatever reason and could be friendlier.
Compared to that about 20% of all mentors actively help and contribute positively to groups. The rest are just silent and do their thing.

Skill is harder to evaluate as it's a little subjective but overall about only 7% have bellow par skills and honestly, willing to bet a good chunk of those are people learning new classes and not indicative of their actual skill level. Not only that but the majority (just barely, 54%) of mentors have what I would call above average skill.

This idea that the mentor system is somehow failing really doesn't have any tangible data justifying it. At best you get anecdotal evidence.

If anyone's curious, on aether:
- Worst track record per server is gilgamesh with the most "bad" mentors. About 2.5x second place.
- Best server is Siren. Highest % of helpful mentors, haven't had a bad apple yet.
- Least played classes by mentors are MNK, WAR. Least played healer is SCH
- Most played classes by mentors are DNC, RDM, SMN. (62% of mentors are dps)

Also while we're at it, Mentor roulette ex encounters clear roughly 50-60% of the time. I guess your mileage will vary based on how helpful you are. Some people's numbers are closer to 70% clear rates.

Edit: None of this really speaks to the quality of the NN. I assume NN quality can vary wildly based on server and especially region (heard EU is rough, probably because of the mix of languages). On Faerie the NN is fine.

[Baxcel]

No.

Just stop expecting mentors to be gods that have memorized every single fight. They're just other players, like you. And most players will not wanna do Ramuh EX in the DF, period. Mentor or not.

I don't think EX trials should even be in the mentor roulette, but that's a whole other topic.

not expecting them to be gods.. im expecting them to stay and try the fight for more then one pull before demanding the new players do the trial unsycned.. or demanding to be kicked or afking until they are kicked..

Mentor roulette is there to help new players experience the content synced not to yell at them for being new and trying stuff they just unlocked when.. "oh you can just unsycn this.." and leaving the group.

[Baxcel]

One of the biggest problem in the mentoring system is forcing mentors to do extreme versions of trials. It is assumed that people who try to do extreme are no longer beginners, so I don't understand why mentors are used here. And although the mentors I have met are not as good as they could be, they would be more useful in a group of newcomers for completing story dungeons and trials.

the roulette fills old content including the ex trials so new players can enjoy them.. mentor are compensated with a roulette rewards and a mount they can earn.. they signed an agreement saying that they would be exemplary players an teach new players how to do that content.. if they didnt read the terms and are refusing to do the content they said thsy would do.. then they dont need to be mentors..