Suggestion: Revoke Mentorship Status

[AngelCheese77]

Mentors are not on your payroll. The only thing a mentor agrees to do is guide people on basic game functions. It's not a mentor's job to know every dungeon or every raid or every single aspect of this game. That's not what mentors are for. A mentor is not going to stop the party in the middle of a dungeon and teach you how to play. Mentors don't have time for that.

https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...3d2c4227dfdc2e

The mentor system provides more experienced players a means to offer advice and guidance to newer players.

- What is a mentor?
Mentors are veteran players who chose to offer their time and experience to help guide new adventurers. To facilitate their assistance, mentors will gain access to a special chat channel as well as a means to easily register for duties and trials with new players.

https://blog.playstation.com/2016/02...mentor-system/

Q: The mentor system is going to be introduced in Patch 3.2, which hits the FFXIV servers on the February 23rd. Can you tell us roughly what the mentor system is and why you have chosen to implement this feature?

FFXIV: Naoki Yoshida

A: “Mentor” is a special status for experienced players, who are only able to call themselves mentors after obtaining certain achievements and meeting certain criteria. Mentors are players who support beginners who have just started their adventures in-game and answer their questions from the standpoint of a seasoned veteran. Mentorship is also a new element to help those who role play and to further enhance the player community. With the arrival of Patch 3.2, a special chat channel called the Novice Network will be added to each world. This chat channel can only be used by mentors and new players who have played the game for less than 40 hours. The purpose of this channel is to offer a place for new players to ask mentors about the game and for mentors to give answers to their questions. To eliminate the prospect of any malicious RMT (Real Money Traders) from invading the chat channel, we made it so only mentors can invite new players into it. On top of that, when a mentor and new player form a party, they will both receive an experience point bonus. In addition to this, a special duty roulette called “Duty Roulette: Mentor” that is only available for mentors will be added. This roulette will grant a priority on matching mentors with new players or players who haven’t beaten the specific dungeon or trial yet.

MMORPGs offer a huge amount of content and gameplay systems, so I can imagine how playing one could potentially be overwhelming for some players, especially when they play an MMORPG or online game for the first time. However, the introduction of the mentor system with this new patch enables veteran players to proactively support those who have started the game recently, creating an opportunity for both veteran players and rookies to meet and get to know each other. Now is a very good time for anyone who hasn’t played the game before to begin! To any experienced players out there, I’d love for you all to support our new players. I’m also ready to be a mentor on my personal character.

[-Eliya-]

A mentor is not going to [...] teach you how to play. Mentors don't have time for that.

That is literally what mentors are supposed to do, it's what they should make time for.

[Vyrerus]

Lol, so basically you want the playerbase to eventually grief all mentors out of their mentor status. That's a nice lark.

Beyond the absurd amount of griefing that would occur, this wouldn't be a good idea because then newbies who know nothing would essentially have control over who's going to guide them. I mean, the Novice Network is already pretty bad, so it can't get much worse, but actually putting some sort of power in the hands of people who don't even understand one job, let alone three roles and such is just not a good model.

The only real thing we could implement is either a higher bar for entry for mentors, or a periodic quota for mentorship renewal. Like, you have to run a mentor roulette to duty completion once a week or something.

[Crossu]

Like, you have to run a mentor roulette to duty completion once a week or something.

That's a really nice suggestion.

[Seraphor]

[Like, you have to run a mentor roulette to duty completion once a week or something.]
That's a really nice suggestion.

Not a bad idea.
Although all it would take to become a Mentor after skipping a week is re-registering with the Smith. And skipping a week shouldn't be something that permanently revokes the status because it can be very easy to miss one week of playing the game altogether. Still, it would be something you have to intentionally keep up if you want it.

[SolarisF]

That's a really nice suggestion.

On the contrary, its not really though, but close. I’ve grinded really hard in FF14, I have all classes to level 80, sometimes when my 60 day sub card ends, I like to take a couple weeks off just to rest. If SE tells me that I lose mentorship (which is a long grind in itself to obtain) just because I don’t do what they want once a week, they could kiss my money goodbye for good. The answer is for SE to simply increase payout for mentor roulettes (even for multiple runs in one day) to increase mentor participation in older content. Also I can tell you from experience that there are just as many players who get defensive and don’t want to receive advice as there are players who want to be advised. My role as a mentor is not to tell people how to play if they don’t want to hear it, so my rule of thumb is to simply answer questions if I am asked.

[Nabril]

Lol, so basically you want the playerbase to eventually grief all mentors out of their mentor status. That's a nice lark.

Beyond the absurd amount of griefing that would occur, this wouldn't be a good idea because then newbies who know nothing would essentially have control over who's going to guide them. I mean, the Novice Network is already pretty bad, so it can't get much worse, but actually putting some sort of power in the hands of people who don't even understand one job, let alone three roles and such is just not a good model.

The only real thing we could implement is either a higher bar for entry for mentors, or a periodic quota for mentorship renewal. Like, you have to run a mentor roulette to duty completion once a week or something.

You could raise it as high as you'd like and you'd still have mentors who don't have time to teach you every single aspect of the game. Eventually at some point, people have to be willing to learn.

[Erendis]

Like, you have to run a mentor roulette to duty completion once a week or something.

Unlocking all of mentor roulette duties is not a requirement for battle mentor.

[Kaurhz]

Don't oversell the amount of competence a mentor should be required to have, it's an indication that you're vastly experienced in a variety of the content the game has to offer, not whether you're competent, or incompetent in your class. That shouldn't really be an expectancy of a mentor. Mentors should be expected to give basic gameplay advice to newer players (e.g. How to get a Chocobo, where best to grind, or gain EXP), and really just on the whole be a benchmark for player etiquette. Which arguably a lot of people, even the more technical/advanced players in overall job combat fall way below the expectancy of, which is arguably the bigger, and more overarching issue with the mentor system since the majority of players see it as a vanity fest.

I would propose just outright removing the crown, attach [Mentor tag] to their name within the novice network, and then hold them more accountable for overall etiquette in the community, rather than their general competence.

Again, the issue is just overall etiquette, rather than competence. There comes a certain point where players need to be, and need not be guided, or instructed in general play. Another alternative is SE could just make a better in-game help/tip system that actually covers basics, and recurring mechanics in the game like stack markers.

[KageTokage]

I do feel like they need to do something to address the fact that maybe 80-90% of the mentors in Novice Network on any given server only wanted the crown and never actually help anybody and/or contribute to discussion.

Making the chat opt-in only would be a start.