Rework of unsynced system an mentor system

[Legion88]

I have a better solution for this ideas.

Forget them and start teaching your new players a simple rule I learned 7 years ago in this game: "If you do content like 'Ballad', 'Extreme', 'Savage' or CoB, do it via PF. Only do DF if you are practiced enough to go for the oneshot kill."
You see, every problem solved on both sides without a patch or writing code, just teaching people to use the tools they got.
To add to that: "If you wait for a hour in the queue it's time to check PF if there is a party there for the content you want to do or to create one yourself."

Also there is no shame in saying that you don't know the duty you got queued in via the mentor roulette, not every person can remember every fight and how the strats worked.

[Baxcel]

I have a better solution for this ideas.

Forget them and start teaching your new players a simple rule I learned 7 years ago in this game: "If you do content like 'Ballad', 'Extreme', 'Savage' or CoB, do it via PF. Only do DF if you are practiced enough to go for the oneshot kill."
You see, every problem solved on both sides without a patch or writing code, just teaching people to use the tools they got.
To add to that: "If you wait for a hour in the queue it's time to check PF if there is a party there for the content you want to do or to create one yourself."

Also there is no shame in saying that you don't know the duty you got queued in via the mentor roulette, not every person can remember every fight and how the strats worked.

I mean that's fair but I also think that if your placed into an Ex trial from mentor roulette you could at least stay for more a pull or two.. especially when the duty plainly says there's new players to it

[RajNish]

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..

Then let's go ahead. To be a mentor, player need to close the savage content and teach people how to run the savage.

[Baxcel]

Then let's go ahead. To be a mentor, player need to close the savage content and teach people how to run the savage.

Savage isn't even part of mentor roulette.. and as I've said a few times already.. i am a mentor.. i teach an i never abandon or ask to be kicked.. i suck it up an do the content.. i explain mechanics and give advice..

Also nice goal post fallacy.. always moving the goal further an further away

[RajNish]

Savage isn't even part of mentor roulette.. and as I've said a few times already.. i am a mentor.. i teach an i never abandon or ask to be kicked.. i suck it up an do the content.. i explain mechanics and give advice..

Also nice goal post fallacy.. always moving the goal further an further away

I'm glad that you are a good mentor. I hope this will continue to be so. The mentoring system, like many things in this game, is far from ideal. For example, in other games, you don't need a crown and a reward to help people. Any player who has been playing for a long time will give you advices, teach tricks and will not demand any reward for it.

But in my memory, it has always been this way, if people want to raid and perform hard content, they organize a static group, and do not call some mentor. And if they decided on this, it means that they know what they trying to do. So they don't need a mentor, but a good raid leader.

Requiring a random person to be a raid leader and explaining all the intricacies of the fight to those who are often not in the mood to listen just because he has a crown next to his nickname ... I find this ridiculous.

[ForctyusGold]

i would like just to remove every ex trial , since firstly its hard to fill via duty finder and im not sure its the best idea how to push mentors to tell everything about fight to new players or others since they could complete it ages ago and they should remember because theyre mentors..... ugh ...
mentor systems can be pretty useful for eh filling some duties ppl queueing and they cant get there in time , so those ppl can fill it , duty pop , if something bad happen they can explain etc / im more about to change that name of this to something more accurrate , since not every mentor is helpful anyway
really tell me , you remember every ex trial mechanics when synced ? o.o

[M0rrigan]

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..

New players can't really enjoy ex trials. Synced extremes are fights people had to learn on release, with many wipes and constant communication, often with statics until more people learned from guides. A new player is not familiar with the battle and extreme mechanics flow because leveling up to 50 is extremely easily now with all the exp boosts. Most new players I've seen don't even react to normal dungeon simple mechanics even if you explain them nicely, and we're expecting them to react and learn synced extremes in a single roulette run? good luck with that.

[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.

[Kuroka]

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.

Scrap everything else and keep that for everyone, not just mentors, please. Also on raids n dungeons.

[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.