Honestly, I think there should be two different roulettes with two different rewards. I really enjoy doing mentor roulette, knowing I'm helping those long waiting queues and possibly getting to help new first time players experience and get through content. But it's definitely an anxiety to find out I've been queued into any random extreme trial i'm expected to remember the mechanics of well enough to explain to a group of people who have likely never attempted this content before. Having a mentor roulette for normal content to help fill queues and provide some guidance, and having a separate one for extremes with a corresponding reward (for completion only) would still motivate mentors to jump in and help both these queues while knowing more about what they're getting into and committing to
This is actually the main reason I'm avoiding becoming a mentor. I wanna help other players but I haven't really touched the early expac extremes and stuff, and I reeeeeeeeally don't wanna learn entire fights just on the off chance I'll need to then later teach them to some sprouts of unpredictable willingness to learn
I mean, couldn't you just queue for a non-mentor roulette and achieve the same result? I'm not saying this to be mean or anything, but if you take a more novice centric view of things, as is the intention, this just sounds more like you want to be a mentor without the, you know, mentoring, or rather just being more selective about what you mentor in. in which case just stick to novice network and give the help you want to help there, instead of jumping into mentor roulette. Personally I've loved it every time an EX or a 24 man shows up in mentor roulette. Help is help after all, novices in that content is just as deserving of novices in any other, when we sign up for mentor roulette we're signing up to help new players, thats really the say all and end all of it. If we started getting to pick and choose *where* we do, you're going to end up wiht something similar to Crystal Tower Roulette 2.0 where some content is just dead because everyone actively avoids it. I fully get and understand what you're saying regarding your own experience, but you're not the focus, the novices are you know? If that is that much of a deal breaker, just don't sign up for it and leave to us who do?
I actually think this is an interesting idea but the mount should only be for the extremes. Then people queuing know what they are signing up for and will be incentivized to actually clear the roulette. The non extreme version could have a lesser reward like a title? Unique glam? So that you have a reason to fill spots and complete random duties but not as prestigious as the mount
i was just recently badgered into unlocking my mentor roulette.. I'm one of those mutants that legitimately likes helping new players though.. we should change the crown mentors get for a watering can, remind them they they are not special, they are there for a reason that isn't showing off a crown. they are there to help our next batch of players know what the heck is going on
I know a guy who did content explicitly to, and I quote, "reclaim his crown" e.i went queuing SCH for SMN to be 100 because he hates healing and dps queue and it's the only reason to up healer. He is the worst person to do something new with, and he loves ruining it "for the teaching opportunity". He will pull aoes together, he will run off with stack marks, he will spin with the bosses. It's an all around terrible time unless his wife is joining (his savage raiding wife that is in a different guild than him). Unfortunately my friends think this guy is funny so they bring him, and my husband absolutely refuse to heal instances with this guy, or be his co-tank on trials.
@@drake713 Sounds like he is more of a recurring pain than he should be for you. I know it's easier said than done since this involves a play group but, I think you and your husband shouldn't party with the trouble maker anymore - for any reason
@@grizzlybear6377 Yeah. Fortunately he's busy with a new job but Sophia was a terror we haven't done Zurvan yet. Running the wrong way on purpose for the pull slide is very easy to get people to follow you when you have a crown. Telling him to knock it off and try he's just even harder on making more "mistakes", to teach people what goes wrong. Which is draining because by doing everything wrong on purpose he obviously know how to run the content he ruins the correct way, and many bosses can quickly spiral into chaos without that extra un-help already
Mentor Roulette has to be one of the most stressful ways to play the game there is. Even if you are incentivized to help people that doesn't get through the dozen hurdles you have to jump just to get to the actual helping. I've spent dozens of times trying to teach people fights to people who don't read the chat, ignored me after two minutes out of frustration, who don't speak the same language(s) than me and then people who will straight up insult me for teaching without them asking them first and people who have insulted me for not teaching them before they had to ask. The whole system puts all these expectations on Mentors and half of them don't even care. Wanting to help has never been enough and it doesn't help that every time we talk about the mentor system half of the conversation is about how so many mentors are assholes who don't care about other people. IMO the last thing the mentor system needs is more incentive to do it. Anyone who genuinely wants to help has to first accept that they will be at the very least meme'd on if not insulted for free just for using the burger king crown and making them an even smaller minority would just break the system even more.
While I agree with a lot of Mentors not really being teacher, the opposite is also true unfortunately. Many new players going into xyz content don't want to be taught. They are either unwilling to listen due to having a fragile ego or they just want to learn something blind. The current solution is just terrible all around. I think tracking the time would probably be the best idea. They could also have a "Mentee" option, so when you queue for Extreme content the game would actually ask you whether or not you want a Mentor to guide you or not. They could also add Mentor-specific commendations, which you could give a Mentor even if you fail to clear the content.
lmao Mentee, you could have said student or scholar or apprentice. But they already DO have that option, the issue is that it's opt-out instead of opt-in. You can turn OFF your sprout at any time, but by keeping your sprout you are saying "PLEASE MENTOR ME!"
i actually love doing content blind and learning as i go. for all normal mode content in the game, i dont think thats an issue. for anything above that its probably rude but i religate myself to partyfinder for that side of things.
as a Mentor who just recently finished the 2000 runs, I have noticed two things about the Data Center that I run on (In this case, Crystal) Whenever I got an Extreme Trial (Often Ramuh, Shiva, Moggle Mog, or Great Hunt) The sprouts would come in with absolutely no preparation and no understanding of how the fights work, and often no understanding of their own abilities. Those same sprouts, if they are Tank (I'm DPS) will speed forward and pull before any explanation can be given, and often don't even read the chat. It was always discouraging for any Mentor in the instance, and often one of us would leave merely as a courtesy to the others. Those sprouts didnt want to be mentored, they wanted a carry, and they didn't get it. This happened very often. 2nd, I would often just get the current Expert Dungeons over and over. Mentor Roulette should be about running older content and helping sprouts through it, not babysitting Returner Sprouts (Crownsprouts) get their daily clears. It got boring running them over and over. Getting a Stormblood or Shadowbringers dungeon was a refreshing breeze. I can safely say that those Mentors who are serious about being good folk usually get beaten down by these kinds of situations and become jaded and routine by Run 500. By Run 2000 I can safely say I don't want to touch that roulette again.
I'm currently on about 3.5k mentor roulettes done and I agree that you shouldn't get newer content unless it's literally the only thing left to fill. I would prefer to help actual sprouts. Overall though the system is fine. I don't give advice until new players have tried the pulls a few times anyway so them running in head first actually works for me. It's better for them to learn by experience than to have the first time experience spoiled in chat before starting.
Yeah, sprouts should end either at a timed point, or in general just way earlier than level 90 out of 100. Like, yes there are some new mechanics, and plenty of people who refuse to retain or learn anything at all but I might just be a terrible person who think you should have learned by level 80 that a stack marker with layers of buddy arrows will hit repeatedly. (Am a sprout myself been playing for a month but Nidhogg, who is a msq fight, is always a nightmare).
The solution I thought of after doing my 2000 mentors was having some sort of weighting system where guildhests were worth the bare minimum point of progress, and as you got to harder/less desirable/more intensive content or content that asked more of your time, you would have a higher possible point reward for it. Extremes giving tons of progress, main scenarios giving a decent amount for their long times spent in instance, with dungeons being your 'average' amount of progress and so on. It does abstract it in a weird way and does make it easier to get the mount reward, and within some types of duties like alliance raids there's a time variance, but it's far better than 'some hours I receive 10 guildhests and make tons of progress, or in that same amount of time I teach 7 sprouts Ramuh EX and get 10% of the progress'. Appreciate the video! It tracks with all my feelings about it.
Yeah that is also a way to do it, that could weigh the perceived difficulty of specific content, and can remove more of the potential "tricks" to it! 😊 Thank you!
I enjoy mentor roulette for backfilling lower level duties that were struggling, but I hate when I get level 90 dungeons that didn't need any help in the first place
Personally I use Mentor Roulette when I don't know what I wanna do, something easy, something harder. I play as a tank and think, well, probably someone might be waiting a long time and could use some help with their queue, so I'll help. So it's a win-win-win in my mind. I gave up hunting mounts a long time ago, the grind is just not worth it for me personally after PVP locked out special mount rewards.
I've done about 900 of these roulettes. This videos homework is spot on. I never leave the hard content because honestly it'd thr o ly fun part. Ex trials and firdt time clears are exhilarating. But thats not most mentors. About half or more will just leave and yell at the sprouts for queueing into it. System could use some help but how is definitely the question.
This is the whole thing -- it doesn't group mentors with people who asked for help, or who need help, or even new players. It has nothing to do with actually BEING a mentor.
7:00 This is the flaw in the logic for the vast majority of extremes I've gotten in mentor roulette over the years. Over 90% of the groups I've attempted to talk to and help them learn or realize what they're doing wrong simply don't respond back, don't read chat period or get defensive because they made mistakes. It's more likely that they'll pull before I've managed to explain or I'll finish typing, there's dead silence and then we do the next pull and they make the exact same mistakes. It's to the point where if the duty starts and it's completely silent or they insta pull and then stay silent after the wipe, I know it's another one of these groups and I leave. It's not worth the headache if the newcomers don't want to learn. It's not purely on the mentors overall, the sprouts themselves also have to contribute to the mentor system by wanting to learn and interact.
This is also a fair point. Some of the sprouts are completely unprepared for a duty that requires communication and proper team work to win, and the only thing we can hope in that case, is that they don't try again later, or that they learn what extreme content actually is ^^' Indeed, these are the kind of examples where I think it would really just be better if we didn't have the ability to queue for extremes for example. That would at least give the sprout a stop and moment to think if the button instead opens the party finder and tells them to make a group ^^ But I wonder if that would help!
While I was a sproutie myself I had the displeasure of doing Ifrit EX using duty finder. No one knew what to do so I explained the mechanics as best as I could after watching a video. The other tank and I managed to provoke and pass the boss around so our healers didn't struggle that much, I told the healers where to bait AOEs, after a few wipes they got the timing down, it was looking good. We then spent about an hour wiping to nails because the dps would not wait for the debuffs to wear off. We cleared with 1:32 left on the timer. Thanks to the BLM and MCH being dead for the nails section (or the healers didnt ress them on purpose). Garuda, Odin, Titan and King Mog (patch 5.3) didn't go much smoother but sweet Hydaelyn they were either too used to braindead content where you can clear with just a decent tank and healer or just didn't care about wasting 7 other people's time.
You can never fully "solve" the problem of some people being stubborn or not wanting to learn, but I think something that might alleviate the "silent sprout who doesn't read chat in a DF Extreme" problem would be to make it way more clear in-game that Extremes (and Savages) REQUIRE teamwork and communication, and likely will not be cleared on a first attempt. Considering that the difference in difficulty between "XYZ Duty" and "XYZ Duty (Hard)" is basically nothing, many new players wrongly assume that the difference between (Hard) and (Extreme) is similar. A number of Extreme Trial unlock quests also require you to finish the Extreme Trial to get the quest out of your log, which incentivizes players to actually do them instead of ignoring them. Here's my proposal: - Rename all of the "XYZ (Hard)" duties to something else. The higher-level versions of previous duties like the ARR Trials and various dungeons can just be called "The Bowl of Embers 2" or whatever. Duties that don't have a "normal" version (Ravana, Bismarck, and the post-ARR primals) should just drop the label and replace it with nothing. - Change all of the Extreme Trial unlock quests to NOT require completion of the duty in order to finish the quest. - Call out explicitly in tutorial text when a new player picks up their first Extreme or Savage duty quest that the thing they just unlocked is very difficult, requiring coordination and teamwork and multiple attempts. It should also probably call out that there is no practical benefit to completing Savages/Extremes outside of the current expansion. Some people will not read this of course, but it's better than leaving it vague. Again, this won't solve the problem that some people don't want to cooperate, but it will reduce the amount of sprouts queuing into difficult content without even realizing what they're doing. And as a side-note, Odin should probably be moved to the "High-End Trials" section and treated like an Extreme, and Coils of Bahamut should similarly be treated more like a Savage by the game -- when I first unlocked Odin I sat in a dead queue for like 90 minutes because I thought it was like any other normal-tier Trial.
@@CaetsuChaijiCh IMO that's a flaw of the normal content being way too easy and requiring no thought whatsoever to clear. Something really needs to be done to narrow the gap between normal and high-end content in this game. We never had this problem in FF11 because by level 20 you'd well and truly learned how to communicate or you'd never even make it to level 20. (Of course, it also helped that the mentor icon was a blue blob instead of a golden crown and there were zero rewards attached to the program.) At some point during the MSQ the game really needs to force players to actually *talk* to eachother.
@@CaetsuChaijiCh No, its not. If they dont try later, they will quit the game. Is that what you want? Sprouts are lifeblood of every mmorpg. They have to learn, they have learn, to learn. Just because they are "dumb" from your perspective, doesnt mean they actually are dumb. They might just dont understand, yet. They got over normal diff primal because others carried them, but never told them what are they doing wrong. So they try Ex trial and hit the wall. I did leveling roulette today, got Titan with sprout whm and (i think) mentor tank. Healer went faaar to the side, barelly managed to keep tank and himself alive casting Cure1. We dps got no heal for long time, before he realized he could cast Medica instead(sadly still from distance). Nobody said the word to him. Well i wanted suggest him to use it, but i was busy surviving. We killed Titan, nobody died, but did he learn, to learn? Hopefully. When he gets to Garuda, he should know better before someone gets angry and shoo him away. Problem is communication. Nobody even bothers to respond if someone asks(not all the time but very often), or give them time to ask in first place. Pull, pull, pull. Newbie you are supose to be helping in cutscene? Pull. Dont waste the time actually playing the game. Mentor with that kind of mentality shouldnt be mentor in the first place.
I'll mainly be weighing in here from the perspective of a mentor who wanted to do that job initially, but got past a breaking point in my mentor roulette spam before Endwalker. I'll absolutely admit that was not the healthiest way to do it for my sanity. When I was close to the end I was running 50-60 roulettes per day just to be done with it. However, I do distinctly remember tracking my progress, seeing how many extremes I got and such, but after about half way through or a little less I got to the point where I did not want to offer advice any more or explain mechanics, opting to run a lot of them as red mage and scrape people off the floor to victory. Anyway, the 3 possibilities with giving gameplay/mechanic advice can best be divided as: 1- the sprout was receptive and started improving- great! this is the desired outcome, but it felt more rare than the other 2. 2- the players simply ignore everything, don't respond, and continue cure 1 spamming and single targeting dungeon trash and playing ice mage, 3- they are outright hostile with the best responses being 'you don't pay my sub' and the worst being abuse. Enough of 2 and 3 made it so I really thought twice about even giving advice again, and soured my experience overall. On the note of extremes, and to echo another comment- situations 2 and 3 were also highly common especially in the harder ARR/HW extremes. Some examples include sprout tanks face pulling Ramuh as soon as the gate drops even after several wipes, players missing entire sets of accessories or other gear in extreme trials. Overall I completed many extremes that were more lenient with the ilvl sync (Garuda, Ravana) but tended to avoid (leave/vote abandon) the more deadly ones like Ramuh and Nidhogg. Of additional note with my situation being a sprout in Stormblood, I simply did not get to experience those fights myself at current content level, and thus was far less thrilled with seeing them in roulettes than others. Mentors are not walking encyclopedias for every fight in the game (there are a lot) and that is definitely not in the requirements when signing up to be one. It would be worth considering this side, too, if they are ever to make any changes to this fundamentally broken system.
@@koopakape Mentors cannot help people who are unwilling to be helped. That is the majority of people who magically ignore everything around them and somehow think that going into a queue for an extreme that released several expansions ago is a good idea. If you have even tried to do Mentor roulette you'd understand. It also doesn't help that the novice network is full of "mentors" who teach blatantly wrong information that a single minute of google would say otherwise, and nobody tries to argue it since you'll get thrown out of the novice network. The system doesn't work because Square refuses to hold people hostage until they learn (locking people out of MSQ if they fail to do a very basic dps rotation), or the Mentor system is far too lenient and should be brought to the other extreme where it locks out people who can't do current expansion Ultimates.
So there's this idea called "selection bias" or "confirmation bias", where the events that stand out the most in your memory are ones you look for again. Your brain NATURALLY is panicked into a fight-or-flight HEY F&%K YOU mode when someone yells at you for trying to help, so you naturally remember it better. Most of the time, I've found almost every sprout is incredibly receptive, grateful as HECK, thankful that I would offer them my time, and begging for MORE tips and tricks by the end! There definitely were a LOOOOT of "Bots" I will say (Not actual bots, just people who don't type, don't read, don't want to read or learn, and do the bare minimum to scrape by), but I like to think they don't want to do hardcore content anyways, and are probably just working hard and have a day off, so I push extra hard to make sure they can relax more and we can clear the dungeon while they Ice-Mage! Hey, Blizzard *IS* cool, I don't blame them! 3, when people start yelling at me about how I need to shut up and just let them play, I just apologize "I didn't mean to step on your toes. I just wanted to help, as a mentor I've played this game a lot and wanted to make sure you were enjoying it by being the best you could be! Sorry it made the experience worsen for you, feel free to blacklist me so that you don't have to listen to me talk in the future, however! I will offer advice to other people instead! ^^" and usually they get even more salty and sour but I blacklist them at that point. They won't make it in the FFXIV community with that attitude, and I know it, so I just let them eat themselves alive. Shame, if they cared even a bit they'd have found a beautiful place to love. If they DO make it in this game, they grew up, pulled their own heads out of their butts, and just learned to play. You're fully right about the hard content, though. I really wish there was some way that we could handle people walking into The Whorl (Extreme) with ilvl 50 armor and ilvl 30 accessories as if they weren't going to get pancaked every single sneeze. We can't mentor that besides saying "So, we will not be clearing this fight, and it is pretty much heavily your fault, but there's nothing you can do about it :) Go to Mor Dhona and go get accessories!" Which we CANNOT say because WTF! Obviously we do tell them to bump up their item level, but this game just needs to make it clear how important the party finder system is!
I’ve met some legitimately helpful mentors, and I’ve met a lot more mentors that complain at ppl trying to learn something new in roulettes or expressing that if people who do not wallpull in df should be reported because it’s so much slower. There used to be a mentality in 14 that we teach new players stuff, maybe not every extreme trials but at least the base dungeons. I’ve seen less patience with this over time, and I think that is where the mentor problem stems from. Yes you should probably pull a lot as a tank in dungeons, as do I when I tank, but saying people are wasting your time when they aren’t optimal is kind of wierd. Do these people also complain to the old lady in the queue at the grocers because she stopped to talk with the person at the register? There is nothing wrong with minmaxxing, but when mentors actively complain to novice network about tanks being slow it becomes kind of hostile to learn something new and people will start playing other games.
Having done the 2000 roulettes I needed for the mount, I was 100% trying to teach the extremes every time I got them, you just sometimes get players that either don't learn fast enough to clear or are completely unwilling to learn which is why I still do leave if I don't see us clearing in the hour. Like Ramuh EX with tanks that don't read chat is just impossible. I also got a Garuda EX at some point with healers that kept telling me to shut up, stop talking and "just play the game" while deleting every marker I put down to help... Sprouts usually did appreciate the advice in extremes. The reality is that sprouts usually don't want it in regular content and will often react negatively to being given unsolicited advice, so I'm 100% in the camp of not giving any advice unless 1. The fight has a mechanic that can easily wipe us on the first go or 2. It's an extreme. At least make it so there's a checkbox somewhere that says "I would like to be paired with a mentor" so we know the sprouts we get paired with DO want advice, it would help a LOT. Otherwise I think mentor roulette would work better rebranded as a backfill for other roulettes over trying to get burger king crowns to try to teach new players. It just doesn't work atm.
The "I would like to be paired with a mentor" checkbox is a pretty good idea. Indeed, when I do content, I typically wait until things go wrong before trying to teach anything, specifically because a lot of players respond negatively to being taught, until they realize they need it. It can get awkward, because this can also be interpreted on the other side of the fence, as a mentor not even trying to communicate! Also, that Garuda EX example sounds terrible. I feel like to some degree, those players were actively preventing the duty from being cleared >.
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Yep, and they kept telling people to stay hidden behind the rocks, which is a bad idea because then the rocks get knocked down and her ultimate gets harder to live through... On the flipside, I've gotten a Thordan Extreme that cleared in one pull, that one was surreal.
It is impossible to mentor people who don't want to be mentored. A prime example would be Shiva extreme. I have explained to countless sprouts why we must all stand behind Shiva when she uses her bow and people just didn't want to listen. This in my opinion is the main reason why mentor roulettes don't work.
I'd suggest at least some of the sprouts aren't actually ignoring you, they're running around in panic. That said, I of course agree they should both read the chat and act accordingly.
To be fair, my main issue as a sprout was noticing which weapon Shiva was using.. I got lucky on my 3rd run as a healer, thankfully the other healer survived, res'd me and we were able to finish but with all the spells and commotion its tough unless you fix the settings to only see your attacks and shivas but I enjoy the chaos, y'know?
That is actually the real life problem of teachers all over the world. Try teaching something teens and kids dont care and want nothing about it. If you can solve this, you will solve the mentor thing.
I had a mentor roulette like that with Ramuh(EX) the other day. We were telling people not to grab the orbs repeatedly because they were needed for tanks and tethers. Run ended up getting abandoned as soon as that was an option. And it was one of the mentors that was the biggest perpetrator of just walking into orbs for no reason.
I really don't think they are ignoring you. They just aren't used to certain mechanics yet and dont now what to look out for. The whole battle might be really overwhelming for them. I know I was when I was a sprout.
You forgot another possible setup: a group of sprouts that queue for an extreme and insist on a 100% blind run, therefore refusing any advice or teaching the mentor may have to give. I've been in that situation too many times, where I'm basically not allowed to help, but expected to sit there and fail for an hour + like I have that kind of spare time just sitting around
That is true. Personally if I ended up in such a group, I would almost certainly report them for refusing to communicate. If you want to have full creative control over how your group does things (a blind run for example), then you should make a group in party finder 🙁 and that also goes for sprouts. But that is just my opinion of course 😊 Edit: there's also a difference between wanting to pull and see the fight, and getting tips and tricks and advice as you see more of the fight. It's just not okay to refuse advice altogether when you are technically publicly queueing for something. The duty finder is there to work through beating the content together 🤔
I'm still newish at the game (working towards shadowbringers DLC, after finishing Stormblood), my personal view is that i'll go in to a duty any role and just ask (i'm new/first time, what should i look out for?) On the other hand though, I will never look up a guide to a fight, minus ex, as i don't cue for those. Things i haven't cleared once which i think is the purpos of the party finder, I want to go in and learn, and experriance the duty as intended as much as is possible @@CaetsuChaijiCh
It is of no fault to the mentor to give ideas on how to do the fight. That being said, I personally wouldn't throw an entire essay of exactly what to do but I would explain to them what they have just seen. Imo it also helps you as a player look out for future mechanics rather than being solely reliant on guides as you start actually putting your own words into practice.
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Wanting to do content blind is not reportable my dude. As annoying as it is, they are not required to take our advice - not wanting to listen isn't against TOS. I'd suggest you read up on it and just leave a party that's frustrating you.
@kellevichy wanting to do content blind is not reportable no. Going into content blind and then not at least trying to work with your team is rude, but perhaps not reportable. Refusing to communicate with your team is reportable, and is where "not wanting to listen" leads to. It also applies to intentionally impeding completion of duties, which is a vague one, but also reportable. Now that doesn't mean you should report them for that specifically, I'd say that highly depends on context, but that is to say, yes I did in fact read both the community guidelines, and the various report reasons found in the ingame support desk 😊
On a second note, a simple change they could do to make the Mentor Roulette process more appealing is if you couldn't get the same instance twice in a row. Getting Praetorium or Troia 4 times in a row can drain anyone's mental strength.
I dislike this about the way the Roulette works outside of Mentoring, too. I KNOW I will get Praetorium, I just know it. Main Story Roulette is a 95% chance Praetorium and somethings needs to change about it - either by altering Praetorium and allowing people to skip the cutscenes (And appropriately giving flack to people who don't respect when a sprout wants to view the cutscenes) or by altering the layout to make Praetorium a Part 1 / 2 dungeon. I know it's hard to find a solution for this because some people, especially more experienced players, WILL keep playing while a Sprout watches cutscenes which diminishes their participation in the fights and gets them booted into a cutscene talking to Nero followed by Nero being gone and the group hijacking the Elevators... but I seriously dread Praetorium at this point. It's not even exciting content, most of this mission is extremely easy, TOO easy, especially the mobs. You can let your Fae solo heal the tank while they're leashing mobs.
Mentor roulette was never supposed to be rewarding, it's supposed to be a service to the community, there's a reason Astrope's description says the mount is only given to those of GENTLE hearts. IMO Battle mentor should only be given to people who ran the roulette, make it so it has stages, and the more runs u do the closer u get to getting the mentor title doesn't matter if the game has less mentors anyway if no one is running the roulette or helping anyone. take away everyone's crowns if they're not using them. Also, as a mentor, in my 2000 runs, i never told someone to go party finder anything, if you're queueing for the roulette, that's on YOU, and you should help whoever's there to beat the content. Some people don't wanna pf and that's totally fine, in JP server they use duty finder to clear savage. so i don't think mentors should be complaining that people aren't using pf, that's just mentors not willing to teach. Not to mention, the roulette isn't even that bad, sure, u'll get bad duties, long alliance raids, but sometimes u'll also get an extreme, with 3 sprouts and 5 mentors, and it's a walk in the park, mentors should be helping each other as well in mentor roulette, be prepared for the duties, or at least willing to learn a new fight u've never done synced before. Mentor roulette changed me as a player, and i think aside from filling the game's duty queues, that is the whole point of mentor roulette. it's about helping the community, not doing what's most convenient or rewarding for the mentor. it's not supposed to be interesting or appealing, it's literally just a service u do out of kindness, OR for a mount. but regardless, even if u did it for the mount, u can't argue that u didn't help someone along the way. Mentors should aspire to be an example, and not complain like the average player.
People on JP use duty fighter to do current EX/Savage with actually good consistency which is why I am surprised people even talk about forcing newbies to PF. (I am a JP Datacenter player) That being said there are some perks to the other servers. JP servers will only use 1 or 2 strats, and there will be cases where a new optimal strat is found but would likely never be used outside of statics because everyone is too used to the old strats to care about the newer ones, even if the setup was easier.
@@deltaoalice9281 yeah, i just think it's wrong to tell players to pf when they're just trying to run the content. it just sounds like you don't want to help when you say that. i know most people probably don't like my comment, but i stand by it. all the mentors complaining are just lazy.
@@deltaoalice9281 You mean raid finder, which allows you to filter matchmaking to completion only. JP players don't use it for practice or to learn the fight, which is a major difference from the situation with mentor roulette - having to guide new people through hard content that they might not be actually skilled enough to do yet.
I do Mentor roulette primarily for fun. I enjoy helping out sprouts and it lets me relive my own days as a sprout. The issue I find with actually mentoring is that a LOT of players do not take kindly to any amount of advice. And indeed, some may even report for it, which is not ideal. I am of course, extremely patient and respectful when I say anything, but after a number of people getting angry at me for even suggesting we do the mechanics right, it doesn't even feel worth it to say anything. I loaded into Ramuh EX one time in Mentor roulette and they basically refused to do orbs right and I was like, "You can try to brute force it, but it really helps to get that down. You're just gonna keep dying if you don't." and this dude started saying I was toxic and I shouldn't be bossing them around. Like of course mentors don't bother mentoring when there are players like that. Most mentors I know that actually enjoy mentoring just wait to say anything until someone asks and most people just don't ask. Making this comment at 5:59 so you may very well make this exact point LOL
as someone who has ran over 1000 mentor roulettes in a bit over a year now i have to say that it sometimes makes me question my life choices. like a few days ago i've lost about 3 hours trying to complete a single mentor roulette because every time i got one of the old extremes where some didn't bother to listen to mentors explaining mechanics and just pull early and stuff like that. the whole evening was just wiping over and over again until the time was up. i literally cried. but other times i get into low level dungeon runs or leveling dungeons with first timers and they appreciate my advice and warnings about boss mechanics which makes it worth it to me because i like helping and always try to make the tank feel safe when i go as healer (which is most of the time). sorry for the ramble. love your content ♥
As someone who has completed the grind for the Astrope mount. Having done it during Shadowbringers during the lull to Endwalker. I did it in 3 months on Aether basically doing 20 runs a day. I generally hoped to get the quick and easy stuff, obviously. But I never just ran away from EX trials I didn't want to do unless someone happened to leave before me. Yeah, I did the typical stuff most people grinding for the mount did. But I was never the first to leave. I ALWAYS tried to teach people whatever content I was thrown into. but as others have said. You can't mentor people that don't *want* to be mentored.
I've almost got my 2nd Astrophe mount. I prefer to get the harder stuff. The less dungeons the better. I'd prefer to wipe for an hour in an Ex trial than do a single dungeon. On the plus side as a Tank I get 7200 gil each time I run it so I make a lot of money by just spamming the roulette. You love to see it.
I think your idea of having the achievement be based on hours spent in Mentor Roulette duties is actually a really interesting idea! I wouldn't have thought of something like that.
The main problem i have with mentor roulette doesnt have anything to do with difficult content, on the contrarie i really enjoy doing extremes with sprouts and helping them to take theire first step into difficultish content. the main thing that annoys me is that 90% of the time i end up getting queued into a msq group that doesnt even have any new players in them, so it feels like i just had to do msq roulette for a fraction of the usual rewards.
yeah honestly at this point i leave msq dungeons when i get them so that someone (usually a dps) can get a fast msq roul queue and actually benefit from the fat exp, and i just go craft/gather for 30 x)
Even if there is a single sprout and you get queue into a msq dungeon through mentor roulette. The main reason you queue for msq roulette is the chunk of exp you get. Guess what, you need to be max level to queue for mentor roulette so you don't even get that exp.
I think getting a comm system of some sorts specifically for mentors, hours invested into mentor roulette, and how many you've completed, would ultimately solve this issue. Where mentors would essentially have to play the role of the best citizen kinda thing. Where you're getting rewarded for the best you can be, which is why there is no one simple solution to fix it all. You have to add in multiple factors to make it a competent system to have others become reliable without minimal incentive.
Replace the mentor crown with a mentor watering can, watch as 90% of "ehehe crown so good" people dissapear. It'd make more sense too, you're suppose to make sprouts thrive
Also remember to throw in the added note: Since the Free Trial expanded, we have a lot more free players, and so now, telling sprouts to "Use Party Finder" doesn't always work anymore since free people cant do that. So the mentor roulette issue compounds on that even more if you aren't prepared to deal with that possibility,
@@zacharyperea3624 Yeah, sure! They can join the zero open pf listing for extremes! Don't get me wrong, I understand that often, if they ask, someone would be willing to set that up for them, but you're asking for a complicated, multi-step process from someone it hasn't ever been required from in the past, that depends on others' goodwill, that takes much longer, and that isn't particularly intuitive to begin with. I think that the insistence on using pf for extremes is... frankly ridiculous. You knew which roulette you were queueing. You knew you could get an extreme. Buck up, try to teach, and if they're not willing to learn, *then* feel free to leave them to their fate. Maybe it's just my experience, maybe I've just been lucky, but I've never had to leave an extreme and never timed one out, either. The absolute *worst* I've had was a 40 minute striking tree, but that one wasn't even sprouts being the problem, it was mentors.
@@zacharyperea3624It took me 4 months to complete every arr trial doing this (just joining pfs). I just joined pfs because I wanted to do them min IL no echo. Ramuh was the worst taking 3 of the 4 months because it's rarely run and a miserable fight nobody competent wants to help with. If I didn't care about MINE and just wanted to beat the fights synced the 90 minute queue time seems not so bad in comparison.
The reason I went to the trouble of unlocking the Mentor Roulette was entirely for the additional gil from the daily bonus. I wasn't even aware there was a Mount attached to going through Mentor stuff. However, if I ever see the "One or more players are new to this content" in the chat window then I will absolutely try my best to explain the fights... provided I even remember them.
Lukewarm take: Remove Mentor Roulette. Remove rewards from being tied in the Mentor program. Remove the crowns. The most that should be "awarded" to Mentors in my opinion, is solely the "Mentor" title. It keeps it from being flashy and weeds out the people who are only there for the vanity. There also needs to be a bit better of a vetting process. If more people are willing to help out and not wear the "burger king crown", then that's incredibly telling. Heck, if someone has opted in as a mentor, at the end of an instance, success or fail, there should be a sort of rating system that newer players can use that can help filter to the people who are actually genuinely helpful. And it doesn't have to be anything crazy, just a sort of "Good, Okay, Bad" set of buttons. And keep it hidden from said mentors so they can't try to manipulate it.
@@user-bl5wk3tc2q I actually really like your idea. Maybe for that extreme roulette there's a disclaimer box that you have to agree on letting you know that the likelihood of success is uncertain.
As a returner I just left the novice network. Most of the chat was nothing to do with the learning and some of the mentors were just straight condescending and using it as an ego boost.
Indeed, this is a common problem with the novice network chat. I have heard that on some data centers it might be fine, but generally I wouldn't recommend it for sprouts! :/
@@CaetsuChaijiCh I know on Siren at least, people are usually joking around all the time and the regulars are harrassing each other... but if someone comes in with a question, probably 95% of the time someone will respond to it pretty much immediately, and people looking for help with groups almost always get at least one or two helpers, so the channel does its job as long as you don't mind sitting through the goofing around.
On Famfrit in Stormblood, it was very common to see mentors bully sprouts (unjustly kicking many of them), give bad advice, or turn the chat into an ERP 101 class. A few people in my FC at that time decided to step in and police it. Let's just say a few those bad mentors did some time in GM jail for harrassment or any other ToS infraction that could be found within these bully mentor's behavior.
I've never left an extreme in mentor roulette but I absolutely despise getting long alliance raids or praetorium but I wouldn't mind so much if the time spent in those was more rewarded
I think with Ramuh Extreme in particular, there are factors that lead to an outsized number of sprouts queueing without understanding what they're getting into. - The NPC who gives the unlock quest is located in the Adders' Nest in Gridania, very close to where the MSQ sends you to talk to Ilberd during the 2.4 quests. This makes it likely that the first quest a new player stumbles into that actually leads to difficult content is the Ramuh EX quest. (Garuda EX is also here but it has Garuda Hard as a prerequisite which a player doing the 2.4 MSQ isn't required to have done yet.) - The unlock plays out like every other DF unlock, and at this point a new player has probably associated an optional quest like this with interesting casual content like 4-man dungeons that aren't part of the MSQ. The only indication that it's balanced very differently than everything else they've done up to this point is the word "Extreme", and if they have rolled through the Garuda/Titan/Ifrit "hard" modes by this point, they might disregard that. - Once a few people make this mistake, Mentor Roulette will helpfully pull in some mentors who extremely do not want to be there to fill out the group, and it's very unlikely to succeed because Ramuh EX's mechanics are specifically unfriendly to there being a few people who don't know what they're doing -- the people who know what to do are stunned for upwards of a minute and the people who don't (and probably had no idea they were even signing up for something they might fail) are asked to go against everything the game has taught them up to this point and intentionally hit the stunned players with their damaging circle to break them out. In the few posts I've seen where people who did the 2000 mentor roulettes bothered to track the duty they got and their success rates, Ramuh EX both appears more frequently than most extremes and is more likely to fail. Garuda is also frequent, probably because the quest is almost as easy to stumble into, but the success rate is higher because it's a bit more forgiving in terms of mechanics when everyone has a much higher ilvl than the fight was originally designed for.
Rather than Garuda extreme being forgiven, it's simply easier. Garuda extreme is kill adds, don't get hit by raid wides, don't get hit boss attacks, separate mini-bosses. The most mechanically difficult part is the separate mini-bosses. Other than that, it's extreme-level damage and health. Ramuh has more damage, has many one-shots, and difficult mechanics. -Tanks need exactly 3 tanks of the lightning ball and to cycle between them + tank swap at appropriate times. Fail this and die, depend on how you fail, you might get both tanks killed. -Don't stand next to the main tank or die. -Get shocked awaked from charm or die. -Don't let the arena get overrunned by lightning orbs or everyone dies. -Don't take all of the lightning orbs or tanks die. -Succeed the arbiter dps check or die. (Note this is hard because everything else that kills you or charms for you 30+ seconds) Source: Am tank who went into garuda and ramuh extreme blind with a couple of fc clan mates. Garuda was successfully on the second or third try. Ramuh tried like 10 attempts but I ended up leaving with my fc mates because it was way past midnight. With that said, music 10/10, interesting content, would and likely will attempt to do ramuh extreme again.
exactly same thing happend to me when I was a sprout. I stumbled over this quests for Ramuh Extreme. The additional problem is, that in the german client it is not called Extreme oder Hard or anthing like that. It is called "Zenit der Götter - Ramuh" which translates something like "zenith of the gods - Ramuh") So it was not obvious that this is a very hard content. So I queued for that and learned it the hard way :D
Best way is to give weights to duty completed: Guildhest - 1p Dungeon - 2p ... EX Trial - 8p The harder the content, the bigger time to point ratio to incentivize trying to teach people (if they can even speak languages I set up in DF) and compensate for chance of duty fail. Would be actually bonus move if Mentor get % of points for minimum % of boss reached during failed duty.
I agree with what you say about the mentor side of the argument. However what you left completely unmentioned is how some sprouts simply don't want to be helped. it's completely demotivating to do any Mentor work when you get hostile responses to 'unsolicited' advice. From my experience, sprouts wanting help are a minority and the rest either doesn't care or doesn't even read chat. Yesterday I got Thordan extreme in the roulette and one of the four sprouts didn't even read chat for the entire time. We cleared with around 15 minutes left on the lockout.
@@Gendo. I'm from Primal too and most sprouts are very open to advice in extremes, so +1 on that. Doesn't mean that bad apples don't exist though sadly.
I straight-up gave up on trying to give people advice when a sprout outright told me I was wrong about Conjurer being a healer and that it's not their job to heal the tank.
I think the issue is due to expectations. The game isn't so great at communicating what to expect from an Extreme. A lot of sprouts steamroll through an expansion or two then queue for their first Extreme, assuming it'll be a bit harder but possible to blindly plow through. Then when people try to give advice, they're just like "why would I need that I've already beat copperbell (hard) lol" and there lies the problem.
I think the biggest issue with Mentor Roulettes is honestly setting the correct expectations for newer Players when queueing for Extremes just as much as setting expectations for Mentors if they end up in there. Part of that could be fixed by making it so all extremes/savages etc are still considered "high-end Duties" and put in the respective category, sorted by expansions. At the same time, giving some sort of tutorial that High-End content requires a bigger deal of coordination and cooperation. Another Idea could be that sprouts can only queue into these duties if they're in a party with a Mentor. This would necessitate for Sprout/Mentor/etc statuses to be applied on an account wide basis, so that alt accounts could still theoretically queue into it (as unlikely as that is)
I'm at 800 successful mentors rn and at the beginning I had the same positive attitude of trying to help and do every single extreme the game throws my own way to not be like "one of those mentors" a lot of players have. And after a while you just realize it's indeed much better for your mental health to just leave instantly. I had to duo Shiva Extreme from 20% to zero with another tank because no matter how many times I explained the mechanics, no one listened. I had to teach a tank how to provoke the moogles in Mog Ex and even with the moogles marked he couldn't do it. I had to teach multiple healers in Garuda Ex you're not suppose to use Cure 1 on every individual person. One Titan Ex run I basically didn't dps at all and only spam macros with sfx for people to do mechanics. Or my favorites, explained to a healer to not stand with the party on Ifrit Ex with Searing Wind just for them to say "I know" and keep doing it. Granted, I had some genuine teaching experiences in extremes, but 90% of the time is just me carrying people that barely understand their own jobs to victory. And none of that is fun. I still occasionally do them synced in PF (sprouts that do make PFs seems more communicative in my experience), but DF? Nowadays I rather take the 30, log and play Star Rail. I feel like the only fix is to either take extremes out of mentor and do a roulette only for them, or just open the roulette for everyone and delete the crown.
I've never had this experience myself. If people don't know their class/job, it's a stepping stone to learning. Like a White Mage casting Cure 1 on everyone isn't a problem, that's just something they have to learn. And then you need to account for people, as you say " _I know_ " and still doing it, either out of accident, stress or latency. Can't do more than smile and chuck a potion at them. What I have, had problems with myself, is endgame raiders bluntly telling others how to play and when they don't listen, the raiders go " _DON'T YOU WANT TO BE OPTIMAL?_ ", while following up with " _Good Luck finding a static!_ " in a mocking tone, and finally angry when you tell them you're not a raider " _Why do you even play?!_ ", I've had to defend sprouts so much from angry endgame raiders
@@Zeithri we each have unique experiences I guess because when I tried to explain someone that they shouldn't be spamming Cure 1 all the time all I got in response was "I don't tell you how to play my your job so you don't tell me how to play mine." Screw being optimal, there is literally no content in this game that *requires* you to play fully optimally, but there are a lot of players who refuse to put in the bare minimum to not grief their team. If someone wants to roleplay a cure only whm or an ice only black mage - sure have fun, but then they really don't belong in ex content or above. And I don't say it out of gatekeeping intentions, but rather because their only hope of clearing it with that attitude is getting carried and that's just not fair to everyone else in their group. Same for the "I know" kind of people. If you claim to understand how to do a mechanic and then fail it 15+ times in a row (and I have seen that happen many times) then you either really shouldn't be in that piece of content.
I think the best solution would be to split mentor roulette into two different roulettes. Mentor Roulette (Normal) Gives you any/all normal content, dungeons, variants, pvp, 24 and 8 player raids, CLL, Dalriada, Delubrum etc.. To unlock, you have to do all the normal content. It would be fun to be dropped into palace of the dead, one queue, and then into PVP the next. And you can do it as much as you want, incentivizing helping out in content as much as possible. Mentor Roulette (Advanced) Gives you all the EX fights. Greater rewards for completion. Maybe make it give out a token or some sort that can be traded for big prizes. For both, I'd like that the bonus actually be repeatable. No need to lock it to a daily lock out. This would solve the issue of old content not having enough players as well. Additionally, I've always wanted to see an "All Roles" mentor roulette. A roulette that can you can enter as healer/tank/dps all at once and it drops you into whatever is in need.
If they could get this kind of system working it'd be great - I want to get mentor roulette unlocked because sometimes it would be nice to hop into any random duty people want help clearing and I'm not picky about what role I play. Really an 'all roles' option would hugely benefit all of the duty finder. I do imagine that adding the bozja duties, deep dungeons, and pvp to the queue might not be possible since they have pretty different queue requirements, but I would love to get those sometimes - at the moment it's pretty much impossible to get queues for them on Materia unless you spend time organising a party yourself. Whether an extreme mentor roulette would be useful I'm not sure, on lower population data centres there might not ever be enough people queueing for it at once unless a weird system developed like doing a party finder to recruit people to then solo queue into the roulette at the same time (assuming it would force solo queue like current mentor roulette)
Aye, I prefer to go to help and not to backfill easy mode content that you don't need a mentor for. I'm sure there are enough people that want easy stuff for their roulettes, but I'm not about that life. @@wavypavy4059
Drop the pvp from the normal list and I'd love that one myself. Pvp's just not my thing. Only reason I've always avoided the mentor roulette is the possibility of ending up in extremes, which I either don't know at all, or have only ever done unsynced. (Just don't have a static to try them with, and have never managed to feel comfortable joining party finders even knowing it would probably be just fine.) So removing them from the main list and giving them their own? Yeah, I'd happily do that sort of roulette all day. Honestly, that sort of thing even as a non-mentor thing would be nice. (or allow queuing for multiple roulettes at once.) Actually, with the thought of removing pvp because it's just not my jam, the idea of maybe having a variable roulette that you could pick and choose what category of content you want to queue for would be great. And man, does Bozja and Eureka need an actual roulette too. So hard to get into some of that stuff anymore without external collaborations. Also, yeah, that all roles thing would be nice too, for any type of roulette at all. I'm currently omni-70, and working everything upward, but have at least one 90 in each role type (for the role quests), and really wouldn't care which role I'm thrown into most of the time. Would probably need some means of prioritizing which specific classes in any given role is chosen, though, for those who are omni but still prefer being, say, a RDM over a BLM, AST over WHM, etc etc.
You shouldn't worry about Extreme trials as a mentor, if you are not sure then it's even better as it's a new experience for you too. Your knowledge in general game mechanics will be enough for you to help out. No one should expect perfect players as long as you are positive. I absolutely agree on the changing roles mid instance [out of combat and only to a missing role of course] as a mentor. There have been dozens of times where I sacrificed my roulette to leaving and coming back as a different role. I just wish the game filled older parties before new ones, because unfortunately when you try and leave and come back as a tank or healer it will usually send you to a new instance when you just wanted to help that group out. Luckily I have mentor roulette on 2 characters so I can at least cancel a few times to try and get to the boys I left. @@orciencor6001
Remove extremes from mentor roulettes. Extremes take more coordination than anything else in duty finder and willing to bet most mentors have not done old extremes synced. Mentor roulette is not designed to be an extreme prog party.
When I became a mentor, I had not done most trials synced, however when I got put into that inevitable first Ramuh, King Moogle, etc. I stepped up, I speed-read a guide, looked at a video to skim, and within 5 minutes had a strategy for the group to work on, since then, I've done several extremes to finish, and learned them because of mentor roulette, and my history of having run on-content savages & ultimates allowed me to understand how the game mechanics worked.
I think the incentive should be to teach sprouts how to use the Party Finder for that kind of content and reward mentors that come in to help. That way new players know how to construct their own groups and there could be a way to signify that that group is looking for a guide. Instead of mentors trying to memorize dozens on different extreme trials, mentors could know exactly what they are getting into and go in prepared.
As a mentor who never leaves any extremes, they have become really easy for me. I want them to stay because they are a fun change from getting dungeons most of the time. Plus being a mentor is not just some title to me. I truly want to help sprouts
I think the problem is that on JP servers people queue up for DF/RF when they know they fight and are ready to clear. So in that regard the mentor roulette works well because the mentor is just filling a party that just needs an extra person or two. I think SNAFU is right, I think there needs to be something in the game that indicates to sprouts that when you're progging the fight you should go to PF first.
Personally I just wish there was an all purpose roulette like mentor where I dont have the pressure of being the one to teach everything, i'm more than happy to just help tbh
Honestly, a pretty good video. It touched on almost everything. I would add the main scenario roulette has no place in mentor roulette for two primary reasons. First, it has it's own dedicated roulette that rewards more tomes than doing it through that roulette than it does to do it through mentor roulette. Second, the content is so braindead easy that you would have to be intentionally trying to fail for you to fail it, making it not really require any teaching from a mentor. As it stands, we get main scenario in mentor roulette far too often. While I can appreciate getting something I can speedrun, main scenario is literally just watching a movie with activity breaks.
Changing it to 2000 hs is kinda insane is assuming that each single roullete last 1 hour, but the idea of changing it to a certain amount of time is a good idea
The most frustrating thing as a free trial sprout is you cannot use party finder -- so after a 100 minute wait for extreme. that usually has to be filled with mentors it falls apart. For example when I got into The Striking Tree (Extreme) before the 7 second opening cutscene was done both mentor tanks left. And the others leave comments like who queues for these and stop queueing for these. Or use party finder that I cant do. We didnt even do one pull. And then i get offers to just unsync. Like I guess it removes the quest from my journal; but im not queueing into content for 2 hours for a carry... I want to play the game.
@@rischea7902 see everyone just says use pf , but a new player is going to see a duty finder for it and have a quest for you and everyone just yells at you for using the only obvious tool you have in game.
"Reward time invested in general" should honestly apply to more then mentor roulette. People are practically encouraged to throw casual Crystal Conflict matches the moment things start going south because spending an extra five minutes trying to make a comeback is not worth it when the rewards remain the same regardless of a match's length.
"There is the possibility of some mentors doing the mentor roulette just for the sake of having fun. But those are very rare." That sounds so dystopian.
I guess I'm one of the rare exceptions to mentor roulette. While i am working on the mount (just hit 1k the other day) i usually que up for fun or just something to do when not in raid. I'm also on Dynamis so im glad to help speed up any que times and love when it's a group of sprouts (though some may be alts) and being there to answer questions if they have any.
Being on Dynamis is the main reason I'm grinding to unlock Battle Mentor and the roulette. Queues here suck enough. I'm aiming to make the queues just a little bit less bad for everybody.
@@supergamer1388 i made an fc on seraph to try and pull in sprouts to help them and teach and stuff but it failed XD the giant fc sucked them up or its just alts. so mentor roulette it must be!
Really good video! One possibility could be splitting out mentor roulette into two roulettes, one which targets the easier content and counts towards the achievement and a harder one for extremes / long alliance raids with significantly better daily rewards. With so many roulettes already though I imagine they're not keen to add more though.
That is an interesting suggestion! Like making a specific Extreme Mentor Roulette for the hard stuff! That could help too. I do see what you mean about the roulette count though :/ Thank you! ^^
as someone who isn't a mentor but would like to be, extreme trials being in the roulette is what holds me back. maybe either splitting the mentor roulette's duty list into 2 roulettes could work? removing extreme trials entirely? maybe changing to a point-based system where a dungeon gives you 1 'mentor point' while an extreme trial could give you... 10? this would also be extra incentive to help with more challenging content
I spammed some MR yesterday since I didn’t feel strongly pulled to any other content. Of the 4 duties I queues into, I did Castrum Meridianum, Praetorium, and Porta Decumana. Doing all of Main Scenario roulette was not great for my desire to go back to Mentor roulette in the future.
Agree with the single big change that needs to happen is just removing any tangible rewards like the mount to at least get rid of speedrunning fake mentors, but! The other simple change that should happen is the make it so that the early extremes that have a quest that stays in your log until completion don’t do that anymore! As a sprout I fell into the trap of sitting in DF for an hour for my first extreme (queue never filled, thankfully, which clued me in something was wrong), simply because I was treating the journal as guidance for things I should be trying to do. Bonus points if unlocking your first extreme came with a Baldesion Arsenal type of waiver you had to click through warning you about what you were getting into by signing up. When I eventually unlock mentor roulette, I would have no problem getting an ARR extreme if I knew that every sprout in it knew it was challenging, outdated content with no relevant rewards for syncing it and just wanted to do it anyway out of curiosity or for a challenge - not just some random player who barely understands their kit yet who wandered in out of confusion.
As a free trial player who has farmed all the extreme mounts of ARR in Duty Finder and is currently in the process of farming the Heavensward mounts. I wholeheartedly believe something has to change with mentors, at least with "mentor + extremes". Right now, if you find players and the queue pops for extreme fights, most of the mentors already left before you could even skip the cutscene. I believe removing Extremes from Mentor Roulette is, at least for people like me (free trial), a bad option because it would be impossible to fill Extreme groups in Duty Finder without them. Right now I have to wait at least 2 to 4 hours so that a group fills up (I play AST). Also, the constant "Use Party Finder for Extremes" by mentors gets annoying pretty quickly. I understand but I and many other players can't create a party as free trial players, and there are no parties for old Extremes in Party Finder. And I know, "Then buy the game if you want to play Extremes". I have heard that often enough. But look at my perspective: why should I pay if I still have so much to do in the free trial? Also, I believe Extremes are one of the best ways to hook new players, so that they want to buy the game. They should not be stopped from playing them. I believe the idea to track the time and not the completion is the best option. I would even add bonus time for Extremes if the party was able to complete the Duty, it would incentivize the mentors to explain stuff and would make Extremes the most rewarding activity in the Roulette. At the same time, I think that there should be stricter requirements for mentors. If you join an Extreme via Duty Finder right now, 30% of the mentors have no idea how the fight works. Some say they never did the fight synced.(Like, WTF is that even possible?, and if yes, WHY?). Some don't know how to play their job or role. And some are just extremely bad at the game. It gets frustrating if the first timer makes less mistakes then the mentor. Well, that was all I wanted to say... Bye.
One major problem that may? be solved in the future is communication. Sprouts tend to have /say chat by default and a LOT dont even know about /party chat, and its not visible if they are tabbed onto a chat tab that has just battle stuff or who knows what. If we get chat bubbles that work out of combat but in instances that would literally visibly draw their attention and may massively help communication.
The only thing not taken into account here is just... the joy of playing the game? Do you not enjoy teaching and progressing through a fight? I know I do... I assume that's the intent of the roulette, too. The rewards are less actual rewards and more just a small bonus for doing something fun anyway. The real problem is I guess that becoming a mentor is too easy, and people who don't care about helping people can easily become a mentor.
Oh no, I did in fact take that into account! I did mention that *some* mentors, even some players in general enjoy taking their time, and playing just for the sake of it! The only reason this situation becomes a problem, is because some players like to optimize a bit... Too hard at times. Some players want to collect everything, meaning they don't view the mount at the end of the 2000 mentor roulettes as a little bonus for doing something nice. They see it as a target to optimize getting! This is exactly the reason why I suggested adjusting the achievement to reward taking your time, as you suggest, instead of specifically rewarding success, if that makes sense! So that the players that forgot the part where they also have to have fun when gaming, still feel incentivized to play along! I hope this makes sense ^^
I have been a mentor for a few years now and I always try to help anyone if they need help with content. I play the game about 4-5 hours a day and it is the only game I play, so I do know quite a bit about the main parts of the game. But I have never done a Mentor roulette because I do not do Extreme content when it first comes out. I love the game, love playing it, and love teaching it, but I am not a Raider. My problem with the Mentor Roulette is that 1) It expects you to be a top tier player that clears all of the content and can be able to do all of it regardless of ability. I love helping sprouts with MSQ content and Normal/Alliance raids. But recent Extremes are a bit above my skill set. 2) My memory is not able to remember each and every dungeon, trial, and raid. There is simply too much content in a ten year old game for me to remember every single fight and every single mechanic. Which brings me to 3) I am not the worlds greatest typist, so a lot of times I will be in the middle of typing some help for someone when someone else gets antsy and goes Leroy Jenkins on me in mid sentence. I cannot type 100 words a minute. That is why I have not done a Mentor Roulette and just mostly do the Novice Network, which itself is just mostly Mentors. The Mentor Roulette System is a great idea, but with poor execution. They want you to not only be willing to help new players, but also be a top tier raider, have the memory of a super computer, and have the typing skills of a Fortune 500 Personal Assistant. So that leaves out those of us who can't do that, but still want to help.
The comments say it all -- so many 'mentors' are contemptuous of unskilled players, and believe they're there to issue commands, and then are upset when they're not carried out, so they leave. They don't have the patience to teach, and probably think they're good at conveying information in a clear and non-hostile way, when they may well not be good at either.
Problem with unskilled mentor players, is, mostly that roulette doesnt care if you clear content sync or unsync. I see A LOT of Party Finders with the description... "clear for mentor roulette". Shame on you, what the hell, thats the kind of people I find on Ifrit EX and can't make a single mechanic and makes the sprout experience even worse
@@kellevichy There are no real issues with it at the minute. It works. People are just expecting every 'mentor' to be superstars when they are just there to fill queues. If you want to go back to the ARR and HW days when you couldn't get a party as a DPS for 40+ minutes during peak times you work away. I never want to return to that, and that's what mentors have brung to the game. Stop getting jealous over a stupid crown icon. It doesn't mean anything. This has been such a childish debate for many years now and people just need to dry their eyes and play the game. What pray tell would you change to it that would make it better without harming the queues?
A solution I wonder if they can actually track... the number of commendations the mentor receives upon completion of the duty? This encourages the mentor to not only complete things, but also to perform well throughout. That said, it doesn't remove the issue of mentors still then wanting to run through more briskly so they can get on to farming more achievements, but it would introduce a system of the friendlier you are, the more you try to explain troublesome mechanics, and the fact you stick around to finish are actually rewarded, but toxic mentors are not.
Back before mentor status existed, I used to ask if people wanted me to explain mechanics of certain boss fights. I never thought anything of it, to be honest. A lot of times when I want to explain things I can't though as I'm a very slow typer. It often felt like in duties I could never type an explanation before someone pulls a boss. Then there's the people who complain when you try to explain mechanics, so I've taken to keeping quiet & only say something if asked or if people mess up during the duty in a bad way.
Another part of the problem is that mentorship shows no knowledge of the game , just because someone has a mentor crown doesnt mean they know anything about the game, it just means they have played a while. the system is flawed. you cant mentor people on content when the mentors probably don't know the content either. i have had my crown for 6 years and it has been the biggest most useless thing on my account. they need to considerably raise the requirements for mentorship.
It always amazed me that the game doesn't actually require harder content to be a mentor. You just have to have put in the time on each role and in a lot of duties. That's it. Makes it more accessible to someone like me (nobody hardcore, to be sure) but if you want me to teach an EX or something - I am not your person. I might help in other ways! But not in harder content.
I enjoy mentor roulette simply for those time when I want to play something but don't know what I want to do. Just hit a button and instantly I'm in... some kind of content. Honestly just giving everyone mentor or not a "I don't care just put me in" roulette would be great. Especially one where you don't have to be max level that'd be excellent for leveling dps and also helping players with long queues get a party together
I just unlocked battle mentor because I genuinely love helping people who need help with anything I'm knowledgeable about or have resources for in the game - that said, I still haven't unlocked mentor roulette and it's not a huge priority for me atm. I do intend to unlock it just so I can have *another* completionist thing in this game that will take me forever to accomplish, but also I SWEAR I'll never bail on a party just because I got a synced EX lol I think part of the solution would be removing Extremes and Savages from mentor roulette because a lot of mentors never learned them and don't intend to since they did them unsynced- I don't think this is inherently bad, because there are loads of people that will do it synced or unsynced; it's just really more of a prog together over VC if possible kinda thing. (One of the things I plan to do before I start doing mentor roulette is learn as many as I can by heart lol) I have Another Idea- it's kinda long, but I think it would be really helpful for any controller users, but especially console players without a keyboard qwq (I'll just reply to myself so I don't turn this into a gross wall of text)
The other thing I was thinking that could really be helpful would be adding a way for sprouts/returners to have a window that pops up automatically at the beginning of each duty that has selection boxes to ask for help like: "Please explain the mechanics of the [first/second/last] boss/trial." "Does this duty have anything specific I should watch out for?" < like traps on the ground in Hullbreaker for example or anything with adds that one-shot you. "Why did we/I die?" < like if they are revived or the party wipes, the window pops up again and they have the opportunity to ask this. "I'm having trouble understanding my class/job; can you help me?" Obviously have it toggleable in settings so that it doesn't automatically pop up for people who don't want it -especially people who have alts or are really getting it and don't need much help anymore- maybe specific questions could be toggled on/off too? The menu could be brought up at any time by anyone regardless of sprout/returner status by selecting the mentor and in the dropdown menu, have the mentor help menu as an option. Any mentor in a party with a struggling Sprout can select the Sprout and maybe an option in the dropdown could be "offer tips" and the Sprout can select "Accept" or "Decline." And as incentive and ensuring quality in mentors: Any interaction where the Sprout has asked a specific mentor in their party a question, they have a follow up "did [name] try to answer your questions?" And they get some variation of " :( :| :) " and don't HAVE TO answer (much like commendations) but answering could earn them some kind of reward like weekly bonus? maybe give a lil gil and/or exp? When the Mentor is over a certain threshold- say 100- of Sprout :( :| :) things, if over a large percent- say 75%- of them are bad, they either get auto booted or reviewed idk, but only one thing per duty (maybe per sprout even) and people that have been on the mentor's friend list or block list at any point- even if they're alts- could be excluded from the count for the sake of not abusing the system. Maybe having a certain number of :) things could give a reward to the mentor? But this whole setup would be super helpful for sprouts playing with controller and no keyboard since the ability to select predetermined questions and answered without having to figure out the nightmare that is macros would break down a lot of walls for them. That might be too complex, though. I just really love this game with all of my heart and wanna see more qol improvements and just a lot of little things that could add more life because I invest so much time and love into it lol
Bit late, I know, but I became a mentor and started the roulette ultimately for the mount but 30-ish runs in and the mount has become secondary, Mentor roulette has become my favourite roulette because it really does have everything in it and I get far more variety than I did doing leveling. Some might call me a bad mentor since I don't remember all the content in the roulette but that's just life, I'm willing to (re)learn it.
I always enter mentor roulette with the mindset that "It's not about me" (the mentor). I'm an asset, put there for the benefit of the group. If there's a sprout in my group, it's my responsibility to give them the best experience possible. If it means going slow, discussing mechanics, helping them with their rotation, or offering other helpful suggestions, that's what I'll do. It might take a few minutes longer, but it's very beneficial for new or inexperienced players in the long run.
Mentor roulette daily bonus should be better, Adventurer in need bonus should give materia crystals like leveling and alliance raid does, as well as more gil, and maybe something else like 50 causality, 10 comedy, since you'll definitely be endgame, and mentor covers way more necessity than any other roulette anyways, so the In Need reward should be proportionate.
Personally I would make it so that extreme trials are not part of the roulette. Main reason is that most new players don't read the chat most of the time. And trying to guide new players that don't I would rather leave eat the penalty and do gathering or crafting. They could also make it that any instsance that has a new player going into it, has a priority for the mentor roulette to pick it.
That is a good point. I also heard others bring up that often, the sprouts are not willing to communicate on their end either, which of course makes it quite hopeless for the mentor that is at least TRYING to help. Removing content that isn't made to be beaten in a single session from the mentor roulette might help this. I am also actually surprised that the mentor roulette isn't exclusively, or at least primarily, to pair mentors with first timers!
@@CaetsuChaijiCh I bet there are people like me who have only played a couple years and have unlocked mentor roulettes but have never done an ARR exeteme unsynced. I wouldn't even know how to teach that. I'm busy learning the new ones. How am I supposed to go back and learn the old ones synced? I' d be no different than a sprout on that.
My recommendation is to have mentor commendations. At end of duty, any first time sprouts that got matched with a mentor from the roulette, get a notification asking if their mentor was helpful. This would benefit actually helpful mentors, since they could get anywhere from 1-7 commendations from a run, and wouldn't require clearing the content. You'd still occasionally run into rude sprouts, but overall system would motivate mentors to be as helpful and patient as possible. Then to tie the mentor achievements, to those mentor commendations instead of just runs cleared.
I think they could at a 2nd tier of commendation and a "warning" when someone in the instance got in via mentor roulette. Almost like a ready check of "is a mentor needed" when they get in and a "where they good" at the end, and have those impact the progress somehow. The first basically works as a primer for the 2nd, and if the 2nd one is overwhelmingly positive (like 2/3 in a 4m, and 5/7 in an 8m) they would get 2 ticks. Also can agree with Mentor roulette progressing on a Timeout as well as a clear, that makes a lot of sense to me. Another option would be to grade achievement progress based on content, take a dungeon as 1, normal trial as 1, normal raid as 2, extreme trial as 3, savage as 4, probably 2 or 3 for alliance raids due to time needed or some other grading method. Would probably require the 2000 completions to be beefed up to 4-6k, and probably a more detailed "progress count" than the simple one I roughly laid out. Been around long enough that a lot of people in my circle basically avoid getting the mentor tag now because of the negative connotation attached to it. When they changed the requirements basically all of us allowed it to drop off.
I feel like the suggestions for a Mentor-Roulette-exclusive rating system at the end of a run are probably the most helpful. "Did you find X's advice helpful? Yes or No" and you have to accumulate maybe a certain percentage of Yes' to get 1 point added towards the Achievement to offset Alliances or something large like that. Because I do hand out advice to players, but only after we have a) wiped to a mechanic we have all clearly forgotten about, or b) a player is clearly new and is struggling with a mechanic (is spinning the boss, is running away from a tankbuster symbol that can't be dodged, etc.) And even then, I always make sure to ask at the END of a dungeon, privately, so as to not embarrass them, and I only give advice if they say they want it. Even still, I'm a very casual player who only dips their toes into Extremes for an occasional dyeable glam or mount farm for very old expansions, so Mentor material I am not.
The mentor system isn't really about helping though, that's the misconception that too many people make. They are simply there to fill the DF so queues aren't 30 minutes. Everyone expects Mentors to know everything when most of them are just regular players looking for something to do. No one wants to go back to the ARR days where you were literally waiting for 50 minutes as a DPS during prime time for a levelling roulettte. I'd rather deal with bad players in my team than wait 50 minutes when I wanted to play a DPS.
My first mentor roulette was Ramuh EX, a duty that I've never done in sync, and as a tank We went 20 minutes of mentors screaming at the sprout before leaving and 15 minutes to do the duty in 2 pulls when we got people that actually wanted to play the game lol
After 6.5 I'm still seeing an overwhelming majority of crystal tower raids. I have for the first time seen some variation, but still. I absolutely hate the kick system. I've seen people go afk for ages or be massive trolls but you never are able to kick them at all because either the combat is still going or "there is loot still being rolled for"... while the only person that didnt yet roll is they themselves; because they know they can block it that way.
Honestly while in 6.5 crystal tower is still the overwhelming majority of raids, I'm actually seeing more of other raids without having to specifically queue for them myself (which can be an issue for 80+ classes, given my photosensitivity interacts badly with two of the Nier raids) and I've yet to see a crystal tower without a first time bonus since then.
I will admit when i was doing my mentor roulettes grind my general reason for doing it was for the mount. However once I got it I still find myself queing in mentor roulette to this day. It can be a slog to complete at times. My last 600 runs was when we had the influx of players from WoW. I could always count on every other run being an ARR ex, and the vast majority of those runs ended in failure. But I never left not once and always did my best to help the sprouts. In the end its probably why I have over 12k comms.
I think an issue also comes from the fact that the sprouts queuing in aren’t aware someone might be going in as a mentor. Most people actually don’t welcome advice even if they have failed a mech or have wiped multiple times. Someone queuing as mentor might go in with the mindset that they’re there to teach, and they get a sprout who is in ShB and doesn’t feel they need any help. I think even a DF setting that sprouts could use to be specifically paired with a mentor would be handy to ensure that both are there for the correct reason could be useful.
Here's the problem with the Mentor Roulette. Whatever random duty you get could take anywhere between 3 minutes to 45-60. The fix for this would be to keep the current roulettes, do away with the "Mentor Roulette" and add an option to existing roulettes to "Queue as Mentor". So you could queue for the Leveling roulette "as a mentor" and be more prepared for the time commitment you are agreeing to, plus a better idea of what you're preparing to walk new players through. I straight up leave any EX I get in the mentor roulette. Am I part of the problem? Sure, maybe, but I didn't create the problem and its not on me to fix it.
The unhealthy thing about that 2,000 run achievement is if a mentor were to just do 1 a day; it would take 6 years to obtain it. Because of that, a lot of mentors are trying to run 3 to 5 rolos a day hoping to blast through them so they can get it done in a year or even less. There has been a period where I tried to do 3 mentor rolos a day to try to decrease the time to get the achievement, and it has lead me to not be the best kind of player. (I stay dead silent while burning through the content.) Because its a RNG rolo; I get a lot of anxiety trying to queue up for it. If I got an extreme or a dungeon; it puts me in a bad mood because both take a lot of time compared to a guild heist or a normal trial/raid. I never leave an instance unless someone else does, so I do try to put my best foot forward; but the race to 2000 is a recipe for burnout and apathy. I checked out lala achievements; and there are unobtainable achievements because the content it was under is no longer around. I seriously think the devs need to take the 2000 point one away while giving a fair warning with a good amount of time so players who are in the middle of getting it will have time to finish it before its no longer around. That way there are better incentives to do mentor rolo and not feel so chained down to farm content for a mount that no one will praise due to the reputation the mentor system has. The system has been abused a lot because there was a lot of factors that were not taken into consideration. I would rather not have the system at all and let people naturally help each other out without the crowns. I love the idea of a random roulette. Let every player have it with a daily reward so everyone can fill in for whatever the community needs with no achievements or huge requirements attached to it. (Aside from unlocking the content of course.)
I don't think it taking 6 years if you do 1 a day should be an argument if you already have a grind that takes around 7 years in the form of getting all leve achievements.
I am terribly late to this reply. The difference with levequests and mentor rolo are a few. Levequests are time gated to where you will be stopped, eventually using up your allowances. Even if you wanted to burn through it all, you won't be allowed to. Also, you don't have to do them with other players. It is more relaxed, and easier to put down. There are also 0 rewards to completing the full 7 years, except a few achievement points. No titles, nothing. It totally sucks. Mentor rolo has you needing to work with other players, and has titles and mounts attached to the achievements, and also; no time gates. So, people are going to try to bulldoze the grind, and it can end up, like I mentioned in my comment, creating players that have unfavorable behaviors. -shrugs- Both of them suck, but the game incentives players to play very differently when compared. @@ruily276
That could also work, I assume this would also be accompanied by being blocked from becoming a mentor again, at least for a set amount of time. This would however just further incentivize mentors to wait for the 15 minutes to vote abandon instead! ^^'
that ending might've genuinely reawakened some sort of PTSD from endwalker- anyway cool video! not a mentor myself but honestly i don't see many flaws in your arguments ^^
We need to make the icon *not* a crown. The most toxic people get it for the prestige of the icon. Change it to a watering can so that we can "water" the sprouts. Then, split the mentor roulette into time-based sizes and adjust rewards based on length. Run "Mentor Roulette - Short"? small reward, 1 point towards mount. Run "Mentor Roulette - Long"? large reward, 3 points towards mount. Maybe have a medium one in there too.
Something i noticed from raiding on a static is that call outs help a ton on progression. So maybe allowing in game voice chat could help a ton in case a mentor wants to call out mechanics. Just make it so other party members have to approve of voice chat before turning it on and can disable it at any moment. As for the mount, maybe changing roulette to giving a currency that you can use to get the mount and other things would be more practical. Random dungeons could give less of it compared to extremes, this way people might be more willing to give hard content a go as it can net them more currency compared to spamming easy content.
I’m passively working to the mentor achievements yeah. I want the mount eventually. I kind of do mentor because it can be a surprise. Helping out sprouts with their first run of a dungeon, trial or raid can be far more fun than running level 90 stuff with experienced players. Getting an extreme that I have not run for ages or even at all unsynced can be fun too if not trust at times.
Removing Guildhests, Extremes and Alliance Raids (let's face it, alliance raids fill up fast enough) would alleviate some of the issues of mentor roulette and people leaving. But at the end of the day, most mentors (including myself) just unlocked it to gradually grind out the mount. I even disabled the crown the moment I got it. If they want the mentor system to actually be about helping people, then it should really be just about that and not about incidental rewards that bring in people that have no interest in helping people. There shouldn't be any achievements tied to the system (and also not getting WT resets from it, as the other reason I unlocked mentor roulette was for an easy avenue for WT resets). I think people that unlock mentor for the sake of actually helping newer players would be less likely to leave Extreme Raids and the Nier raids for example, in which case the roulette wouldn't really need to be adjusted.
I mean, removing guildhests would be pointless, them being in that roulette is the system working as intended, having free hands fill in queues on content that would otherwise waste a lot more time on waiting. I've yet to see wipes on Nier raids, their "difficulty" is greatly exaggerated imo. And for Extremes, the biggest fix they could do is put a massive pop-up telling a sprout queueing for ANY extreme for the first time in DF that if someone starts explaining how to do mechanics, they should listen and follow that advice instead of acting like the usual toxic lemming we get at least one of per Extreme pop. The problem is rarely mentors leaving because they don't want to teach people, the problem is mentors leaving after being ignored and told to know their place by ignorant noobs for half an hour.
No one leaves Nier because it's difficult, people leave because it takes far longer than any other content and you can just come back after the penalty expires. Everything in Nier should have 25% less health, but that's a separate point. And guildhests should be removed from the game entirely, to be honest. Not just mentor roulette. As it stands it's a relic from ARR that teaches things that are never implemented and is mainly a way for people to cheese farm/grind commendations and mentor roulette duties completed. I don't disagree on the extreme front, to be honest. Part of the frustration from getting an extreme to pop is expecting no one to listen or pay attention to any advice because everyone's the best player in the world in their own POV.@@MyVanir
Every time the mentor roulette puts me in Ramuh EX with tanks that say "hi first time and have not seen a video" I properly mentor them in the use of party finder because I know it will not be cleared. (I will try to teach them, but there is a large chance some people will bail.)
I have yet to fail a Ramuh Extreme when I join from start. It's actually handy enough once you teach people that you can bait the 2nd chaos. When they are both random it causes problems but once you can always have 1 be on the healers a massive amount of the deaths disappear.
you get to second chaos? I end up with groups that can't even count to 3, so they leave far too many orbs, and the group wipes from damage before that.
I don't have any issue with any ARR or HW EX trials in my groups and like I said that's with over 3500 runs of the roulette. Nidnogg is usually the roughest going for people in final phase, everything else though is handy enough. Kinda helps that I am a Tank / Healer main so I can do a lot more of the heavy lifting in certain fights.@@ICountFrom0
Part of the issue is the fact that extremes are included in the mentor roulette. But new players are never told that this content might require them to watch or read a guide outside of the game. This becomes an issue when the mechanics get a bit too complicated to explain in the game itself. It's not the fault of the mentors, that do stay and try to help, when the new players either don't understand or cannot execute the mechanics that need to be done. Nor is it the fault of the new players really. I've seen plenty of times where it is easier to keep a new player down and just do the fight without them, then it is to raise them and have them mess up something and wipe the group at less than 5% on the boss.
maybe they should also tie mentor roulette to commends, have the players get 2000 commends from mentor roulette in order to get the mount, it encourages players to be nice to sprouts in order to get the commend
While that sounds like a great idea on paper, this would just cause the bad mentors to just farm commends by being a healer during a Guildhest over and over.
As a sprout who's never interacted with the mentor system as I tend to play and learn the game at my (admittedly slow) pace. It's interesting to see what being a mentor does, alongside the perspective of a mentor in said system. On a side note about the alliance raid roulette change, it's mostly resulted in me not touching it as often as I used to. I just reached post game heavensward and am around the mid 70's with my summoner, and am now required to have gear I can't normally access to play the roulette again. Yes I could buy gear off the market board, but I would honestly just rather manually queue for the raids now than to bother with doing that. Anyways I've probably typed too much, good video yo!
I haven't looked at the changes but poetic tomestone gear for your level should be enough. Especially noting that your "lvl 70 class set" from your class quest is not lvl 70. For example, the Samurai Antiquated Myochin Haori has a lvl requirement of 70 with ilvl 290. The lvl 60 poetic gear is ilvl 270. The lvl 70 poetic gear is ilvl 400. I've never had problems with ilvl and have not had to buy gear off of the marketboard. Just using the poetic gear solves all of those problems. With that said, this does harm the exploration aspect as gear upgrades are not a thing. Note, I have not finished the last expansion yet, so I don't know if there is current expansion poetic gear. I'm assuming there isn't but I don't know.
@@tylerbreau4544 To clarify, I'm specifically referring to the effects of the 6.5 change that reads "Item level restrictions based on class or job level at the time of duty registration will now be applied for Duty Roulette: Alliance Raids". This change makes it so that queuing for alliance raid duty roulette requires the item level of your gear to be around the level of the class you have equipped. The issue I'm running into is that the tomestone gear (at least for arr and hw for me so far) have only become available once you beat the final main quest for said expansion. Having just beaten Heavensward's main story, I recently got the full set of shire tomestone gear with an item level of 270. Post patch 6.5 the minimum item level for my Summoner in the mid 70's to participate in alliance raid roulette is 305. Being nowhere near the end of Stormblood to have access to the lv 70 tomestone, let alone having reached the expansion at all, basically locks out the class from participating in alliance roulette with gear I would conventionally have access to. I understand this change is mostly to address the issue of people circumventing being queued into higher level alliance raids by equipping lower level gear, I just wanted to give some perspective this change has had on someone who is still making their way through the story. Since posting my initial comment I've picked up dancer to do the roulette with, which while being a somewhat convenient solution to the problem I was running into, is still a problem I didn't have before patch 6.5. It'll be interesting to see if the change has the desired effect of filling out more of the higher level alliance raids, or drives more people away from bothering with the roulette at all.
@@BlackKiteX I empathize with your issue here; I don't think it was thought through what would happen if someone had a job that was leveled beyond the expansion they're currently in. My only possible suggestion is if you've got another job in the 50+ range you're working on leveling, you could use that one for it.
I really enjoy Mentor Roulette. I set an initial goal for myself (get the dragon monocle), and I met that goal and am on my way to getting the Astrope. However, I do take the time to help when I can and for those that actually WANT to be helped. I've had some duties where a sprout or returner (or even another MENTOR) is confrontational about the dumbest shit. Sometimes those people get vote kicked if it's bad enough. As far as leaving duties goes though, I generally leave and msq roulette or ARR alliance raid. If I get those, I just leave, log out, and do something else. I don't agree with you about taking the achievement away. I've made so much progress on that and I would genuinely be pissed if that just got ripped away.
worst person i met in mentor roulette was a non-mentor non-sprout in zurvan ex, i told the sprouts smth like 'we might not clear but i will try my best to teach, i recommend party finder in case we don't finish so you can get people quicker and they know what fight to prepare for. if you just want loot you can unsync but people will join synced parties as well if you want to truly experience the fight' and he immediately turned hostile towards every piece of advice us mentors gave to the point the SPROUT had enough of his bs and told him to stop acting like that and apologizing for him and reassuring us that we are, in fact, being helpful. like if you hate mentors why are you queueing for an extreme trial knowing damn well you're gonna get a bunch of mentors for the next hour and a half. a decent amount of mentors that instantly dip are ppl who experience blatant hatred like that from people who also dont wanna put in effort and just want a carry while ignoring advice
How about dividing mentor roulette into categories? Like dungeons and trials separately and not in same roulette? And that you would need to clear a specific number of each category to get the reward? This would give mentors more freedom of choice. If they don't want to do Extremes at the moment, they can choose something else. Of course, this might become troublesome, when queing for trials becomes absolutely mandatory, as it can be either normal or Extreme. If there is one thing changes can't fix, it is players themselves. Some players just want to get things done quickly and they don't bother teach stuff to others if they ask it. And some players don't want to be teached. Language barrier can sometimes be an issue too. I've had duties in which one sprout player does mechanics wrong, and others then try to explain them, but the player either doesn't understand, or he doesn't read the chat.
As many have already said, a huge problem is the community. A large portion either ignores advice or reacts negatively if anyone dares try to help them play better and clear content. If you queue into an extreme there is a high chance you'll get players who don't want to hear it, they just want to be carried. Shout-outs to the sprouts who are actually receptive to advice and feedback, but they seem to be few and far between.
I think you raise several good points. I personally think that just changing one or more parts of the current mentor system wouldn't fix it, and that to truly turn the current issues around there would need to be a more complete overhaul of it to make it work (as intended).
Mentor roulette can be fun for two reasons in particular for me. The fact that it's a true roulette roulette, something the game sorely needs. And because you are likely to join people doing something their first time which I really like.
On the other hand (and I say this as someone who hasn't bothered becoming mentor and doesn't care about any of the rewards) there is a *large* amount of people who react to any attempts at advice with hostility. I genuinely like teaching and helping others and for that purpose I often join learning PFs for fights that I have long since mastered, but I completely gave up on giving any advice in DF because much more often than not it results with people flaming me for approaching them in the most polite and understanding way I can.
If its any content that isn't extreme the people I come across are absolutely lovely. After the few times I did any of the extremes where no one listens and you get kicked a few times because they wanted a blind, face roll run when you're just trying to help it really mentally defeats you.
biggest issue with solution #3 beyond just the AFK issue or by griefing: It's incentivizing them NOT to help new players regardless. Think of it like this: the mentor doesn't say a single word, and the sprouts just cannot figure out what to do. The mentor watches the party try and fail, again, and again, and again. Doesn't help, but doesn't purposefully troll. Every now and then, "accidentally" drops a puddle near a problematic sprout who has been messing up a lot, then simply lets the group point the finger at them (e.g. "On these clock spots I claimed south, you went south" when in actuality the sprout went southeast and you just shifted over one to kill them and then said they weren't paying attention.). Not enough to REALLY grief, but enough to stress them out and cause them to make more mistakes. "Well, you're rewarded for DOING ANY content, so it doesn't help you MORE to make it take longer!" ... But if I finish, I have to load into city, get back into the queue, load into the next dungeon, and start trying my ass off all over again. If I don't, I can farm idiots for free minutes while doing almost nothing and watching RUclips on my other monitor. Bottom line: You cannot track time, as it means the better mentor that can teach faster is penalized more. You cannot track runs completed, because it incentivizes selfish "do-anything-for-the-clear" runs. You can't track commendations, as it encourages comm-farming. You *cannot* reward someone for being a good person, being good MUST be its own reward. I love being a mentor and hopping into mentor roulette. I will NEVER get Astriope, I know that, I don't care. I have attempted my best at EVERY SINGLE Ifrit Extreme, Titan Extreme, I have never LOST AT AN ULTIMATE WEAPON MINSTREL'S BALLAD, I AM 5/5 ON THOSE. I always stop even when I'm not in mentor roulette to help random people. Black mage needs to learn the level 60 rotation, because the game does a TERRIBLE system of teaching them the new Fire IV priority. Tank needs to learn to space out their cooldowns or else they will die every time, and if doing dungeon runs they need to check who their healer is, because popping a huge cooldown for damage mitigation on pull start with a white mage is a bad idea, they will stun the adds for 10-15 seconds anyways and you will have wasted it. I loooove helping people. If there was a leaderboard for helping people, it'd sour the experience. Firstly, because I'd always know that I could be doing more and I'd judge myself harder instead of just focusing on helping them out. Secondly, because it would mean people would gamify how to "be better than me", even though they don't actually care, they just want to be #1. The love of the sprout is the ONLY reason you mentor. The sprout that you mentor in Stormblood may one day end up mentoring you in Endwalker (true story, my sprout baby grew up and became a hardcore pvp'er, she's now teaching me how to pvp and I am terrified of her). If you have to get paid to be a good person, you're not a good person, you just want to get paid.
I think a problem with mentors in this game specifically is that main story content is so easy that teaching things is almost never needed. Also most quests in the game are very linear, so there is not much to miss or be confused about, this leaves the only content that needs teaching as hard content. The game does’t require you to know hard content to be a mentor though, instead it requires you to grind 1500 guildheis- I mean get 1500 commendations, its an arbitrarily large grind that means almost nothing about how good you are at teaching. The incentives to do hard content are problematic, like you said. So when faced with the one place with a job worth doing, its more efficient to leave. One thing of note though is that 80% of the time arr extremes and heavensward extremes can be killed within 30 minutes, so it is rarely actually worth it to be the first to leave, even if you get thordan. If its going bad or someone else leaves first, go ahead, but leaving instantly risks the party 1 pulling it and being super fast (I even 1 pulled thordan once like that, just tank lb the spear stack) also things like shiva are just super easy and almost always will be killed in 2-3 pulls(yes exceptions exist, but shiva and ifrit and the like are pretty easy to carry dead bodies through). Personally, the way I would fix this is make extremes count for like 20 duties for the achievement each, that should be enough to motivate people to stay. Either that or make an extreme roulette, most old extremes are reasonably clearable with a party of randoms in 60 minutes, so I think It would work, assuming the rewards are good enough, plus it would be a great way to improve player skill while still being optional so nobody quits over it.
I got my Astrope before Stormblood came out. I'm glad I got it out of the way when I did. The content seems way more difficult for beginners now than it was before.
From a fairly new sprout (three months, early StB thanks to the free trial unlock), what I can tell about the mentor roulette system looks like a circus. I learned not to DF queue for extremes because packs of mentors started abusing my parties by the time I got to Ramuh EX. The sprouts were competent or at least willing to listen, far more helpful on average than half the crowns who were spreading salt, quitting on the second or third wipe, or dooming runs by persistently discouraging everyone else until half the party left and cleared the penalty for them. For every tank on Garuda who repeated the same basic mistake over and over, for every me who never learned and never had explained (with mentors present) how Ifrit's debuffs mattered to a healer, there were five mentors playing better but throwing just as hard. With the current system, a mentor is as likely as anyone else to teach anything, and more likely to make a hard instance worse. I don't read the crown as a mark of anything good. Not helping things, it seems like their broken roulette is the reason why free trial players like me have no good option to get into an extreme. Otherwise DF would be fine, wouldn't it?
I am a mentor who is nearly done with the roullete. I personally believe extremes should be removed from the pool. And here are my reasons why. 1. Most sprouts that queue into them do so without the willingness to learn the fight. Mentors cannot teach them anything if they don’t want to learn. 2. Sprouts are generally pretty bad at the game. Its increadbly frustrating to queue into harder content with random people and suffer because of it. 3. Most extremes past HW (even some HW ones) are not designed to be able to be fully cleared from blind prog in a single lockout for the average player. It doesn’t matter how good at the game the Sprouts may be, the chances they are clearing something like Shinryu EX in a single lockout is VERY low. 4. As a roullete, the expectation is that you aren’t signing up to prog a single fight for a whole hour when mentors go into mentor roullete, and doing so is ultimately a waste of time like 75% of the time because no clear=no mount progress. If it were up to me, I’d have the extreme trials in their own category and unable to be queued for via normal df at all. Kind of like how the high end duties (including *gasp* an EXTREME TRIAL are now). If a sprout wants to do an extreme trial synced. They are automatically filtered to pf.
Your changes would be great. I never gave it too much thought. Maybe there could even be a question at the end of content, if ppl where happy with the run, a yes would give the mentor like... mvp points you could boast with in your profile. Or instead of points showing directly, a cosmetic item that gets more fancy the more mvp points you have. This could tell new people who is actually helpful as well, if they have a question.
That could also be a good idea! I wonder how well this would work alongside the commendation system we have! But some way to highlight when a Mentor actually mentors well would probably help a lot!
The system to reward mentors for being good mentors is already in place: it's the commendation system. Just make the achievement based on a certain number of commendations gained during mentor roulettes.
The commendation system has flaws of its own. I have seen a ton of people farm commendations in Guildhests by posting macros with things like "Comm me after pls trying to be mentor before Dawntrail
That would be awful. A majority of players either leave without giving a comm or give it out for a reason other than how good or helpful the player was. Instead of any duty being worth the same when it completes and being able to play any role you would want to queue as a healer and then wait until everyone leaves just so have the best chance at getting comms.
It's also something completely subjective, people can forget, choose not to commend, don't pay attention to that and you are left with an effort with no guarantees
I give my coms to the worst players in the group another in my group gives coms to people that are the class he likes and many other reasons for my other friends like was this person a female au'ra or som off stuffs no one cares about mentor crowns xD
I think a lot of this traces back to the issue that current early game in FFXIV has, where people do so much damage and take so little damage, that everything is trivial. There's a lot of stuff pre-Stormblood that can oneshot a player and make them realise "oh that kills me." But how much stuff these days do we just... shrug at? And not even realize the mechanics aren't there anymore? Fights like Garuda Hard, Bismark, Thordan. And if you want an incredibly memorable example: the entire Crystal Tower series. This is an issue because players start the game naive and then never grow out of it because the game just lets you fuck around and do shit for damage, 'cause everyone else will make up for it if they're good. The moment you have 2-3 people in your party of 8 who have fallen into this issue, you're going to notice some huge issues. The healers will die constantly. The tanks don't mitigate or pull agro, the DPS aren't doing their own namesake. Because they didn't need to before. Now they're being kicked in the shins at level 60 and beyond because the game starts to get difficult, or they were one of the sprouts to queue for Ifrit EX without a basic understanding of their own rotation or how important gear really is. I partially blame the developers for this, but I would treat it more like hindsight at this point. They've already taken a step in the right direction regarding my favourite trial, The Final Day, and had it ilvl synced so your gear can't carry you through the fight AND delivers an experience in the fight that's more comparable to how it felt on launch week. That's what all of the content should be like, imo. All of them. Difficulty be damned. The reason we got the mentality of "I just want a quick roulette" is because those quick dungeons and raids USED to be hard or moderately challenging. If we got shoved into the ilvl box and actions didnt do obscene amounts of damage at such low levels, quick roulettes wouldn't be the expectation, rather the reward for people learning the fight and their rotation to a tee. There should be exceptions, of course. If it's still too difficult, you look back and see what can be fixed. Preserving the raid shouldn't be a factor anymore, not when less than half the playerbase has even done the Binding Coils, the most story-important raid series in the game.
Honestly, I think there should be two different roulettes with two different rewards. I really enjoy doing mentor roulette, knowing I'm helping those long waiting queues and possibly getting to help new first time players experience and get through content. But it's definitely an anxiety to find out I've been queued into any random extreme trial i'm expected to remember the mechanics of well enough to explain to a group of people who have likely never attempted this content before. Having a mentor roulette for normal content to help fill queues and provide some guidance, and having a separate one for extremes with a corresponding reward (for completion only) would still motivate mentors to jump in and help both these queues while knowing more about what they're getting into and committing to
That's actually a solid idea. if you're not ready to lay down some knowledge, then just skip extreme roulette and still get your mount
This is actually the main reason I'm avoiding becoming a mentor. I wanna help other players but I haven't really touched the early expac extremes and stuff, and I reeeeeeeeally don't wanna learn entire fights just on the off chance I'll need to then later teach them to some sprouts of unpredictable willingness to learn
Having extremes in the roulette is the problem. You can still mentor newer players without having had any experience in EX content.
I mean, couldn't you just queue for a non-mentor roulette and achieve the same result?
I'm not saying this to be mean or anything, but if you take a more novice centric view of things, as is the intention, this just sounds more like you want to be a mentor without the, you know, mentoring, or rather just being more selective about what you mentor in. in which case just stick to novice network and give the help you want to help there, instead of jumping into mentor roulette.
Personally I've loved it every time an EX or a 24 man shows up in mentor roulette. Help is help after all, novices in that content is just as deserving of novices in any other, when we sign up for mentor roulette we're signing up to help new players, thats really the say all and end all of it. If we started getting to pick and choose *where* we do, you're going to end up wiht something similar to Crystal Tower Roulette 2.0 where some content is just dead because everyone actively avoids it.
I fully get and understand what you're saying regarding your own experience, but you're not the focus, the novices are you know?
If that is that much of a deal breaker, just don't sign up for it and leave to us who do?
I actually think this is an interesting idea but the mount should only be for the extremes. Then people queuing know what they are signing up for and will be incentivized to actually clear the roulette. The non extreme version could have a lesser reward like a title? Unique glam? So that you have a reason to fill spots and complete random duties but not as prestigious as the mount
i was just recently badgered into unlocking my mentor roulette.. I'm one of those mutants that legitimately likes helping new players though.. we should change the crown mentors get for a watering can, remind them they they are not special, they are there for a reason that isn't showing off a crown. they are there to help our next batch of players know what the heck is going on
I appreciate your service and you are not a mutant. You are a friend
I second the watering can. honestly the crown should be for 100% achievements.
I know a guy who did content explicitly to, and I quote, "reclaim his crown" e.i went queuing SCH for SMN to be 100 because he hates healing and dps queue and it's the only reason to up healer. He is the worst person to do something new with, and he loves ruining it "for the teaching opportunity". He will pull aoes together, he will run off with stack marks, he will spin with the bosses. It's an all around terrible time unless his wife is joining (his savage raiding wife that is in a different guild than him). Unfortunately my friends think this guy is funny so they bring him, and my husband absolutely refuse to heal instances with this guy, or be his co-tank on trials.
@@drake713 Sounds like he is more of a recurring pain than he should be for you. I know it's easier said than done since this involves a play group but, I think you and your husband shouldn't party with the trouble maker anymore - for any reason
@@grizzlybear6377 Yeah. Fortunately he's busy with a new job but Sophia was a terror we haven't done Zurvan yet. Running the wrong way on purpose for the pull slide is very easy to get people to follow you when you have a crown. Telling him to knock it off and try he's just even harder on making more "mistakes", to teach people what goes wrong. Which is draining because by doing everything wrong on purpose he obviously know how to run the content he ruins the correct way, and many bosses can quickly spiral into chaos without that extra un-help already
Mentor Roulette has to be one of the most stressful ways to play the game there is. Even if you are incentivized to help people that doesn't get through the dozen hurdles you have to jump just to get to the actual helping. I've spent dozens of times trying to teach people fights to people who don't read the chat, ignored me after two minutes out of frustration, who don't speak the same language(s) than me and then people who will straight up insult me for teaching without them asking them first and people who have insulted me for not teaching them before they had to ask. The whole system puts all these expectations on Mentors and half of them don't even care. Wanting to help has never been enough and it doesn't help that every time we talk about the mentor system half of the conversation is about how so many mentors are assholes who don't care about other people. IMO the last thing the mentor system needs is more incentive to do it. Anyone who genuinely wants to help has to first accept that they will be at the very least meme'd on if not insulted for free just for using the burger king crown and making them an even smaller minority would just break the system even more.
While I agree with a lot of Mentors not really being teacher, the opposite is also true unfortunately. Many new players going into xyz content don't want to be taught. They are either unwilling to listen due to having a fragile ego or they just want to learn something blind. The current solution is just terrible all around. I think tracking the time would probably be the best idea. They could also have a "Mentee" option, so when you queue for Extreme content the game would actually ask you whether or not you want a Mentor to guide you or not. They could also add Mentor-specific commendations, which you could give a Mentor even if you fail to clear the content.
lmao Mentee, you could have said student or scholar or apprentice. But they already DO have that option, the issue is that it's opt-out instead of opt-in. You can turn OFF your sprout at any time, but by keeping your sprout you are saying "PLEASE MENTOR ME!"
i actually love doing content blind and learning as i go. for all normal mode content in the game, i dont think thats an issue. for anything above that its probably rude but i religate myself to partyfinder for that side of things.
how about we call it "mentored" not "mentee" because the latter sounds like how you would describe a York peppermint patty
@Maeve_Rose i know it sounds silly but mentee is literally the English word for someone who is being mentored 😅
@@CaetsuChaijiCh no no, i am aware but "mentored" is also an acceptable word that isn't odd-sounding to english speakers.
as a Mentor who just recently finished the 2000 runs, I have noticed two things about the Data Center that I run on (In this case, Crystal)
Whenever I got an Extreme Trial (Often Ramuh, Shiva, Moggle Mog, or Great Hunt) The sprouts would come in with absolutely no preparation and no understanding of how the fights work, and often no understanding of their own abilities. Those same sprouts, if they are Tank (I'm DPS) will speed forward and pull before any explanation can be given, and often don't even read the chat. It was always discouraging for any Mentor in the instance, and often one of us would leave merely as a courtesy to the others. Those sprouts didnt want to be mentored, they wanted a carry, and they didn't get it. This happened very often.
2nd, I would often just get the current Expert Dungeons over and over. Mentor Roulette should be about running older content and helping sprouts through it, not babysitting Returner Sprouts (Crownsprouts) get their daily clears. It got boring running them over and over. Getting a Stormblood or Shadowbringers dungeon was a refreshing breeze.
I can safely say that those Mentors who are serious about being good folk usually get beaten down by these kinds of situations and become jaded and routine by Run 500. By Run 2000 I can safely say I don't want to touch that roulette again.
I'm currently on about 3.5k mentor roulettes done and I agree that you shouldn't get newer content unless it's literally the only thing left to fill. I would prefer to help actual sprouts. Overall though the system is fine. I don't give advice until new players have tried the pulls a few times anyway so them running in head first actually works for me.
It's better for them to learn by experience than to have the first time experience spoiled in chat before starting.
another issue with being a mentor, 90% of the time no one bloody listens to what we say, which leads to most of us staying quiet
Aye if they don't listen I just do my own thing. As long as I do my part I'm happy enough. @@Kude1707
Yeah, sprouts should end either at a timed point, or in general just way earlier than level 90 out of 100. Like, yes there are some new mechanics, and plenty of people who refuse to retain or learn anything at all but I might just be a terrible person who think you should have learned by level 80 that a stack marker with layers of buddy arrows will hit repeatedly. (Am a sprout myself been playing for a month but Nidhogg, who is a msq fight, is always a nightmare).
The solution I thought of after doing my 2000 mentors was having some sort of weighting system where guildhests were worth the bare minimum point of progress, and as you got to harder/less desirable/more intensive content or content that asked more of your time, you would have a higher possible point reward for it. Extremes giving tons of progress, main scenarios giving a decent amount for their long times spent in instance, with dungeons being your 'average' amount of progress and so on.
It does abstract it in a weird way and does make it easier to get the mount reward, and within some types of duties like alliance raids there's a time variance, but it's far better than 'some hours I receive 10 guildhests and make tons of progress, or in that same amount of time I teach 7 sprouts Ramuh EX and get 10% of the progress'.
Appreciate the video! It tracks with all my feelings about it.
Yeah that is also a way to do it, that could weigh the perceived difficulty of specific content, and can remove more of the potential "tricks" to it! 😊
Thank you!
I enjoy mentor roulette for backfilling lower level duties that were struggling, but I hate when I get level 90 dungeons that didn't need any help in the first place
Yeah I get what you mean! It could be pretty cool if there was a roulette for joining groups for less popular content to fill them specifically! ^^'
Personally I use Mentor Roulette when I don't know what I wanna do, something easy, something harder. I play as a tank and think, well, probably someone might be waiting a long time and could use some help with their queue, so I'll help. So it's a win-win-win in my mind. I gave up hunting mounts a long time ago, the grind is just not worth it for me personally after PVP locked out special mount rewards.
Yeah, its super annoying to get the most recent dungeon in mentor roulette, I highly doubt that one needs any help getting filled
I've done about 900 of these roulettes. This videos homework is spot on. I never leave the hard content because honestly it'd thr o ly fun part. Ex trials and firdt time clears are exhilarating.
But thats not most mentors. About half or more will just leave and yell at the sprouts for queueing into it.
System could use some help but how is definitely the question.
This is the whole thing -- it doesn't group mentors with people who asked for help, or who need help, or even new players. It has nothing to do with actually BEING a mentor.
7:00 This is the flaw in the logic for the vast majority of extremes I've gotten in mentor roulette over the years. Over 90% of the groups I've attempted to talk to and help them learn or realize what they're doing wrong simply don't respond back, don't read chat period or get defensive because they made mistakes. It's more likely that they'll pull before I've managed to explain or I'll finish typing, there's dead silence and then we do the next pull and they make the exact same mistakes. It's to the point where if the duty starts and it's completely silent or they insta pull and then stay silent after the wipe, I know it's another one of these groups and I leave. It's not worth the headache if the newcomers don't want to learn.
It's not purely on the mentors overall, the sprouts themselves also have to contribute to the mentor system by wanting to learn and interact.
This is also a fair point. Some of the sprouts are completely unprepared for a duty that requires communication and proper team work to win, and the only thing we can hope in that case, is that they don't try again later, or that they learn what extreme content actually is ^^'
Indeed, these are the kind of examples where I think it would really just be better if we didn't have the ability to queue for extremes for example. That would at least give the sprout a stop and moment to think if the button instead opens the party finder and tells them to make a group ^^ But I wonder if that would help!
While I was a sproutie myself I had the displeasure of doing Ifrit EX using duty finder. No one knew what to do so I explained the mechanics as best as I could after watching a video. The other tank and I managed to provoke and pass the boss around so our healers didn't struggle that much, I told the healers where to bait AOEs, after a few wipes they got the timing down, it was looking good. We then spent about an hour wiping to nails because the dps would not wait for the debuffs to wear off. We cleared with 1:32 left on the timer. Thanks to the BLM and MCH being dead for the nails section (or the healers didnt ress them on purpose).
Garuda, Odin, Titan and King Mog (patch 5.3) didn't go much smoother but sweet Hydaelyn they were either too used to braindead content where you can clear with just a decent tank and healer or just didn't care about wasting 7 other people's time.
You can never fully "solve" the problem of some people being stubborn or not wanting to learn, but I think something that might alleviate the "silent sprout who doesn't read chat in a DF Extreme" problem would be to make it way more clear in-game that Extremes (and Savages) REQUIRE teamwork and communication, and likely will not be cleared on a first attempt. Considering that the difference in difficulty between "XYZ Duty" and "XYZ Duty (Hard)" is basically nothing, many new players wrongly assume that the difference between (Hard) and (Extreme) is similar. A number of Extreme Trial unlock quests also require you to finish the Extreme Trial to get the quest out of your log, which incentivizes players to actually do them instead of ignoring them.
Here's my proposal:
- Rename all of the "XYZ (Hard)" duties to something else. The higher-level versions of previous duties like the ARR Trials and various dungeons can just be called "The Bowl of Embers 2" or whatever. Duties that don't have a "normal" version (Ravana, Bismarck, and the post-ARR primals) should just drop the label and replace it with nothing.
- Change all of the Extreme Trial unlock quests to NOT require completion of the duty in order to finish the quest.
- Call out explicitly in tutorial text when a new player picks up their first Extreme or Savage duty quest that the thing they just unlocked is very difficult, requiring coordination and teamwork and multiple attempts. It should also probably call out that there is no practical benefit to completing Savages/Extremes outside of the current expansion. Some people will not read this of course, but it's better than leaving it vague.
Again, this won't solve the problem that some people don't want to cooperate, but it will reduce the amount of sprouts queuing into difficult content without even realizing what they're doing. And as a side-note, Odin should probably be moved to the "High-End Trials" section and treated like an Extreme, and Coils of Bahamut should similarly be treated more like a Savage by the game -- when I first unlocked Odin I sat in a dead queue for like 90 minutes because I thought it was like any other normal-tier Trial.
@@CaetsuChaijiCh IMO that's a flaw of the normal content being way too easy and requiring no thought whatsoever to clear. Something really needs to be done to narrow the gap between normal and high-end content in this game. We never had this problem in FF11 because by level 20 you'd well and truly learned how to communicate or you'd never even make it to level 20. (Of course, it also helped that the mentor icon was a blue blob instead of a golden crown and there were zero rewards attached to the program.) At some point during the MSQ the game really needs to force players to actually *talk* to eachother.
@@CaetsuChaijiCh No, its not. If they dont try later, they will quit the game. Is that what you want? Sprouts are lifeblood of every mmorpg. They have to learn, they have learn, to learn. Just because they are "dumb" from your perspective, doesnt mean they actually are dumb. They might just dont understand, yet.
They got over normal diff primal because others carried them, but never told them what are they doing wrong. So they try Ex trial and hit the wall.
I did leveling roulette today, got Titan with sprout whm and (i think) mentor tank. Healer went faaar to the side, barelly managed to keep tank and himself alive casting Cure1. We dps got no heal for long time, before he realized he could cast Medica instead(sadly still from distance). Nobody said the word to him. Well i wanted suggest him to use it, but i was busy surviving. We killed Titan, nobody died, but did he learn, to learn? Hopefully. When he gets to Garuda, he should know better before someone gets angry and shoo him away.
Problem is communication. Nobody even bothers to respond if someone asks(not all the time but very often), or give them time to ask in first place. Pull, pull, pull. Newbie you are supose to be helping in cutscene? Pull. Dont waste the time actually playing the game.
Mentor with that kind of mentality shouldnt be mentor in the first place.
I'll mainly be weighing in here from the perspective of a mentor who wanted to do that job initially, but got past a breaking point in my mentor roulette spam before Endwalker. I'll absolutely admit that was not the healthiest way to do it for my sanity. When I was close to the end I was running 50-60 roulettes per day just to be done with it.
However, I do distinctly remember tracking my progress, seeing how many extremes I got and such, but after about half way through or a little less I got to the point where I did not want to offer advice any more or explain mechanics, opting to run a lot of them as red mage and scrape people off the floor to victory. Anyway, the 3 possibilities with giving gameplay/mechanic advice can best be divided as: 1- the sprout was receptive and started improving- great! this is the desired outcome, but it felt more rare than the other 2. 2- the players simply ignore everything, don't respond, and continue cure 1 spamming and single targeting dungeon trash and playing ice mage, 3- they are outright hostile with the best responses being 'you don't pay my sub' and the worst being abuse. Enough of 2 and 3 made it so I really thought twice about even giving advice again, and soured my experience overall.
On the note of extremes, and to echo another comment- situations 2 and 3 were also highly common especially in the harder ARR/HW extremes. Some examples include sprout tanks face pulling Ramuh as soon as the gate drops even after several wipes, players missing entire sets of accessories or other gear in extreme trials. Overall I completed many extremes that were more lenient with the ilvl sync (Garuda, Ravana) but tended to avoid (leave/vote abandon) the more deadly ones like Ramuh and Nidhogg.
Of additional note with my situation being a sprout in Stormblood, I simply did not get to experience those fights myself at current content level, and thus was far less thrilled with seeing them in roulettes than others. Mentors are not walking encyclopedias for every fight in the game (there are a lot) and that is definitely not in the requirements when signing up to be one.
It would be worth considering this side, too, if they are ever to make any changes to this fundamentally broken system.
@@shane0616 And here we have the prime example of people who absolutely should not be a mentor lol
@@koopakape Mentors cannot help people who are unwilling to be helped. That is the majority of people who magically ignore everything around them and somehow think that going into a queue for an extreme that released several expansions ago is a good idea. If you have even tried to do Mentor roulette you'd understand.
It also doesn't help that the novice network is full of "mentors" who teach blatantly wrong information that a single minute of google would say otherwise, and nobody tries to argue it since you'll get thrown out of the novice network. The system doesn't work because Square refuses to hold people hostage until they learn (locking people out of MSQ if they fail to do a very basic dps rotation), or the Mentor system is far too lenient and should be brought to the other extreme where it locks out people who can't do current expansion Ultimates.
So there's this idea called "selection bias" or "confirmation bias", where the events that stand out the most in your memory are ones you look for again. Your brain NATURALLY is panicked into a fight-or-flight HEY F&%K YOU mode when someone yells at you for trying to help, so you naturally remember it better. Most of the time, I've found almost every sprout is incredibly receptive, grateful as HECK, thankful that I would offer them my time, and begging for MORE tips and tricks by the end! There definitely were a LOOOOT of "Bots" I will say (Not actual bots, just people who don't type, don't read, don't want to read or learn, and do the bare minimum to scrape by), but I like to think they don't want to do hardcore content anyways, and are probably just working hard and have a day off, so I push extra hard to make sure they can relax more and we can clear the dungeon while they Ice-Mage! Hey, Blizzard *IS* cool, I don't blame them!
3, when people start yelling at me about how I need to shut up and just let them play, I just apologize "I didn't mean to step on your toes. I just wanted to help, as a mentor I've played this game a lot and wanted to make sure you were enjoying it by being the best you could be! Sorry it made the experience worsen for you, feel free to blacklist me so that you don't have to listen to me talk in the future, however! I will offer advice to other people instead! ^^" and usually they get even more salty and sour but I blacklist them at that point. They won't make it in the FFXIV community with that attitude, and I know it, so I just let them eat themselves alive. Shame, if they cared even a bit they'd have found a beautiful place to love. If they DO make it in this game, they grew up, pulled their own heads out of their butts, and just learned to play.
You're fully right about the hard content, though. I really wish there was some way that we could handle people walking into The Whorl (Extreme) with ilvl 50 armor and ilvl 30 accessories as if they weren't going to get pancaked every single sneeze. We can't mentor that besides saying "So, we will not be clearing this fight, and it is pretty much heavily your fault, but there's nothing you can do about it :) Go to Mor Dhona and go get accessories!" Which we CANNOT say because WTF! Obviously we do tell them to bump up their item level, but this game just needs to make it clear how important the party finder system is!
@@koopakape Whatever it is you think a mentor is, the way it is implemented is not it.
I’ve met some legitimately helpful mentors, and I’ve met a lot more mentors that complain at ppl trying to learn something new in roulettes or expressing that if people who do not wallpull in df should be reported because it’s so much slower.
There used to be a mentality in 14 that we teach new players stuff, maybe not every extreme trials but at least the base dungeons. I’ve seen less patience with this over time, and I think that is where the mentor problem stems from. Yes you should probably pull a lot as a tank in dungeons, as do I when I tank, but saying people are wasting your time when they aren’t optimal is kind of wierd. Do these people also complain to the old lady in the queue at the grocers because she stopped to talk with the person at the register? There is nothing wrong with minmaxxing, but when mentors actively complain to novice network about tanks being slow it becomes kind of hostile to learn something new and people will start playing other games.
The example with the old lady is extremely good! Exactly! We all have to learn at some point, and we aren't all masters of the game anyway! 😊
Having done the 2000 roulettes I needed for the mount, I was 100% trying to teach the extremes every time I got them, you just sometimes get players that either don't learn fast enough to clear or are completely unwilling to learn which is why I still do leave if I don't see us clearing in the hour. Like Ramuh EX with tanks that don't read chat is just impossible. I also got a Garuda EX at some point with healers that kept telling me to shut up, stop talking and "just play the game" while deleting every marker I put down to help...
Sprouts usually did appreciate the advice in extremes. The reality is that sprouts usually don't want it in regular content and will often react negatively to being given unsolicited advice, so I'm 100% in the camp of not giving any advice unless 1. The fight has a mechanic that can easily wipe us on the first go or 2. It's an extreme. At least make it so there's a checkbox somewhere that says "I would like to be paired with a mentor" so we know the sprouts we get paired with DO want advice, it would help a LOT. Otherwise I think mentor roulette would work better rebranded as a backfill for other roulettes over trying to get burger king crowns to try to teach new players. It just doesn't work atm.
The "I would like to be paired with a mentor" checkbox is a pretty good idea.
Indeed, when I do content, I typically wait until things go wrong before trying to teach anything, specifically because a lot of players respond negatively to being taught, until they realize they need it. It can get awkward, because this can also be interpreted on the other side of the fence, as a mentor not even trying to communicate!
Also, that Garuda EX example sounds terrible. I feel like to some degree, those players were actively preventing the duty from being cleared >.
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Yep, and they kept telling people to stay hidden behind the rocks, which is a bad idea because then the rocks get knocked down and her ultimate gets harder to live through... On the flipside, I've gotten a Thordan Extreme that cleared in one pull, that one was surreal.
It is impossible to mentor people who don't want to be mentored.
A prime example would be Shiva extreme. I have explained to countless sprouts why we must all stand behind Shiva when she uses her bow and people just didn't want to listen.
This in my opinion is the main reason why mentor roulettes don't work.
I'd suggest at least some of the sprouts aren't actually ignoring you, they're running around in panic. That said, I of course agree they should both read the chat and act accordingly.
To be fair, my main issue as a sprout was noticing which weapon Shiva was using.. I got lucky on my 3rd run as a healer, thankfully the other healer survived, res'd me and we were able to finish but with all the spells and commotion its tough unless you fix the settings to only see your attacks and shivas but I enjoy the chaos, y'know?
That is actually the real life problem of teachers all over the world. Try teaching something teens and kids dont care and want nothing about it. If you can solve this, you will solve the mentor thing.
I had a mentor roulette like that with Ramuh(EX) the other day. We were telling people not to grab the orbs repeatedly because they were needed for tanks and tethers. Run ended up getting abandoned as soon as that was an option. And it was one of the mentors that was the biggest perpetrator of just walking into orbs for no reason.
I really don't think they are ignoring you. They just aren't used to certain mechanics yet and dont now what to look out for. The whole battle might be really overwhelming for them. I know I was when I was a sprout.
You forgot another possible setup: a group of sprouts that queue for an extreme and insist on a 100% blind run, therefore refusing any advice or teaching the mentor may have to give. I've been in that situation too many times, where I'm basically not allowed to help, but expected to sit there and fail for an hour + like I have that kind of spare time just sitting around
That is true. Personally if I ended up in such a group, I would almost certainly report them for refusing to communicate. If you want to have full creative control over how your group does things (a blind run for example), then you should make a group in party finder 🙁 and that also goes for sprouts.
But that is just my opinion of course 😊
Edit: there's also a difference between wanting to pull and see the fight, and getting tips and tricks and advice as you see more of the fight. It's just not okay to refuse advice altogether when you are technically publicly queueing for something. The duty finder is there to work through beating the content together 🤔
I'm still newish at the game (working towards shadowbringers DLC, after finishing Stormblood), my personal view is that i'll go in to a duty any role and just ask (i'm new/first time, what should i look out for?) On the other hand though, I will never look up a guide to a fight, minus ex, as i don't cue for those. Things i haven't cleared once which i think is the purpos of the party finder, I want to go in and learn, and experriance the duty as intended as much as is possible @@CaetsuChaijiCh
It is of no fault to the mentor to give ideas on how to do the fight. That being said, I personally wouldn't throw an entire essay of exactly what to do but I would explain to them what they have just seen. Imo it also helps you as a player look out for future mechanics rather than being solely reliant on guides as you start actually putting your own words into practice.
@@CaetsuChaijiCh Wanting to do content blind is not reportable my dude. As annoying as it is, they are not required to take our advice - not wanting to listen isn't against TOS. I'd suggest you read up on it and just leave a party that's frustrating you.
@kellevichy wanting to do content blind is not reportable no.
Going into content blind and then not at least trying to work with your team is rude, but perhaps not reportable.
Refusing to communicate with your team is reportable, and is where "not wanting to listen" leads to. It also applies to intentionally impeding completion of duties, which is a vague one, but also reportable.
Now that doesn't mean you should report them for that specifically, I'd say that highly depends on context, but that is to say, yes I did in fact read both the community guidelines, and the various report reasons found in the ingame support desk 😊
On a second note, a simple change they could do to make the Mentor Roulette process more appealing is if you couldn't get the same instance twice in a row. Getting Praetorium or Troia 4 times in a row can drain anyone's mental strength.
I dislike this about the way the Roulette works outside of Mentoring, too.
I KNOW I will get Praetorium, I just know it. Main Story Roulette is a 95% chance Praetorium and somethings needs to change about it - either by altering Praetorium and allowing people to skip the cutscenes (And appropriately giving flack to people who don't respect when a sprout wants to view the cutscenes) or by altering the layout to make Praetorium a Part 1 / 2 dungeon.
I know it's hard to find a solution for this because some people, especially more experienced players, WILL keep playing while a Sprout watches cutscenes which diminishes their participation in the fights and gets them booted into a cutscene talking to Nero followed by Nero being gone and the group hijacking the Elevators... but I seriously dread Praetorium at this point. It's not even exciting content, most of this mission is extremely easy, TOO easy, especially the mobs. You can let your Fae solo heal the tank while they're leashing mobs.
Agreed... As much as I love getting Under the Armor, even I get annoyed getting it 5+ times in a row because someone is trying to farm comms.
Most people, except ones like my g.f that thinks Praetorium is the best dungeon in the game. I question her sanity
Great hunt ex 3 times in a row....that was an early night that I called it.
Mentor roulette was never supposed to be rewarding, it's supposed to be a service to the community, there's a reason Astrope's description says the mount is only given to those of GENTLE hearts.
IMO Battle mentor should only be given to people who ran the roulette, make it so it has stages, and the more runs u do the closer u get to getting the mentor title
doesn't matter if the game has less mentors anyway if no one is running the roulette or helping anyone. take away everyone's crowns if they're not using them.
Also, as a mentor, in my 2000 runs, i never told someone to go party finder anything, if you're queueing for the roulette, that's on YOU, and you should help whoever's there to beat the content. Some people don't wanna pf and that's totally fine, in JP server they use duty finder to clear savage. so i don't think mentors should be complaining that people aren't using pf, that's just mentors not willing to teach.
Not to mention, the roulette isn't even that bad, sure, u'll get bad duties, long alliance raids, but sometimes u'll also get an extreme, with 3 sprouts and 5 mentors, and it's a walk in the park, mentors should be helping each other as well in mentor roulette, be prepared for the duties, or at least willing to learn a new fight u've never done synced before.
Mentor roulette changed me as a player, and i think aside from filling the game's duty queues, that is the whole point of mentor roulette. it's about helping the community, not doing what's most convenient or rewarding for the mentor. it's not supposed to be interesting or appealing, it's literally just a service u do out of kindness, OR for a mount. but regardless, even if u did it for the mount, u can't argue that u didn't help someone along the way.
Mentors should aspire to be an example, and not complain like the average player.
People on JP use duty fighter to do current EX/Savage with actually good consistency which is why I am surprised people even talk about forcing newbies to PF. (I am a JP Datacenter player)
That being said there are some perks to the other servers. JP servers will only use 1 or 2 strats, and there will be cases where a new optimal strat is found but would likely never be used outside of statics because everyone is too used to the old strats to care about the newer ones, even if the setup was easier.
@@deltaoalice9281 yeah, i just think it's wrong to tell players to pf when they're just trying to run the content. it just sounds like you don't want to help when you say that. i know most people probably don't like my comment, but i stand by it. all the mentors complaining are just lazy.
@@deltaoalice9281 You mean raid finder, which allows you to filter matchmaking to completion only. JP players don't use it for practice or to learn the fight, which is a major difference from the situation with mentor roulette - having to guide new people through hard content that they might not be actually skilled enough to do yet.
I do Mentor roulette primarily for fun. I enjoy helping out sprouts and it lets me relive my own days as a sprout. The issue I find with actually mentoring is that a LOT of players do not take kindly to any amount of advice. And indeed, some may even report for it, which is not ideal. I am of course, extremely patient and respectful when I say anything, but after a number of people getting angry at me for even suggesting we do the mechanics right, it doesn't even feel worth it to say anything. I loaded into Ramuh EX one time in Mentor roulette and they basically refused to do orbs right and I was like, "You can try to brute force it, but it really helps to get that down. You're just gonna keep dying if you don't." and this dude started saying I was toxic and I shouldn't be bossing them around. Like of course mentors don't bother mentoring when there are players like that. Most mentors I know that actually enjoy mentoring just wait to say anything until someone asks and most people just don't ask. Making this comment at 5:59 so you may very well make this exact point LOL
as someone who has ran over 1000 mentor roulettes in a bit over a year now i have to say that it sometimes makes me question my life choices. like a few days ago i've lost about 3 hours trying to complete a single mentor roulette because every time i got one of the old extremes where some didn't bother to listen to mentors explaining mechanics and just pull early and stuff like that. the whole evening was just wiping over and over again until the time was up. i literally cried.
but other times i get into low level dungeon runs or leveling dungeons with first timers and they appreciate my advice and warnings about boss mechanics which makes it worth it to me because i like helping and always try to make the tank feel safe when i go as healer (which is most of the time).
sorry for the ramble. love your content ♥
As someone who has completed the grind for the Astrope mount.
Having done it during Shadowbringers during the lull to Endwalker.
I did it in 3 months on Aether basically doing 20 runs a day.
I generally hoped to get the quick and easy stuff, obviously. But I never just ran away from EX trials I didn't want to do unless someone happened to leave before me.
Yeah, I did the typical stuff most people grinding for the mount did. But I was never the first to leave. I ALWAYS tried to teach people whatever content I was thrown into. but as others have said. You can't mentor people that don't *want* to be mentored.
I've almost got my 2nd Astrophe mount. I prefer to get the harder stuff. The less dungeons the better. I'd prefer to wipe for an hour in an Ex trial than do a single dungeon. On the plus side as a Tank I get 7200 gil each time I run it so I make a lot of money by just spamming the roulette. You love to see it.
I think your idea of having the achievement be based on hours spent in Mentor Roulette duties is actually a really interesting idea! I wouldn't have thought of something like that.
The main problem i have with mentor roulette doesnt have anything to do with difficult content, on the contrarie i really enjoy doing extremes with sprouts and helping them to take theire first step into difficultish content. the main thing that annoys me is that 90% of the time i end up getting queued into a msq group that doesnt even have any new players in them, so it feels like i just had to do msq roulette for a fraction of the usual rewards.
THIS^
yeah honestly at this point i leave msq dungeons when i get them so that someone (usually a dps) can get a fast msq roul queue and actually benefit from the fat exp, and i just go craft/gather for 30 x)
Even if there is a single sprout and you get queue into a msq dungeon through mentor roulette. The main reason you queue for msq roulette is the chunk of exp you get. Guess what, you need to be max level to queue for mentor roulette so you don't even get that exp.
I agree. Remove msq dungeon from mentor roulette.
I think getting a comm system of some sorts specifically for mentors, hours invested into mentor roulette, and how many you've completed, would ultimately solve this issue. Where mentors would essentially have to play the role of the best citizen kinda thing. Where you're getting rewarded for the best you can be, which is why there is no one simple solution to fix it all. You have to add in multiple factors to make it a competent system to have others become reliable without minimal incentive.
Replace the mentor crown with a mentor watering can, watch as 90% of "ehehe crown so good" people dissapear. It'd make more sense too, you're suppose to make sprouts thrive
Also remember to throw in the added note: Since the Free Trial expanded, we have a lot more free players, and so now, telling sprouts to "Use Party Finder" doesn't always work anymore since free people cant do that. So the mentor roulette issue compounds on that even more if you aren't prepared to deal with that possibility,
This just isnt true. You cannot CREATE party finders but you can JOIN them as a ft
@@zacharyperea3624 Yeah, sure! They can join the zero open pf listing for extremes! Don't get me wrong, I understand that often, if they ask, someone would be willing to set that up for them, but you're asking for a complicated, multi-step process from someone it hasn't ever been required from in the past, that depends on others' goodwill, that takes much longer, and that isn't particularly intuitive to begin with.
I think that the insistence on using pf for extremes is... frankly ridiculous. You knew which roulette you were queueing. You knew you could get an extreme. Buck up, try to teach, and if they're not willing to learn, *then* feel free to leave them to their fate. Maybe it's just my experience, maybe I've just been lucky, but I've never had to leave an extreme and never timed one out, either. The absolute *worst* I've had was a 40 minute striking tree, but that one wasn't even sprouts being the problem, it was mentors.
@@zacharyperea3624It took me 4 months to complete every arr trial doing this (just joining pfs). I just joined pfs because I wanted to do them min IL no echo. Ramuh was the worst taking 3 of the 4 months because it's rarely run and a miserable fight nobody competent wants to help with.
If I didn't care about MINE and just wanted to beat the fights synced the 90 minute queue time seems not so bad in comparison.
The reason I went to the trouble of unlocking the Mentor Roulette was entirely for the additional gil from the daily bonus. I wasn't even aware there was a Mount attached to going through Mentor stuff. However, if I ever see the "One or more players are new to this content" in the chat window then I will absolutely try my best to explain the fights... provided I even remember them.
Lukewarm take:
Remove Mentor Roulette.
Remove rewards from being tied in the Mentor program.
Remove the crowns.
The most that should be "awarded" to Mentors in my opinion, is solely the "Mentor" title. It keeps it from being flashy and weeds out the people who are only there for the vanity. There also needs to be a bit better of a vetting process. If more people are willing to help out and not wear the "burger king crown", then that's incredibly telling. Heck, if someone has opted in as a mentor, at the end of an instance, success or fail, there should be a sort of rating system that newer players can use that can help filter to the people who are actually genuinely helpful. And it doesn't have to be anything crazy, just a sort of "Good, Okay, Bad" set of buttons. And keep it hidden from said mentors so they can't try to manipulate it.
@@user-bl5wk3tc2q I actually really like your idea. Maybe for that extreme roulette there's a disclaimer box that you have to agree on letting you know that the likelihood of success is uncertain.
Add to the list
-add a global chat
Make it so there are Crown Tiers, and you only get the crown after 100 successful clears.
I fear changing it to that would make no one care.
As a returner I just left the novice network. Most of the chat was nothing to do with the learning and some of the mentors were just straight condescending and using it as an ego boost.
Indeed, this is a common problem with the novice network chat. I have heard that on some data centers it might be fine, but generally I wouldn't recommend it for sprouts! :/
@@CaetsuChaijiCh I know on Siren at least, people are usually joking around all the time and the regulars are harrassing each other... but if someone comes in with a question, probably 95% of the time someone will respond to it pretty much immediately, and people looking for help with groups almost always get at least one or two helpers, so the channel does its job as long as you don't mind sitting through the goofing around.
On Crystal, we're chill as you can imagine for Crystal's reputation. That said maybe too chill for some because our chat turns into comedy.
On Famfrit in Stormblood, it was very common to see mentors bully sprouts (unjustly kicking many of them), give bad advice, or turn the chat into an ERP 101 class. A few people in my FC at that time decided to step in and police it. Let's just say a few those bad mentors did some time in GM jail for harrassment or any other ToS infraction that could be found within these bully mentor's behavior.
Faerie NN is full of "well ACTUALLY" mentors
I've never left an extreme in mentor roulette but I absolutely despise getting long alliance raids or praetorium but I wouldn't mind so much if the time spent in those was more rewarded
I like getting Prae, you get paid to do nothing. Watch some RUclips and chill.
When i saw you could get msq i stopped doing mentor roulette 😭
It's so fucking cool having Mentor Roulette be MSQ or Expert Roulette but with no reward /s
You still get loads of scrub tomes and all you do is watch a few cutscenes, whip open youtube on your 2nd screen or tab out. Wee buns. @@xivCatumin
@@Asako_Gaming Ah yes, I love getting msq dungeons through mentor roulette. It's not like you get no exp and only a third of the tome rewards.
I think with Ramuh Extreme in particular, there are factors that lead to an outsized number of sprouts queueing without understanding what they're getting into.
- The NPC who gives the unlock quest is located in the Adders' Nest in Gridania, very close to where the MSQ sends you to talk to Ilberd during the 2.4 quests. This makes it likely that the first quest a new player stumbles into that actually leads to difficult content is the Ramuh EX quest. (Garuda EX is also here but it has Garuda Hard as a prerequisite which a player doing the 2.4 MSQ isn't required to have done yet.)
- The unlock plays out like every other DF unlock, and at this point a new player has probably associated an optional quest like this with interesting casual content like 4-man dungeons that aren't part of the MSQ. The only indication that it's balanced very differently than everything else they've done up to this point is the word "Extreme", and if they have rolled through the Garuda/Titan/Ifrit "hard" modes by this point, they might disregard that.
- Once a few people make this mistake, Mentor Roulette will helpfully pull in some mentors who extremely do not want to be there to fill out the group, and it's very unlikely to succeed because Ramuh EX's mechanics are specifically unfriendly to there being a few people who don't know what they're doing -- the people who know what to do are stunned for upwards of a minute and the people who don't (and probably had no idea they were even signing up for something they might fail) are asked to go against everything the game has taught them up to this point and intentionally hit the stunned players with their damaging circle to break them out.
In the few posts I've seen where people who did the 2000 mentor roulettes bothered to track the duty they got and their success rates, Ramuh EX both appears more frequently than most extremes and is more likely to fail. Garuda is also frequent, probably because the quest is almost as easy to stumble into, but the success rate is higher because it's a bit more forgiving in terms of mechanics when everyone has a much higher ilvl than the fight was originally designed for.
Rather than Garuda extreme being forgiven, it's simply easier.
Garuda extreme is kill adds, don't get hit by raid wides, don't get hit boss attacks, separate mini-bosses.
The most mechanically difficult part is the separate mini-bosses.
Other than that, it's extreme-level damage and health.
Ramuh has more damage, has many one-shots, and difficult mechanics.
-Tanks need exactly 3 tanks of the lightning ball and to cycle between them + tank swap at appropriate times. Fail this and die, depend on how you fail, you might get both tanks killed.
-Don't stand next to the main tank or die.
-Get shocked awaked from charm or die.
-Don't let the arena get overrunned by lightning orbs or everyone dies.
-Don't take all of the lightning orbs or tanks die.
-Succeed the arbiter dps check or die. (Note this is hard because everything else that kills you or charms for you 30+ seconds)
Source: Am tank who went into garuda and ramuh extreme blind with a couple of fc clan mates.
Garuda was successfully on the second or third try.
Ramuh tried like 10 attempts but I ended up leaving with my fc mates because it was way past midnight.
With that said, music 10/10, interesting content, would and likely will attempt to do ramuh extreme again.
exactly same thing happend to me when I was a sprout. I stumbled over this quests for Ramuh Extreme. The additional problem is, that in the german client it is not called Extreme oder Hard or anthing like that. It is called "Zenit der Götter - Ramuh" which translates something like "zenith of the gods - Ramuh") So it was not obvious that this is a very hard content. So I queued for that and learned it the hard way :D
Best way is to give weights to duty completed:
Guildhest - 1p
Dungeon - 2p
...
EX Trial - 8p
The harder the content, the bigger time to point ratio to incentivize trying to teach people (if they can even speak languages I set up in DF) and compensate for chance of duty fail. Would be actually bonus move if Mentor get % of points for minimum % of boss reached during failed duty.
I agree with what you say about the mentor side of the argument. However what you left completely unmentioned is how some sprouts simply don't want to be helped. it's completely demotivating to do any Mentor work when you get hostile responses to 'unsolicited' advice. From my experience, sprouts wanting help are a minority and the rest either doesn't care or doesn't even read chat. Yesterday I got Thordan extreme in the roulette and one of the four sprouts didn't even read chat for the entire time. We cleared with around 15 minutes left on the lockout.
This must be a data center or specific server thing. Most sprouts on Ultros are very open to advice
@@Gendo. I'm from Primal too and most sprouts are very open to advice in extremes, so +1 on that. Doesn't mean that bad apples don't exist though sadly.
I'm from europe, Light Data Center. Our sprout are very open for advice too. Usually we only get in trouble if languages are different.
I straight-up gave up on trying to give people advice when a sprout outright told me I was wrong about Conjurer being a healer and that it's not their job to heal the tank.
I think the issue is due to expectations.
The game isn't so great at communicating what to expect from an Extreme. A lot of sprouts steamroll through an expansion or two then queue for their first Extreme, assuming it'll be a bit harder but possible to blindly plow through.
Then when people try to give advice, they're just like "why would I need that I've already beat copperbell (hard) lol" and there lies the problem.
I think the biggest issue with Mentor Roulettes is honestly setting the correct expectations for newer Players when queueing for Extremes just as much as setting expectations for Mentors if they end up in there. Part of that could be fixed by making it so all extremes/savages etc are still considered "high-end Duties" and put in the respective category, sorted by expansions. At the same time, giving some sort of tutorial that High-End content requires a bigger deal of coordination and cooperation.
Another Idea could be that sprouts can only queue into these duties if they're in a party with a Mentor. This would necessitate for Sprout/Mentor/etc statuses to be applied on an account wide basis, so that alt accounts could still theoretically queue into it (as unlikely as that is)
I'm at 800 successful mentors rn and at the beginning I had the same positive attitude of trying to help and do every single extreme the game throws my own way to not be like "one of those mentors" a lot of players have. And after a while you just realize it's indeed much better for your mental health to just leave instantly.
I had to duo Shiva Extreme from 20% to zero with another tank because no matter how many times I explained the mechanics, no one listened. I had to teach a tank how to provoke the moogles in Mog Ex and even with the moogles marked he couldn't do it. I had to teach multiple healers in Garuda Ex you're not suppose to use Cure 1 on every individual person. One Titan Ex run I basically didn't dps at all and only spam macros with sfx for people to do mechanics. Or my favorites, explained to a healer to not stand with the party on Ifrit Ex with Searing Wind just for them to say "I know" and keep doing it.
Granted, I had some genuine teaching experiences in extremes, but 90% of the time is just me carrying people that barely understand their own jobs to victory. And none of that is fun. I still occasionally do them synced in PF (sprouts that do make PFs seems more communicative in my experience), but DF? Nowadays I rather take the 30, log and play Star Rail.
I feel like the only fix is to either take extremes out of mentor and do a roulette only for them, or just open the roulette for everyone and delete the crown.
I've never had this experience myself. If people don't know their class/job, it's a stepping stone to learning. Like a White Mage casting Cure 1 on everyone isn't a problem, that's just something they have to learn. And then you need to account for people, as you say " _I know_ " and still doing it, either out of accident, stress or latency. Can't do more than smile and chuck a potion at them.
What I have, had problems with myself, is endgame raiders bluntly telling others how to play and when they don't listen, the raiders go " _DON'T YOU WANT TO BE OPTIMAL?_ ", while following up with " _Good Luck finding a static!_ " in a mocking tone, and finally angry when you tell them you're not a raider " _Why do you even play?!_ ", I've had to defend sprouts so much from angry endgame raiders
@@Zeithri we each have unique experiences I guess because when I tried to explain someone that they shouldn't be spamming Cure 1 all the time all I got in response was "I don't tell you how to play my your job so you don't tell me how to play mine." Screw being optimal, there is literally no content in this game that *requires* you to play fully optimally, but there are a lot of players who refuse to put in the bare minimum to not grief their team. If someone wants to roleplay a cure only whm or an ice only black mage - sure have fun, but then they really don't belong in ex content or above. And I don't say it out of gatekeeping intentions, but rather because their only hope of clearing it with that attitude is getting carried and that's just not fair to everyone else in their group. Same for the "I know" kind of people. If you claim to understand how to do a mechanic and then fail it 15+ times in a row (and I have seen that happen many times) then you either really shouldn't be in that piece of content.
I think the best solution would be to split mentor roulette into two different roulettes.
Mentor Roulette (Normal) Gives you any/all normal content, dungeons, variants, pvp, 24 and 8 player raids, CLL, Dalriada, Delubrum etc.. To unlock, you have to do all the normal content. It would be fun to be dropped into palace of the dead, one queue, and then into PVP the next. And you can do it as much as you want, incentivizing helping out in content as much as possible.
Mentor Roulette (Advanced) Gives you all the EX fights. Greater rewards for completion. Maybe make it give out a token or some sort that can be traded for big prizes.
For both, I'd like that the bonus actually be repeatable. No need to lock it to a daily lock out. This would solve the issue of old content not having enough players as well.
Additionally, I've always wanted to see an "All Roles" mentor roulette. A roulette that can you can enter as healer/tank/dps all at once and it drops you into whatever is in need.
Mentor Roulette Advanced in that case would literally be all I ever queue for for the rest of time. Almost at 3.5k roulettes done as it is. Love it.
If they could get this kind of system working it'd be great - I want to get mentor roulette unlocked because sometimes it would be nice to hop into any random duty people want help clearing and I'm not picky about what role I play. Really an 'all roles' option would hugely benefit all of the duty finder.
I do imagine that adding the bozja duties, deep dungeons, and pvp to the queue might not be possible since they have pretty different queue requirements, but I would love to get those sometimes - at the moment it's pretty much impossible to get queues for them on Materia unless you spend time organising a party yourself.
Whether an extreme mentor roulette would be useful I'm not sure, on lower population data centres there might not ever be enough people queueing for it at once unless a weird system developed like doing a party finder to recruit people to then solo queue into the roulette at the same time (assuming it would force solo queue like current mentor roulette)
Aye, I prefer to go to help and not to backfill easy mode content that you don't need a mentor for. I'm sure there are enough people that want easy stuff for their roulettes, but I'm not about that life. @@wavypavy4059
Drop the pvp from the normal list and I'd love that one myself. Pvp's just not my thing. Only reason I've always avoided the mentor roulette is the possibility of ending up in extremes, which I either don't know at all, or have only ever done unsynced. (Just don't have a static to try them with, and have never managed to feel comfortable joining party finders even knowing it would probably be just fine.) So removing them from the main list and giving them their own? Yeah, I'd happily do that sort of roulette all day. Honestly, that sort of thing even as a non-mentor thing would be nice. (or allow queuing for multiple roulettes at once.)
Actually, with the thought of removing pvp because it's just not my jam, the idea of maybe having a variable roulette that you could pick and choose what category of content you want to queue for would be great. And man, does Bozja and Eureka need an actual roulette too. So hard to get into some of that stuff anymore without external collaborations.
Also, yeah, that all roles thing would be nice too, for any type of roulette at all. I'm currently omni-70, and working everything upward, but have at least one 90 in each role type (for the role quests), and really wouldn't care which role I'm thrown into most of the time. Would probably need some means of prioritizing which specific classes in any given role is chosen, though, for those who are omni but still prefer being, say, a RDM over a BLM, AST over WHM, etc etc.
You shouldn't worry about Extreme trials as a mentor, if you are not sure then it's even better as it's a new experience for you too. Your knowledge in general game mechanics will be enough for you to help out. No one should expect perfect players as long as you are positive.
I absolutely agree on the changing roles mid instance [out of combat and only to a missing role of course] as a mentor. There have been dozens of times where I sacrificed my roulette to leaving and coming back as a different role. I just wish the game filled older parties before new ones, because unfortunately when you try and leave and come back as a tank or healer it will usually send you to a new instance when you just wanted to help that group out. Luckily I have mentor roulette on 2 characters so I can at least cancel a few times to try and get to the boys I left.
@@orciencor6001
Remove extremes from mentor roulettes. Extremes take more coordination than anything else in duty finder and willing to bet most mentors have not done old extremes synced. Mentor roulette is not designed to be an extreme prog party.
When I became a mentor, I had not done most trials synced, however when I got put into that inevitable first Ramuh, King Moogle, etc. I stepped up, I speed-read a guide, looked at a video to skim, and within 5 minutes had a strategy for the group to work on, since then, I've done several extremes to finish, and learned them because of mentor roulette, and my history of having run on-content savages & ultimates allowed me to understand how the game mechanics worked.
I think the incentive should be to teach sprouts how to use the Party Finder for that kind of content and reward mentors that come in to help. That way new players know how to construct their own groups and there could be a way to signify that that group is looking for a guide. Instead of mentors trying to memorize dozens on different extreme trials, mentors could know exactly what they are getting into and go in prepared.
As a mentor who never leaves any extremes, they have become really easy for me. I want them to stay because they are a fun change from getting dungeons most of the time. Plus being a mentor is not just some title to me. I truly want to help sprouts
I would argue that is EXACTLY what it’s supposed to be…hence why I don’t queue. Lol
I think the problem is that on JP servers people queue up for DF/RF when they know they fight and are ready to clear. So in that regard the mentor roulette works well because the mentor is just filling a party that just needs an extra person or two.
I think SNAFU is right, I think there needs to be something in the game that indicates to sprouts that when you're progging the fight you should go to PF first.
Personally I just wish there was an all purpose roulette like mentor where I dont have the pressure of being the one to teach everything, i'm more than happy to just help tbh
Honestly, a pretty good video. It touched on almost everything. I would add the main scenario roulette has no place in mentor roulette for two primary reasons. First, it has it's own dedicated roulette that rewards more tomes than doing it through that roulette than it does to do it through mentor roulette. Second, the content is so braindead easy that you would have to be intentionally trying to fail for you to fail it, making it not really require any teaching from a mentor. As it stands, we get main scenario in mentor roulette far too often. While I can appreciate getting something I can speedrun, main scenario is literally just watching a movie with activity breaks.
Changing it to 2000 hs is kinda insane is assuming that each single roullete last 1 hour, but the idea of changing it to a certain amount of time is a good idea
I think 200 hours would be good
The most frustrating thing as a free trial sprout is you cannot use party finder -- so after a 100 minute wait for extreme. that usually has to be filled with mentors it falls apart. For example when I got into The Striking Tree (Extreme) before the 7 second opening cutscene was done both mentor tanks left. And the others leave comments like who queues for these and stop queueing for these. Or use party finder that I cant do. We didnt even do one pull. And then i get offers to just unsync. Like I guess it removes the quest from my journal; but im not queueing into content for 2 hours for a carry... I want to play the game.
You could ask someone else to invite you to a party and make a pf for you.
@@rischea7902 see everyone just says use pf , but a new player is going to see a duty finder for it and have a quest for you and everyone just yells at you for using the only obvious tool you have in game.
"Reward time invested in general" should honestly apply to more then mentor roulette.
People are practically encouraged to throw casual Crystal Conflict matches the moment things start going south because spending an extra five minutes trying to make a comeback is not worth it when the rewards remain the same regardless of a match's length.
"There is the possibility of some mentors doing the mentor roulette just for the sake of having fun. But those are very rare."
That sounds so dystopian.
I guess I'm one of the rare exceptions to mentor roulette. While i am working on the mount (just hit 1k the other day) i usually que up for fun or just something to do when not in raid. I'm also on Dynamis so im glad to help speed up any que times and love when it's a group of sprouts (though some may be alts) and being there to answer questions if they have any.
Same here. Mentor rolo is lots of fun. I do work towards the mount as well but I never leave long or difficult content.
Being on Dynamis is the main reason I'm grinding to unlock Battle Mentor and the roulette. Queues here suck enough. I'm aiming to make the queues just a little bit less bad for everybody.
@@supergamer1388 i made an fc on seraph to try and pull in sprouts to help them and teach and stuff but it failed XD the giant fc sucked them up or its just alts. so mentor roulette it must be!
Really good video!
One possibility could be splitting out mentor roulette into two roulettes, one which targets the easier content and counts towards the achievement and a harder one for extremes / long alliance raids with significantly better daily rewards. With so many roulettes already though I imagine they're not keen to add more though.
That is an interesting suggestion! Like making a specific Extreme Mentor Roulette for the hard stuff! That could help too. I do see what you mean about the roulette count though :/
Thank you! ^^
as someone who isn't a mentor but would like to be, extreme trials being in the roulette is what holds me back. maybe either splitting the mentor roulette's duty list into 2 roulettes could work? removing extreme trials entirely? maybe changing to a point-based system where a dungeon gives you 1 'mentor point' while an extreme trial could give you... 10? this would also be extra incentive to help with more challenging content
I spammed some MR yesterday since I didn’t feel strongly pulled to any other content. Of the 4 duties I queues into, I did Castrum Meridianum, Praetorium, and Porta Decumana.
Doing all of Main Scenario roulette was not great for my desire to go back to Mentor roulette in the future.
Agree with the single big change that needs to happen is just removing any tangible rewards like the mount to at least get rid of speedrunning fake mentors, but!
The other simple change that should happen is the make it so that the early extremes that have a quest that stays in your log until completion don’t do that anymore! As a sprout I fell into the trap of sitting in DF for an hour for my first extreme (queue never filled, thankfully, which clued me in something was wrong), simply because I was treating the journal as guidance for things I should be trying to do. Bonus points if unlocking your first extreme came with a Baldesion Arsenal type of waiver you had to click through warning you about what you were getting into by signing up.
When I eventually unlock mentor roulette, I would have no problem getting an ARR extreme if I knew that every sprout in it knew it was challenging, outdated content with no relevant rewards for syncing it and just wanted to do it anyway out of curiosity or for a challenge - not just some random player who barely understands their kit yet who wandered in out of confusion.
As a free trial player who has farmed all the extreme mounts of ARR in Duty Finder and is currently in the process of farming the Heavensward mounts. I wholeheartedly believe something has to change with mentors, at least with "mentor + extremes". Right now, if you find players and the queue pops for extreme fights, most of the mentors already left before you could even skip the cutscene.
I believe removing Extremes from Mentor Roulette is, at least for people like me (free trial), a bad option because it would be impossible to fill Extreme groups in Duty Finder without them. Right now I have to wait at least 2 to 4 hours so that a group fills up (I play AST). Also, the constant "Use Party Finder for Extremes" by mentors gets annoying pretty quickly. I understand but I and many other players can't create a party as free trial players, and there are no parties for old Extremes in Party Finder. And I know, "Then buy the game if you want to play Extremes". I have heard that often enough. But look at my perspective: why should I pay if I still have so much to do in the free trial? Also, I believe Extremes are one of the best ways to hook new players, so that they want to buy the game. They should not be stopped from playing them.
I believe the idea to track the time and not the completion is the best option. I would even add bonus time for Extremes if the party was able to complete the Duty, it would incentivize the mentors to explain stuff and would make Extremes the most rewarding activity in the Roulette.
At the same time, I think that there should be stricter requirements for mentors. If you join an Extreme via Duty Finder right now, 30% of the mentors have no idea
how the fight works. Some say they never did the fight synced.(Like, WTF is that even possible?, and if yes, WHY?). Some don't know how to play their job or role.
And some are just extremely bad at the game.
It gets frustrating if the first timer makes less mistakes then the mentor.
Well, that was all I wanted to say... Bye.
One major problem that may? be solved in the future is communication. Sprouts tend to have /say chat by default and a LOT dont even know about /party chat, and its not visible if they are tabbed onto a chat tab that has just battle stuff or who knows what. If we get chat bubbles that work out of combat but in instances that would literally visibly draw their attention and may massively help communication.
The only thing not taken into account here is just... the joy of playing the game? Do you not enjoy teaching and progressing through a fight? I know I do... I assume that's the intent of the roulette, too. The rewards are less actual rewards and more just a small bonus for doing something fun anyway. The real problem is I guess that becoming a mentor is too easy, and people who don't care about helping people can easily become a mentor.
Oh no, I did in fact take that into account! I did mention that *some* mentors, even some players in general enjoy taking their time, and playing just for the sake of it! The only reason this situation becomes a problem, is because some players like to optimize a bit... Too hard at times. Some players want to collect everything, meaning they don't view the mount at the end of the 2000 mentor roulettes as a little bonus for doing something nice. They see it as a target to optimize getting!
This is exactly the reason why I suggested adjusting the achievement to reward taking your time, as you suggest, instead of specifically rewarding success, if that makes sense! So that the players that forgot the part where they also have to have fun when gaming, still feel incentivized to play along!
I hope this makes sense ^^
Some of us do it for fun, but the crown and the whistle just attract the wrong people into roulettes.
I have been a mentor for a few years now and I always try to help anyone if they need help with content. I play the game about 4-5 hours a day and it is the only game I play, so I do know quite a bit about the main parts of the game. But I have never done a Mentor roulette because I do not do Extreme content when it first comes out. I love the game, love playing it, and love teaching it, but I am not a Raider. My problem with the Mentor Roulette is that 1) It expects you to be a top tier player that clears all of the content and can be able to do all of it regardless of ability. I love helping sprouts with MSQ content and Normal/Alliance raids. But recent Extremes are a bit above my skill set. 2) My memory is not able to remember each and every dungeon, trial, and raid. There is simply too much content in a ten year old game for me to remember every single fight and every single mechanic. Which brings me to 3) I am not the worlds greatest typist, so a lot of times I will be in the middle of typing some help for someone when someone else gets antsy and goes Leroy Jenkins on me in mid sentence. I cannot type 100 words a minute. That is why I have not done a Mentor Roulette and just mostly do the Novice Network, which itself is just mostly Mentors. The Mentor Roulette System is a great idea, but with poor execution. They want you to not only be willing to help new players, but also be a top tier raider, have the memory of a super computer, and have the typing skills of a Fortune 500 Personal Assistant. So that leaves out those of us who can't do that, but still want to help.
The comments say it all -- so many 'mentors' are contemptuous of unskilled players, and believe they're there to issue commands, and then are upset when they're not carried out, so they leave. They don't have the patience to teach, and probably think they're good at conveying information in a clear and non-hostile way, when they may well not be good at either.
Problem with unskilled mentor players, is, mostly that roulette doesnt care if you clear content sync or unsync. I see A LOT of Party Finders with the description... "clear for mentor roulette". Shame on you, what the hell, thats the kind of people I find on Ifrit EX and can't make a single mechanic and makes the sprout experience even worse
@@kingseo3314 Oof, yeah, that's definitely an issue.
As a fellow mentor who actually try to help new players, rhe system needs a serious makeover.
The system is fine. Does exactly what it needs to do.
@@Asako_Gaming Right.. it has no issues whatsoever.. /s
@@kellevichy There are no real issues with it at the minute. It works. People are just expecting every 'mentor' to be superstars when they are just there to fill queues. If you want to go back to the ARR and HW days when you couldn't get a party as a DPS for 40+ minutes during peak times you work away. I never want to return to that, and that's what mentors have brung to the game.
Stop getting jealous over a stupid crown icon. It doesn't mean anything. This has been such a childish debate for many years now and people just need to dry their eyes and play the game.
What pray tell would you change to it that would make it better without harming the queues?
I really love the idea of tracking time isntead of completion, wished square would listen
A solution I wonder if they can actually track... the number of commendations the mentor receives upon completion of the duty? This encourages the mentor to not only complete things, but also to perform well throughout. That said, it doesn't remove the issue of mentors still then wanting to run through more briskly so they can get on to farming more achievements, but it would introduce a system of the friendlier you are, the more you try to explain troublesome mechanics, and the fact you stick around to finish are actually rewarded, but toxic mentors are not.
Back before mentor status existed, I used to ask if people wanted me to explain mechanics of certain boss fights. I never thought anything of it, to be honest. A lot of times when I want to explain things I can't though as I'm a very slow typer. It often felt like in duties I could never type an explanation before someone pulls a boss. Then there's the people who complain when you try to explain mechanics, so I've taken to keeping quiet & only say something if asked or if people mess up during the duty in a bad way.
I’d like the idea of the crown going from bronze to silver to gold to gold with wings or something depending on how many mentor roulettes were done
Another part of the problem is that mentorship shows no knowledge of the game , just because someone has a mentor crown doesnt mean they know anything about the game, it just means they have played a while. the system is flawed. you cant mentor people on content when the mentors probably don't know the content either. i have had my crown for 6 years and it has been the biggest most useless thing on my account. they need to considerably raise the requirements for mentorship.
It always amazed me that the game doesn't actually require harder content to be a mentor. You just have to have put in the time on each role and in a lot of duties. That's it. Makes it more accessible to someone like me (nobody hardcore, to be sure) but if you want me to teach an EX or something - I am not your person. I might help in other ways! But not in harder content.
I enjoy mentor roulette simply for those time when I want to play something but don't know what I want to do. Just hit a button and instantly I'm in... some kind of content.
Honestly just giving everyone mentor or not a "I don't care just put me in" roulette would be great. Especially one where you don't have to be max level that'd be excellent for leveling dps and also helping players with long queues get a party together
I just unlocked battle mentor because I genuinely love helping people who need help with anything I'm knowledgeable about or have resources for in the game - that said, I still haven't unlocked mentor roulette and it's not a huge priority for me atm. I do intend to unlock it just so I can have *another* completionist thing in this game that will take me forever to accomplish, but also I SWEAR I'll never bail on a party just because I got a synced EX lol
I think part of the solution would be removing Extremes and Savages from mentor roulette because a lot of mentors never learned them and don't intend to since they did them unsynced- I don't think this is inherently bad, because there are loads of people that will do it synced or unsynced; it's just really more of a prog together over VC if possible kinda thing. (One of the things I plan to do before I start doing mentor roulette is learn as many as I can by heart lol)
I have Another Idea- it's kinda long, but I think it would be really helpful for any controller users, but especially console players without a keyboard qwq (I'll just reply to myself so I don't turn this into a gross wall of text)
The other thing I was thinking that could really be helpful would be adding a way for sprouts/returners to have a window that pops up automatically at the beginning of each duty that has selection boxes to ask for help like:
"Please explain the mechanics of the [first/second/last] boss/trial." "Does this duty have anything specific I should watch out for?" < like traps on the ground in Hullbreaker for example or anything with adds that one-shot you. "Why did we/I die?" < like if they are revived or the party wipes, the window pops up again and they have the opportunity to ask this. "I'm having trouble understanding my class/job; can you help me?"
Obviously have it toggleable in settings so that it doesn't automatically pop up for people who don't want it -especially people who have alts or are really getting it and don't need much help anymore- maybe specific questions could be toggled on/off too?
The menu could be brought up at any time by anyone regardless of sprout/returner status by selecting the mentor and in the dropdown menu, have the mentor help menu as an option.
Any mentor in a party with a struggling Sprout can select the Sprout and maybe an option in the dropdown could be "offer tips" and the Sprout can select "Accept" or "Decline."
And as incentive and ensuring quality in mentors:
Any interaction where the Sprout has asked a specific mentor in their party a question, they have a follow up "did [name] try to answer your questions?" And they get some variation of " :( :| :) " and don't HAVE TO answer (much like commendations) but answering could earn them some kind of reward like weekly bonus? maybe give a lil gil and/or exp?
When the Mentor is over a certain threshold- say 100- of Sprout :( :| :) things, if over a large percent- say 75%- of them are bad, they either get auto booted or reviewed idk, but only one thing per duty (maybe per sprout even) and people that have been on the mentor's friend list or block list at any point- even if they're alts- could be excluded from the count for the sake of not abusing the system.
Maybe having a certain number of :) things could give a reward to the mentor?
But this whole setup would be super helpful for sprouts playing with controller and no keyboard since the ability to select predetermined questions and answered without having to figure out the nightmare that is macros would break down a lot of walls for them.
That might be too complex, though. I just really love this game with all of my heart and wanna see more qol improvements and just a lot of little things that could add more life because I invest so much time and love into it lol
Bit late, I know, but I became a mentor and started the roulette ultimately for the mount but 30-ish runs in and the mount has become secondary, Mentor roulette has become my favourite roulette because it really does have everything in it and I get far more variety than I did doing leveling. Some might call me a bad mentor since I don't remember all the content in the roulette but that's just life, I'm willing to (re)learn it.
I always enter mentor roulette with the mindset that "It's not about me" (the mentor). I'm an asset, put there for the benefit of the group. If there's a sprout in my group, it's my responsibility to give them the best experience possible. If it means going slow, discussing mechanics, helping them with their rotation, or offering other helpful suggestions, that's what I'll do. It might take a few minutes longer, but it's very beneficial for new or inexperienced players in the long run.
Mentor roulette daily bonus should be better, Adventurer in need bonus should give materia crystals like leveling and alliance raid does, as well as more gil, and maybe something else like 50 causality, 10 comedy, since you'll definitely be endgame, and mentor covers way more necessity than any other roulette anyways, so the In Need reward should be proportionate.
I'd just prefer if the daily bonus was just the standard bonus. 20 weekly tomes for a run regardless.
Personally I would make it so that extreme trials are not part of the roulette. Main reason is that most new players don't read the chat most of the time. And trying to guide new players that don't I would rather leave eat the penalty and do gathering or crafting.
They could also make it that any instsance that has a new player going into it, has a priority for the mentor roulette to pick it.
That is a good point. I also heard others bring up that often, the sprouts are not willing to communicate on their end either, which of course makes it quite hopeless for the mentor that is at least TRYING to help. Removing content that isn't made to be beaten in a single session from the mentor roulette might help this.
I am also actually surprised that the mentor roulette isn't exclusively, or at least primarily, to pair mentors with first timers!
@@CaetsuChaijiCh I bet there are people like me who have only played a couple years and have unlocked mentor roulettes but have never done an ARR exeteme unsynced. I wouldn't even know how to teach that. I'm busy learning the new ones. How am I supposed to go back and learn the old ones synced? I' d be no different than a sprout on that.
My recommendation is to have mentor commendations. At end of duty, any first time sprouts that got matched with a mentor from the roulette, get a notification asking if their mentor was helpful. This would benefit actually helpful mentors, since they could get anywhere from 1-7 commendations from a run, and wouldn't require clearing the content. You'd still occasionally run into rude sprouts, but overall system would motivate mentors to be as helpful and patient as possible. Then to tie the mentor achievements, to those mentor commendations instead of just runs cleared.
I think they could at a 2nd tier of commendation and a "warning" when someone in the instance got in via mentor roulette. Almost like a ready check of "is a mentor needed" when they get in and a "where they good" at the end, and have those impact the progress somehow. The first basically works as a primer for the 2nd, and if the 2nd one is overwhelmingly positive (like 2/3 in a 4m, and 5/7 in an 8m) they would get 2 ticks.
Also can agree with Mentor roulette progressing on a Timeout as well as a clear, that makes a lot of sense to me.
Another option would be to grade achievement progress based on content, take a dungeon as 1, normal trial as 1, normal raid as 2, extreme trial as 3, savage as 4, probably 2 or 3 for alliance raids due to time needed or some other grading method. Would probably require the 2000 completions to be beefed up to 4-6k, and probably a more detailed "progress count" than the simple one I roughly laid out.
Been around long enough that a lot of people in my circle basically avoid getting the mentor tag now because of the negative connotation attached to it. When they changed the requirements basically all of us allowed it to drop off.
It's perfectly possible to get mentor (for the roulette or NN or whatnot) and not have your name besmirched by the ugly crown. Just change status.
I feel like the suggestions for a Mentor-Roulette-exclusive rating system at the end of a run are probably the most helpful. "Did you find X's advice helpful? Yes or No" and you have to accumulate maybe a certain percentage of Yes' to get 1 point added towards the Achievement to offset Alliances or something large like that. Because I do hand out advice to players, but only after we have a) wiped to a mechanic we have all clearly forgotten about, or b) a player is clearly new and is struggling with a mechanic (is spinning the boss, is running away from a tankbuster symbol that can't be dodged, etc.) And even then, I always make sure to ask at the END of a dungeon, privately, so as to not embarrass them, and I only give advice if they say they want it. Even still, I'm a very casual player who only dips their toes into Extremes for an occasional dyeable glam or mount farm for very old expansions, so Mentor material I am not.
The mentor system isn't really about helping though, that's the misconception that too many people make. They are simply there to fill the DF so queues aren't 30 minutes. Everyone expects Mentors to know everything when most of them are just regular players looking for something to do.
No one wants to go back to the ARR days where you were literally waiting for 50 minutes as a DPS during prime time for a levelling roulettte. I'd rather deal with bad players in my team than wait 50 minutes when I wanted to play a DPS.
My first mentor roulette was Ramuh EX, a duty that I've never done in sync, and as a tank
We went 20 minutes of mentors screaming at the sprout before leaving and 15 minutes to do the duty in 2 pulls when we got people that actually wanted to play the game lol
After 6.5 I'm still seeing an overwhelming majority of crystal tower raids. I have for the first time seen some variation, but still. I absolutely hate the kick system. I've seen people go afk for ages or be massive trolls but you never are able to kick them at all because either the combat is still going or "there is loot still being rolled for"... while the only person that didnt yet roll is they themselves; because they know they can block it that way.
Thankfully this is certainly reportable.
Whenever I get Crystal tower, it ALWAYS has a new player doing it now, so it makes sense
@@aiellamori I think that's the case for me also. But that's still kinda an issue. I'm not really sure how to fix that though, or if it can be fixed.
ye it probably is but I just want to move the thing along really.
Honestly while in 6.5 crystal tower is still the overwhelming majority of raids, I'm actually seeing more of other raids without having to specifically queue for them myself (which can be an issue for 80+ classes, given my photosensitivity interacts badly with two of the Nier raids) and I've yet to see a crystal tower without a first time bonus since then.
I will admit when i was doing my mentor roulettes grind my general reason for doing it was for the mount. However once I got it I still find myself queing in mentor roulette to this day. It can be a slog to complete at times. My last 600 runs was when we had the influx of players from WoW. I could always count on every other run being an ARR ex, and the vast majority of those runs ended in failure. But I never left not once and always did my best to help the sprouts. In the end its probably why I have over 12k comms.
I think an issue also comes from the fact that the sprouts queuing in aren’t aware someone might be going in as a mentor. Most people actually don’t welcome advice even if they have failed a mech or have wiped multiple times. Someone queuing as mentor might go in with the mindset that they’re there to teach, and they get a sprout who is in ShB and doesn’t feel they need any help.
I think even a DF setting that sprouts could use to be specifically paired with a mentor would be handy to ensure that both are there for the correct reason could be useful.
Here's the problem with the Mentor Roulette. Whatever random duty you get could take anywhere between 3 minutes to 45-60. The fix for this would be to keep the current roulettes, do away with the "Mentor Roulette" and add an option to existing roulettes to "Queue as Mentor". So you could queue for the Leveling roulette "as a mentor" and be more prepared for the time commitment you are agreeing to, plus a better idea of what you're preparing to walk new players through. I straight up leave any EX I get in the mentor roulette. Am I part of the problem? Sure, maybe, but I didn't create the problem and its not on me to fix it.
The unhealthy thing about that 2,000 run achievement is if a mentor were to just do 1 a day; it would take 6 years to obtain it. Because of that, a lot of mentors are trying to run 3 to 5 rolos a day hoping to blast through them so they can get it done in a year or even less. There has been a period where I tried to do 3 mentor rolos a day to try to decrease the time to get the achievement, and it has lead me to not be the best kind of player. (I stay dead silent while burning through the content.) Because its a RNG rolo; I get a lot of anxiety trying to queue up for it. If I got an extreme or a dungeon; it puts me in a bad mood because both take a lot of time compared to a guild heist or a normal trial/raid. I never leave an instance unless someone else does, so I do try to put my best foot forward; but the race to 2000 is a recipe for burnout and apathy.
I checked out lala achievements; and there are unobtainable achievements because the content it was under is no longer around. I seriously think the devs need to take the 2000 point one away while giving a fair warning with a good amount of time so players who are in the middle of getting it will have time to finish it before its no longer around. That way there are better incentives to do mentor rolo and not feel so chained down to farm content for a mount that no one will praise due to the reputation the mentor system has. The system has been abused a lot because there was a lot of factors that were not taken into consideration. I would rather not have the system at all and let people naturally help each other out without the crowns.
I love the idea of a random roulette. Let every player have it with a daily reward so everyone can fill in for whatever the community needs with no achievements or huge requirements attached to it. (Aside from unlocking the content of course.)
I don't think it taking 6 years if you do 1 a day should be an argument if you already have a grind that takes around 7 years in the form of getting all leve achievements.
I am terribly late to this reply. The difference with levequests and mentor rolo are a few. Levequests are time gated to where you will be stopped, eventually using up your allowances. Even if you wanted to burn through it all, you won't be allowed to. Also, you don't have to do them with other players. It is more relaxed, and easier to put down. There are also 0 rewards to completing the full 7 years, except a few achievement points. No titles, nothing. It totally sucks.
Mentor rolo has you needing to work with other players, and has titles and mounts attached to the achievements, and also; no time gates. So, people are going to try to bulldoze the grind, and it can end up, like I mentioned in my comment, creating players that have unfavorable behaviors. -shrugs- Both of them suck, but the game incentives players to play very differently when compared. @@ruily276
Make it to where if the mentor leaves a duty more than five times, then that person loses their mentor status.
That could also work, I assume this would also be accompanied by being blocked from becoming a mentor again, at least for a set amount of time.
This would however just further incentivize mentors to wait for the 15 minutes to vote abandon instead! ^^'
💀
that ending might've genuinely reawakened some sort of PTSD from endwalker-
anyway
cool video! not a mentor myself but honestly i don't see many flaws in your arguments ^^
Thank you, I appreciate it! 😄
We need to make the icon *not* a crown. The most toxic people get it for the prestige of the icon. Change it to a watering can so that we can "water" the sprouts. Then, split the mentor roulette into time-based sizes and adjust rewards based on length. Run "Mentor Roulette - Short"? small reward, 1 point towards mount. Run "Mentor Roulette - Long"? large reward, 3 points towards mount. Maybe have a medium one in there too.
It doesn't matter what the icon is.
Something i noticed from raiding on a static is that call outs help a ton on progression. So maybe allowing in game voice chat could help a ton in case a mentor wants to call out mechanics. Just make it so other party members have to approve of voice chat before turning it on and can disable it at any moment.
As for the mount, maybe changing roulette to giving a currency that you can use to get the mount and other things would be more practical. Random dungeons could give less of it compared to extremes, this way people might be more willing to give hard content a go as it can net them more currency compared to spamming easy content.
That could get toxic very, very quickly, and it'd be impossible to report harassment and abuse.
I’m passively working to the mentor achievements yeah. I want the mount eventually. I kind of do mentor because it can be a surprise. Helping out sprouts with their first run of a dungeon, trial or raid can be far more fun than running level 90 stuff with experienced players. Getting an extreme that I have not run for ages or even at all unsynced can be fun too if not trust at times.
Removing Guildhests, Extremes and Alliance Raids (let's face it, alliance raids fill up fast enough) would alleviate some of the issues of mentor roulette and people leaving. But at the end of the day, most mentors (including myself) just unlocked it to gradually grind out the mount. I even disabled the crown the moment I got it. If they want the mentor system to actually be about helping people, then it should really be just about that and not about incidental rewards that bring in people that have no interest in helping people. There shouldn't be any achievements tied to the system (and also not getting WT resets from it, as the other reason I unlocked mentor roulette was for an easy avenue for WT resets). I think people that unlock mentor for the sake of actually helping newer players would be less likely to leave Extreme Raids and the Nier raids for example, in which case the roulette wouldn't really need to be adjusted.
I mean, removing guildhests would be pointless, them being in that roulette is the system working as intended, having free hands fill in queues on content that would otherwise waste a lot more time on waiting. I've yet to see wipes on Nier raids, their "difficulty" is greatly exaggerated imo.
And for Extremes, the biggest fix they could do is put a massive pop-up telling a sprout queueing for ANY extreme for the first time in DF that if someone starts explaining how to do mechanics, they should listen and follow that advice instead of acting like the usual toxic lemming we get at least one of per Extreme pop. The problem is rarely mentors leaving because they don't want to teach people, the problem is mentors leaving after being ignored and told to know their place by ignorant noobs for half an hour.
No one leaves Nier because it's difficult, people leave because it takes far longer than any other content and you can just come back after the penalty expires. Everything in Nier should have 25% less health, but that's a separate point. And guildhests should be removed from the game entirely, to be honest. Not just mentor roulette. As it stands it's a relic from ARR that teaches things that are never implemented and is mainly a way for people to cheese farm/grind commendations and mentor roulette duties completed.
I don't disagree on the extreme front, to be honest. Part of the frustration from getting an extreme to pop is expecting no one to listen or pay attention to any advice because everyone's the best player in the world in their own POV.@@MyVanir
Every time the mentor roulette puts me in Ramuh EX with tanks that say "hi first time and have not seen a video" I properly mentor them in the use of party finder because I know it will not be cleared.
(I will try to teach them, but there is a large chance some people will bail.)
I have yet to fail a Ramuh Extreme when I join from start. It's actually handy enough once you teach people that you can bait the 2nd chaos. When they are both random it causes problems but once you can always have 1 be on the healers a massive amount of the deaths disappear.
you get to second chaos? I end up with groups that can't even count to 3, so they leave far too many orbs, and the group wipes from damage before that.
I don't have any issue with any ARR or HW EX trials in my groups and like I said that's with over 3500 runs of the roulette. Nidnogg is usually the roughest going for people in final phase, everything else though is handy enough. Kinda helps that I am a Tank / Healer main so I can do a lot more of the heavy lifting in certain fights.@@ICountFrom0
Free trial players can't use the DF, which exasperates the issue.
If they remove the quests that encourage people to do the EX fights, folks won't mistake them for things that happen regularly too....
Part of the issue is the fact that extremes are included in the mentor roulette. But new players are never told that this content might require them to watch or read a guide outside of the game.
This becomes an issue when the mechanics get a bit too complicated to explain in the game itself. It's not the fault of the mentors, that do stay and try to help, when the new players either don't understand or cannot execute the mechanics that need to be done. Nor is it the fault of the new players really.
I've seen plenty of times where it is easier to keep a new player down and just do the fight without them, then it is to raise them and have them mess up something and wipe the group at less than 5% on the boss.
maybe they should also tie mentor roulette to commends, have the players get 2000 commends from mentor roulette in order to get the mount, it encourages players to be nice to sprouts in order to get the commend
Honestly surprised that’s not how it’s handled. It take commendations to become a mentor. You’d think it’d require them for the reward.
While that sounds like a great idea on paper, this would just cause the bad mentors to just farm commends by being a healer during a Guildhest over and over.
As a red mage main, I can confirm this won't work in practice
As a sprout who's never interacted with the mentor system as I tend to play and learn the game at my (admittedly slow) pace. It's interesting to see what being a mentor does, alongside the perspective of a mentor in said system.
On a side note about the alliance raid roulette change, it's mostly resulted in me not touching it as often as I used to. I just reached post game heavensward and am around the mid 70's with my summoner, and am now required to have gear I can't normally access to play the roulette again. Yes I could buy gear off the market board, but I would honestly just rather manually queue for the raids now than to bother with doing that.
Anyways I've probably typed too much, good video yo!
I haven't looked at the changes but poetic tomestone gear for your level should be enough.
Especially noting that your "lvl 70 class set" from your class quest is not lvl 70. For example, the Samurai Antiquated Myochin Haori has a lvl requirement of 70 with ilvl 290. The lvl 60 poetic gear is ilvl 270.
The lvl 70 poetic gear is ilvl 400.
I've never had problems with ilvl and have not had to buy gear off of the marketboard. Just using the poetic gear solves all of those problems.
With that said, this does harm the exploration aspect as gear upgrades are not a thing.
Note, I have not finished the last expansion yet, so I don't know if there is current expansion poetic gear. I'm assuming there isn't but I don't know.
@@tylerbreau4544 To clarify, I'm specifically referring to the effects of the 6.5 change that reads "Item level restrictions based on class or job level at the time of duty registration will now be applied for Duty Roulette: Alliance Raids". This change makes it so that queuing for alliance raid duty roulette requires the item level of your gear to be around the level of the class you have equipped. The issue I'm running into is that the tomestone gear (at least for arr and hw for me so far) have only become available once you beat the final main quest for said expansion.
Having just beaten Heavensward's main story, I recently got the full set of shire tomestone gear with an item level of 270. Post patch 6.5 the minimum item level for my Summoner in the mid 70's to participate in alliance raid roulette is 305. Being nowhere near the end of Stormblood to have access to the lv 70 tomestone, let alone having reached the expansion at all, basically locks out the class from participating in alliance roulette with gear I would conventionally have access to.
I understand this change is mostly to address the issue of people circumventing being queued into higher level alliance raids by equipping lower level gear, I just wanted to give some perspective this change has had on someone who is still making their way through the story. Since posting my initial comment I've picked up dancer to do the roulette with, which while being a somewhat convenient solution to the problem I was running into, is still a problem I didn't have before patch 6.5.
It'll be interesting to see if the change has the desired effect of filling out more of the higher level alliance raids, or drives more people away from bothering with the roulette at all.
@@BlackKiteX I empathize with your issue here; I don't think it was thought through what would happen if someone had a job that was leveled beyond the expansion they're currently in. My only possible suggestion is if you've got another job in the 50+ range you're working on leveling, you could use that one for it.
I really enjoy Mentor Roulette. I set an initial goal for myself (get the dragon monocle), and I met that goal and am on my way to getting the Astrope. However, I do take the time to help when I can and for those that actually WANT to be helped. I've had some duties where a sprout or returner (or even another MENTOR) is confrontational about the dumbest shit. Sometimes those people get vote kicked if it's bad enough. As far as leaving duties goes though, I generally leave and msq roulette or ARR alliance raid. If I get those, I just leave, log out, and do something else.
I don't agree with you about taking the achievement away. I've made so much progress on that and I would genuinely be pissed if that just got ripped away.
worst person i met in mentor roulette was a non-mentor non-sprout in zurvan ex, i told the sprouts smth like 'we might not clear but i will try my best to teach, i recommend party finder in case we don't finish so you can get people quicker and they know what fight to prepare for. if you just want loot you can unsync but people will join synced parties as well if you want to truly experience the fight' and he immediately turned hostile towards every piece of advice us mentors gave to the point the SPROUT had enough of his bs and told him to stop acting like that and apologizing for him and reassuring us that we are, in fact, being helpful.
like if you hate mentors why are you queueing for an extreme trial knowing damn well you're gonna get a bunch of mentors for the next hour and a half. a decent amount of mentors that instantly dip are ppl who experience blatant hatred like that from people who also dont wanna put in effort and just want a carry while ignoring advice
How about dividing mentor roulette into categories? Like dungeons and trials separately and not in same roulette? And that you would need to clear a specific number of each category to get the reward? This would give mentors more freedom of choice. If they don't want to do Extremes at the moment, they can choose something else. Of course, this might become troublesome, when queing for trials becomes absolutely mandatory, as it can be either normal or Extreme.
If there is one thing changes can't fix, it is players themselves. Some players just want to get things done quickly and they don't bother teach stuff to others if they ask it. And some players don't want to be teached. Language barrier can sometimes be an issue too. I've had duties in which one sprout player does mechanics wrong, and others then try to explain them, but the player either doesn't understand, or he doesn't read the chat.
wanna fix the mentor roulette? REMOVE the mentor rewards. ALL OF THEM. If there's no point...only people who want to teach will actually do it.
As many have already said, a huge problem is the community. A large portion either ignores advice or reacts negatively if anyone dares try to help them play better and clear content. If you queue into an extreme there is a high chance you'll get players who don't want to hear it, they just want to be carried. Shout-outs to the sprouts who are actually receptive to advice and feedback, but they seem to be few and far between.
That is a very good point! It is a more general problem, and absolutely, a mentor can only do so much anyway!
I think you raise several good points. I personally think that just changing one or more parts of the current mentor system wouldn't fix it, and that to truly turn the current issues around there would need to be a more complete overhaul of it to make it work (as intended).
Mentor roulette can be fun for two reasons in particular for me. The fact that it's a true roulette roulette, something the game sorely needs. And because you are likely to join people doing something their first time which I really like.
On the other hand (and I say this as someone who hasn't bothered becoming mentor and doesn't care about any of the rewards) there is a *large* amount of people who react to any attempts at advice with hostility. I genuinely like teaching and helping others and for that purpose I often join learning PFs for fights that I have long since mastered, but I completely gave up on giving any advice in DF because much more often than not it results with people flaming me for approaching them in the most polite and understanding way I can.
If its any content that isn't extreme the people I come across are absolutely lovely. After the few times I did any of the extremes where no one listens and you get kicked a few times because they wanted a blind, face roll run when you're just trying to help it really mentally defeats you.
biggest issue with solution #3 beyond just the AFK issue or by griefing: It's incentivizing them NOT to help new players regardless. Think of it like this: the mentor doesn't say a single word, and the sprouts just cannot figure out what to do. The mentor watches the party try and fail, again, and again, and again. Doesn't help, but doesn't purposefully troll. Every now and then, "accidentally" drops a puddle near a problematic sprout who has been messing up a lot, then simply lets the group point the finger at them (e.g. "On these clock spots I claimed south, you went south" when in actuality the sprout went southeast and you just shifted over one to kill them and then said they weren't paying attention.). Not enough to REALLY grief, but enough to stress them out and cause them to make more mistakes. "Well, you're rewarded for DOING ANY content, so it doesn't help you MORE to make it take longer!" ... But if I finish, I have to load into city, get back into the queue, load into the next dungeon, and start trying my ass off all over again. If I don't, I can farm idiots for free minutes while doing almost nothing and watching RUclips on my other monitor.
Bottom line: You cannot track time, as it means the better mentor that can teach faster is penalized more. You cannot track runs completed, because it incentivizes selfish "do-anything-for-the-clear" runs. You can't track commendations, as it encourages comm-farming. You *cannot* reward someone for being a good person, being good MUST be its own reward. I love being a mentor and hopping into mentor roulette. I will NEVER get Astriope, I know that, I don't care. I have attempted my best at EVERY SINGLE Ifrit Extreme, Titan Extreme, I have never LOST AT AN ULTIMATE WEAPON MINSTREL'S BALLAD, I AM 5/5 ON THOSE. I always stop even when I'm not in mentor roulette to help random people. Black mage needs to learn the level 60 rotation, because the game does a TERRIBLE system of teaching them the new Fire IV priority. Tank needs to learn to space out their cooldowns or else they will die every time, and if doing dungeon runs they need to check who their healer is, because popping a huge cooldown for damage mitigation on pull start with a white mage is a bad idea, they will stun the adds for 10-15 seconds anyways and you will have wasted it. I loooove helping people. If there was a leaderboard for helping people, it'd sour the experience. Firstly, because I'd always know that I could be doing more and I'd judge myself harder instead of just focusing on helping them out. Secondly, because it would mean people would gamify how to "be better than me", even though they don't actually care, they just want to be #1. The love of the sprout is the ONLY reason you mentor. The sprout that you mentor in Stormblood may one day end up mentoring you in Endwalker (true story, my sprout baby grew up and became a hardcore pvp'er, she's now teaching me how to pvp and I am terrified of her).
If you have to get paid to be a good person, you're not a good person, you just want to get paid.
I think a problem with mentors in this game specifically is that main story content is so easy that teaching things is almost never needed. Also most quests in the game are very linear, so there is not much to miss or be confused about, this leaves the only content that needs teaching as hard content. The game does’t require you to know hard content to be a mentor though, instead it requires you to grind 1500 guildheis- I mean get 1500 commendations, its an arbitrarily large grind that means almost nothing about how good you are at teaching. The incentives to do hard content are problematic, like you said. So when faced with the one place with a job worth doing, its more efficient to leave. One thing of note though is that 80% of the time arr extremes and heavensward extremes can be killed within 30 minutes, so it is rarely actually worth it to be the first to leave, even if you get thordan. If its going bad or someone else leaves first, go ahead, but leaving instantly risks the party 1 pulling it and being super fast (I even 1 pulled thordan once like that, just tank lb the spear stack) also things like shiva are just super easy and almost always will be killed in 2-3 pulls(yes exceptions exist, but shiva and ifrit and the like are pretty easy to carry dead bodies through). Personally, the way I would fix this is make extremes count for like 20 duties for the achievement each, that should be enough to motivate people to stay. Either that or make an extreme roulette, most old extremes are reasonably clearable with a party of randoms in 60 minutes, so I think It would work, assuming the rewards are good enough, plus it would be a great way to improve player skill while still being optional so nobody quits over it.
The alliance raid issue is due to ARR raid being required for story. The others are not so most new players dont know to unlock other raids
I got my Astrope before Stormblood came out. I'm glad I got it out of the way when I did. The content seems way more difficult for beginners now than it was before.
lol no the game is even easier now
From a fairly new sprout (three months, early StB thanks to the free trial unlock), what I can tell about the mentor roulette system looks like a circus. I learned not to DF queue for extremes because packs of mentors started abusing my parties by the time I got to Ramuh EX. The sprouts were competent or at least willing to listen, far more helpful on average than half the crowns who were spreading salt, quitting on the second or third wipe, or dooming runs by persistently discouraging everyone else until half the party left and cleared the penalty for them.
For every tank on Garuda who repeated the same basic mistake over and over, for every me who never learned and never had explained (with mentors present) how Ifrit's debuffs mattered to a healer, there were five mentors playing better but throwing just as hard.
With the current system, a mentor is as likely as anyone else to teach anything, and more likely to make a hard instance worse. I don't read the crown as a mark of anything good. Not helping things, it seems like their broken roulette is the reason why free trial players like me have no good option to get into an extreme. Otherwise DF would be fine, wouldn't it?
I am a mentor who is nearly done with the roullete. I personally believe extremes should be removed from the pool. And here are my reasons why.
1. Most sprouts that queue into them do so without the willingness to learn the fight. Mentors cannot teach them anything if they don’t want to learn.
2. Sprouts are generally pretty bad at the game. Its increadbly frustrating to queue into harder content with random people and suffer because of it.
3. Most extremes past HW (even some HW ones) are not designed to be able to be fully cleared from blind prog in a single lockout for the average player. It doesn’t matter how good at the game the Sprouts may be, the chances they are clearing something like Shinryu EX in a single lockout is VERY low.
4. As a roullete, the expectation is that you aren’t signing up to prog a single fight for a whole hour when mentors go into mentor roullete, and doing so is ultimately a waste of time like 75% of the time because no clear=no mount progress.
If it were up to me, I’d have the extreme trials in their own category and unable to be queued for via normal df at all. Kind of like how the high end duties (including *gasp* an EXTREME TRIAL are now). If a sprout wants to do an extreme trial synced. They are automatically filtered to pf.
Your changes would be great. I never gave it too much thought. Maybe there could even be a question at the end of content, if ppl where happy with the run, a yes would give the mentor like... mvp points you could boast with in your profile. Or instead of points showing directly, a cosmetic item that gets more fancy the more mvp points you have. This could tell new people who is actually helpful as well, if they have a question.
That could also be a good idea! I wonder how well this would work alongside the commendation system we have! But some way to highlight when a Mentor actually mentors well would probably help a lot!
The system to reward mentors for being good mentors is already in place: it's the commendation system. Just make the achievement based on a certain number of commendations gained during mentor roulettes.
The commendation system has flaws of its own. I have seen a ton of people farm commendations in Guildhests by posting macros with things like "Comm me after pls trying to be mentor before Dawntrail
That would be awful. A majority of players either leave without giving a comm or give it out for a reason other than how good or helpful the player was. Instead of any duty being worth the same when it completes and being able to play any role you would want to queue as a healer and then wait until everyone leaves just so have the best chance at getting comms.
It's also something completely subjective, people can forget, choose not to commend, don't pay attention to that and you are left with an effort with no guarantees
I give my coms to the worst players in the group another in my group gives coms to people that are the class he likes and many other reasons for my other friends like was this person a female au'ra or som off stuffs no one cares about mentor crowns xD
just make it so you cant get commendations on guildhests as it also does not count for the dungeon achievement@@Darkflyer71
I think a lot of this traces back to the issue that current early game in FFXIV has, where people do so much damage and take so little damage, that everything is trivial. There's a lot of stuff pre-Stormblood that can oneshot a player and make them realise "oh that kills me." But how much stuff these days do we just... shrug at? And not even realize the mechanics aren't there anymore? Fights like Garuda Hard, Bismark, Thordan. And if you want an incredibly memorable example: the entire Crystal Tower series.
This is an issue because players start the game naive and then never grow out of it because the game just lets you fuck around and do shit for damage, 'cause everyone else will make up for it if they're good. The moment you have 2-3 people in your party of 8 who have fallen into this issue, you're going to notice some huge issues. The healers will die constantly. The tanks don't mitigate or pull agro, the DPS aren't doing their own namesake. Because they didn't need to before. Now they're being kicked in the shins at level 60 and beyond because the game starts to get difficult, or they were one of the sprouts to queue for Ifrit EX without a basic understanding of their own rotation or how important gear really is.
I partially blame the developers for this, but I would treat it more like hindsight at this point. They've already taken a step in the right direction regarding my favourite trial, The Final Day, and had it ilvl synced so your gear can't carry you through the fight AND delivers an experience in the fight that's more comparable to how it felt on launch week.
That's what all of the content should be like, imo. All of them. Difficulty be damned. The reason we got the mentality of "I just want a quick roulette" is because those quick dungeons and raids USED to be hard or moderately challenging. If we got shoved into the ilvl box and actions didnt do obscene amounts of damage at such low levels, quick roulettes wouldn't be the expectation, rather the reward for people learning the fight and their rotation to a tee.
There should be exceptions, of course. If it's still too difficult, you look back and see what can be fixed. Preserving the raid shouldn't be a factor anymore, not when less than half the playerbase has even done the Binding Coils, the most story-important raid series in the game.
Depending on the duty, it should reward more progression points. Exactly how much and for what duties would need to be decided.