Mentor moderation Suggestion

[KingScuba]

Hello, just an idea on how you could potentially increase the quality of the mentor/sprout system.

There is a TL;DR at the bottom.

I've seen a lot of mixed reviews in the system. Personally I tried joining at the start and didn't see much worth in the discussions happening in my server at the time, so I never went back as it was more or less just a social club with my questions getting ignored.

Before I get to into it. I'm the Lead Moderator for an official discord for another relatively well known game. I've been in this position for roughly 6 years, as leading communities is a hobby of mine. Currently my Discord server has 22k members, and includes a Mentor system I kick started. I have 1 Lead mentor, and 24 Mentors. That said, my process of choosing mentors requires a full blown interview. This is due to the community I run and the game itself. While not fully compatible here, there's enough overlap that my suggestions could be viable.


My suggestion is geared towards self moderation and overhauling the mentor system itself to become nothing more than the basic idea - a mentor is there to help the sprout, and nothing more.

To begin with, create a Private Discord for people who are Mentors. This discord will ONLY be for people with the mentor status in game. You can rely on the mentors themselves inviting people in via in game DM OR by sending anyone with the title an official Email from Square-Enix.

You'll need at least 1 Mentor to become the lead moderator. This moderator should be as unbiased as possible. The role of this lead moderator is to be a direct chain of correspondence with a FF14 CM to help moderate ALL mentor channels in the game. They'll be responsible for fielding reports from other mentors and moderators to give direct pertinent information to a CM to take quick action against other players utilizing the in game chat system for breaking the rules of the Mentor Channel (Trying to scam, not acting as a mentor should, starting arguments with other mentors, etc)

To find these players will require a FF14 Community Manager to scan the various mentor logs, and find several players across FF14 who are active in the mentor chat, typically send valuable advice to sprouts to begin with, and aren't prone to being emotional or arguing. This will create the basis of the Mentor Player Moderation team.

The Moderators should act as a player driven Quality Control of the Mentor Chat in their servers. The moderators (Not the Lead moderator) Should act as a report mechanism to the Lead moderator. They'll occasionally look at their own mentors chat and look for bad faith actors, or players not using the mentor system as intended.

[KingScuba]

The barebone rules I'd suggest putting in place for the moderation team.

1) All messages must be professional and courteous. Never react impulsively or instinctively, always think twice before you hit send.

2) Remember that your words will usually be taken seriously. Bear in mind that the fact that you are a moderator gives you more responsibilities than power. All rules applied to Mentors are still applied to you, that is, you are not immune.

3) When interacting with users, respect users' opinions as long as they do not attack, degrade, troll or malign other users. If a user requests an explanation about any of your actions, reply adequately explaining your point of view. If a user does something improper or becomes a disturbance, inform the rest of the moderation team and take the necessary measures.

4) There is to be no debating of methodologies or gameplay in the in game mentor channel. Keep that to the discord. Remember that a mentor is a first point of contact with the FF14 game in many cases, and seeing people arguing or debating could be a major turn off to not only the mentor system, but the game itself.

5) Remember to never call ANYTHING in the game bad. A users enjoyment of FF14 is completely subjective to their own experience. A RP player could find validation in only using a certain class or item subset to enhance their own experience. You are welcome to try leading them to a more Meta way of playing, but it should be phrased along the lines of "A better way of doing that might be X"

The Above would be a barebones minimum to making this system work.

What are the benefits to S-E?

1) Making the mentor system function closer to the intended purposes with minimal extra work on their end. Players will do the brunt of the work happily when given the opportunity in a more official capacity.

2) Enhancing the sprout experience when interacting with the Mentor channel, and giving a higher quality impression of FF14 from the gate.


Create a new system of "Mentor Commendations" to be given via sprouts

Quality work deserves to be rewarded. I would suggest making a new "commendation" system specific to mentors to be rewarded by sprouts. These commendations should be allowed to be exchanged for certain in game glamours, mounts, gil, items, or potentially from the cash shop.

There would need to be measures built into the system to prevent exploitation. I.E Only X amount of commendations allowed per timeframe, no more than X commendations can be given from a unique player, or only sprouts with an active subscription can give them.

The commendation turn in should both be attainable but NOT easy to get. If it's for in game stuff, I'd say you'd need between 20 ~ 100 commendations depending on the content.

These commendation rewards should be viewed more as a minor "Thanks for your hard work" from the S-E team more than anything.

[KingScuba]

[TL;DR]

-Create a private discord for mentors
-Create a player moderation team that has a direct pipe line to a SE Community Manager
-Create a Mentor Rule sheet to bring the mentor system more in line with the original spirit
-Remove bad actors from the in game mentor chat
-Potentially add a new Mentor Commendation system for various rewards for being a good mentor.

[Canadane]

Stop trying to elevate the status of mentors.
They're simply experienced players who may be faster at google searching an answer than someone new to the game.

[Angry_Alisaie]

I didn't see this thread as being an attempt to elevate the status of mentors, so much as to help clean up the novice network chat channels and improve the mentoring experience for everyone.

[DrWho2010]

the devs aren't going to turn to a third party program like discord for anything lol

plus they probably don't pay their CM's to go thru player logs. they're too busy doing other things, since they don't even show up here all that much.

[KingScuba]

the devs aren't going to turn to a third party program like discord for anything lol

plus they probably don't pay their CM's to go thru player logs. they're too busy doing other things, since they don't even show up here all that much.

Oh you'd be surprised. It's way more common than you might think. Even if it's NOT an official community, a lot of CMS will work alongside major fan community hubs for various events and activities. You just won't see it because it will stay between the Moderation team and one or two CM's typically. Leaving these communities to the players and just working with them occasionally is basically Free Labor for the CM teams. It also requires almost no dev oversight if you get the right leadership.

As for digging through logs, thatd be a one off activity, only needed for the initial setup. If that gets setup, it'd basically make the entire system on auto pilot for the cms. In fact they'd probably be able to free up some of their human resources elsewhere since they'd have the players moderating themselves.

Mind, Discord is just an example gathering spot. Plenty of ways to skin that cat. I just say discord since practically everyone uses it.

Stop trying to elevate the status of mentors.
They're simply experienced players who may be faster at google searching an answer than someone new to the game.

Well there's some hostility out of nowhere for no good reason. Regardless of what you think, Any new player to the game who joins the sprout channel is going to have their first experience with the community with a mentor. This will set their expectations for the game going forward for better or worse. Since mentor is a system in the game, why not make a suggestion to improve it?

Mentors in this game are in essence the same as my position in my discord. Just another player who wants to help someone, but due to having that particular title, the public perception becomes altered and elevated by human nature. I'm not elevating mentors, I'm just making a suggestion that could help spin em into a more positive track for sprouts overall.

[Arrhin]

I do not see SE turning to a third party forum to host this, too much liability and Mods not on their payroll not necessarily espousing their vision and/or morals. That said the Novice Network is an astounding failure that pretty much everyone predicted. Now if they got off their wallets and actually had GMs prowling that particular chat then maybe it would've worked.

[KingScuba]

I do not see SE turning to a third party forum to host this, too much liability and Mods not on their payroll not necessarily espousing their vision and/or morals. That said the Novice Network is an astounding failure that pretty much everyone predicted. Now if they got off their wallets and actually had GMs prowling that particular chat then maybe it would've worked.

nah, pretty much zero liability. The mods won't have any power outside of their own little community (i.e the discord itself). The only 'power' the mods would have is a direct pipeline to SE CM's to knock out bad actors quicker. This just means that the CM would get a report from the mods, then send the report team to look at various chat logs pertaining to the reportee for validation. Only liability falls onto the Lead mod basically for mucking up their community. Lead mods are very expendable lmao.

Like I said in my intro, I'm actually doing the exact system I proposed above. I run a well known games official discord with a fully integrated mentor system that's a fairly major part of it imo. I get a direct pipe line to the CM's for various issues that crop up. It's very successful overall. The publisher gives the mods outlines on what to do and how to do it, then the players moderate themselves.

We're not on the publishers payroll and we always make sure that it's KNOWN we're just players - This releases the company from any Liability.
The company also set forth basic guidelines and their vision with us at the start, and I enforce that vision.

Just for a few examples of my interactions with the CMs. I only reach out to the CM's MAYBE once a week at most in most cases.
- Forwarding reports I deem critical to game integrity (Photosensitivity, Game Breaking bugs, Threats to the community [i.e potential predators, pedophiles, etc])
- Creating Events for the community with various rewards (i.e Fan Art events), such as in game currency or cosmetics. (I usually do this 4 ~ 5 times a year and try to get my teams little thank you gifts along the way)
- Forwarding overly bad behavior reports (I've only done this once or twice in the year I've run the discord from the 100s of reports I get.)
- Being an extended resource for the CMs for content creators to get in contact with the company

SE would have to invest hundreds of man hours a week to investigate the mentor channel to make it run without player intervention. This means hundreds of thousands of USD per year JUST to make it work right. Their time, effort, and money is MUCH better spent reacting to reports from players instead of trying to preemptively fixing this particular issue. That's sadly the reality, and I can't blame them for it at all.

Utilizing your fans to do the dirty work for you is a norm in the gaming industry, and is very successful when done right. It costs the company almost nothing. It can create a better atmosphere as well as giving the players not only a fun hobby (Like i consider it) but also valuable experience if they choose to get into working with gaming companies - I've known many people in my position that have gone on to work in the industry as CM's themselves.