Mentor Roulette's Achievement Grind Harms New Players' Experiences

[Amelia_Everheart]

I've been doing mentor roulette quite a lot lately and I finally decided to up and make this thread because of some discussions I have had with new players in game I've queued into with mentor roulette.

I'm sure many players who are mentors will be familiar with the experience, or any players who have queued up frequently for extremes via the duty finder without a premade: oftentimes whenever I'm queued into an EX with a group of mentors one or several mentor roulette players immediately drop party and I can't say I blame them.

I avoid doing so because I enjoy helping new players through content, and I recognize how bad of an experience it makes it for these new players to have mentors immediately drop from their party when they've spent a long time waiting for a duty finder queue because they aren't familiar with how the community normally prefers to use the PF for EX+ content.

However, the system, as it's designed doesn't really give the players much incentive to cheer them on, and I think this is a failure more on the design side than a failure of the players. You can talk all you want about how this is bad behavior on the players' part, but ultimately the system is designed such that there is no incentive to actually, really be a mentor and help players through difficult content.

Why would a player sit around in one of the more difficult EX fights wiping for an hour only to get no progress towards their achievement when they can leave and get a 30 minute penalty instead? Even if they do stick around and manage to pull the group through with echo, coaching, or making sound macros to call out mechanics to really try to help these players through this content... all that's waiting for them is 1/2000, the same as a guildhest that takes less than 30 seconds and no effort.

The system is designed such the mentorship opportunities to help players through harder content is actually something to hope to avoid. All that would be needed to remedy a lot of this behavior is to actually give players a reason to stick around. I don't think making punishments more severe is appropriate, especially not with how mentor roulette is already regarded as an awful grind as is. Making it more painful is not a solution.

Instead, I think the community, sprouts especially, would be far better served by having a system that fosters assisting them through new or difficult content. Something like the new player bonus to duties would be one approach. Another would be to award 'bonus points' for longer or more difficult content. IE: Dungeons reward 2 points, and Extremes reward 5 or maybe even 10 points towards that 2000 roulettes. Then you'd wind up with players not hoping to avoid getting dropped into extremes, but instead hoping for it. If players can help coach new adventurers through extremes consistently, they make progress much more quickly, and there's a real incentive to try to encourage good behavior, rather than toxic behavior.

[Amelia_Everheart]

All too often whenever I get into an EX, I wind up with sprouts confused why half the party just immediately dropped, including both tanks and a healer, which now means that the duty is basically not going to fill and they just need to back out. While it reflects poorly on the players who act this way, it's ultimately a problem encouraged by the design of the achievement grind not taking into account the time or effort involved with the kinds of content that go with it. Nor the fact that, if you can't help them through, that you've spent an hour of your time only to get no reward at all.

This toxic behavior is being reinforced by design that doesn't consider the kinds of incentives they're setting up for players who just want to grind the achievement and by doing so is creating an environment that really harms a lot of new players' experiences with extremes.

If my first experiences with extremes were as bad as what I'm seeing lately in mentor roulette, I'd probably have never bothered to try them any further. I hope that the designers are willing to look into this and recognize how the system encourages bad behavior, and how new FFXIV players are negatively impacted by the system as it currently exists.

[RobynDaBank]

My response prediction: "then they should just remove hard duties (especially EX) from the roulette."

[Lustre]

They should just turn EX+ off in the DF, except for unsynch or premades. It would be better for everyone this way. Stops mentors having to drag clueless sprouts through synched ramuh ex, and stops sprouts from expecting clears on ex+ from DF.

[Syln]

Frankly you didn't had to explain it, it's pretty obvious that some people only interested in the mount won't put any effort whatsoever in helping sprouts and probably leave when the duty involve slightly challenging/longer content.

I only took the mentor status to grind the mount, and never gave advice unless asked (or ask if they want some when they do obvious mistake over and over) never left a duty even when it's a clown fest as long as the party members communicate.

Now as i see it : If a mentor leave a mentor duty instantly or even before 10 min : the usual penalty + removing access to the mentor roulette for one week the first time, with increased penalty if they continue their behavior, and finaly removing of the status with no possibilities to get it on this account ever again.

At some point whatever your reasons are to be a mentor, you chose to be in a party of new players (or worse, notoriously obnoxious old players that are on an alt) so don't make their experience miserable just because you can't handle wasting time. You put yourself in this situation not them.

[Krotoan]

Frankly you didn't had to explain it, it's pretty obvious that some people only interested in the mount won't put any effort whatsoever in helping sprouts and probably leave when the duty involve slightly challenging/longer content.

I only took the mentor status to grind the mount, and never gave advice unless asked (or ask if they want some when they do obvious mistake over and over) never left a duty even when it's a clown fest as long as the party members communicate.

Now as i see it : If a mentor leave a mentor duty instantly or even before 10 min : the usual penalty + removing access to the mentor roulette for one week the first time, with increased penalty if they continue their behavior, and finaly removing of the status with no possibilities to get it on this account ever again.

At some point whatever your reasons are to be a mentor, you chose to be in a party of new players (or worse, notoriously obnoxious old players that are on an alt) so don't make their experience miserable just because you can't handle wasting time. You put yourself in this situation not them.

Pretty much. The mount needs to move to something else people can grind and not under the pretense of being a "mentor". Mentors need to have a roulette full of "challenging" instances and perhaps a 2nd roulette of EX only so you know exactly what you're getting into.

[Amelia_Everheart]

Now as i see it : If a mentor leave a mentor duty instantly or even before 10 min : the usual penalty + removing access to the mentor roulette for one week the first time, with increased penalty if they continue their behavior, and finaly removing of the status with no possibilities to get it on this account ever again.

At some point whatever your reasons are to be a mentor, you chose to be in a party of new players (or worse, notoriously obnoxious old players that are on an alt) so don't make their experience miserable just because you can't handle wasting time. You put yourself in this situation not them.

I really don't think increasing the penalty is a good solution, or at least not on its own. If the developers have the ability to foster an environment where players are encouraged to help out sprouts and actually provide advice to get them through EXs, I think that's a great thing, and there's the potential to do that here. If players actually have an incentive to help new players through EXs then there's an opportunity to turn a negative experience into a positive one, where players actively are encouraged to help out people in EXs because doing so, if they clear it, gets them a large speed up to their progress on the grind.

This could also be complemented by another roulette which allows players to effectively opt out of queuing into EX content, where you'd see a twofold improvement. First, the players who really aren't looking to, or confident in their ability to help new players through EXs don't have to do so. Second, players who are able to actually stand to benefit from actually acting like a mentor and assisting players. At the very least, you'd see far fewer instances of EXs starting only for half the group to leave.

Regardless of the approach, incentivizing it, or splitting it off I think would be healthier for the game than just giving harsher punishments out for leaving. That could be done in combination with other options to make such changes more palatable, but just cracking down on it outright doesn't really solve the issue of the system still being designed in a way where getting to help people rather than your 30s hest is a let down.

[Jeeqbit]

We should have a roulette specifically for Extreme trials if they are going to be in a roulette. People would do it because there are people who actually enjoy high-end content and just find it fun.

[RobynDaBank]

We should have a roulette specifically for Extreme trials if they are going to be in a roulette. People would do it because there are people who actually enjoy high-end content and just find it fun.

Nah, people will always do it with PF. Some curious souls and some newbies will queue up from there, have a trashfire occur, and learn their lesson.

[Jaquan]

Nah, people will always do it with PF. Some curious souls and some newbies will queue up from there, have a trashfire occur, and learn their lesson.

From my experience as a newbie and a person enjoying taking it slow through older content and experiencing as it was intended... Party Finder isn't exactly best choice overall. I've noticed people generally assume you just want a clear and suggest doing it unsynced. Sometimes I even wonder if there's a point for that content to exist...