Why Mentors Leave Actually Difficult Content! The Mentor Roulette Problem 

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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

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.

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

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 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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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,

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 ♥

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

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

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.

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)

"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 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.

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.

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

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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 really love the idea of tracking time isntead of completion, wished square would listen

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.

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.

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.

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.

as someone who did the mentor roul for the mount, i finished in 2 months and didn't care where it put me, whether i had to teach or not was fine - had some where i spawned into an EX with only 2 mins on the clock lol but really other than those i had no bad experiences or felt the need to leave

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.)

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.

As a sprout on my first playthrough and MMO, would it perhaps help to have two versions of the mentor roulette? One for say... lvl 15-60 dungeon/trials, and one for lvl +61? Because I can understand mentors get frustrated - but as a sprout it's really hard to talk in the party/alliance chat and focus on the duty at the same time - especially if you're the tank/healer and suddenly see the DPS run ahead and start the boss fight before you even have the time to ask if there's any mechanic you should know about. (I main Paladin & Warrior, have recently started to try and learn White Mage. It's STRESSFUL when you're not even given time to ask questions). I've lost count on how many times I've been forced to run in blind to save the DPS and take over the aggro quickly by activating Provoke, only to get shit afterwards because I didn't do (x) or (y). Which because extra annoying, because I always make sure to tell the party at the start of the duty I'm new with a copy-pasted message I've prepared. .

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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)

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.

They leave because they aren't doing the roulette for the players, they do it for the mount. I've had a big crown for YEARS and i've turned of off for 99% of that time. You don't need to have the crown on to help people. Doesn't matter if it is in sastasha or EX tsukuyomi. Edit: I wrote all that before the video got very far but this is has been known for a long time. How to fix it would be to take 10 clears away from the achievement if you ever leave a mentor roulette, being the first one to leave or not. Only way to leave is to vote abandon so you don't get the penalty. If you get kicked from an EX run that is 20 clears. GGEZ

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.

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.

My understanding is that in Japan, people do queue up for extremes, somewhat regularly. I wish that were more common on western servers. I don’t mind learning an extreme. I wish I could queue into them and learn them with people.

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.

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.

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.

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 ^^

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

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.

What if the achievement or rewards were instead based on clears of specific kinds of content through roulette , eg, clear x extremes from roulette for the mount Or also require someone to comm them for the clear to count towards greedy achievement items

I think part of the issue coming from the systems in the game and how they're presented is that the "hard" versions of the original trials are only marginally more challenging than the "normal" trials, and it gives off a false impression that, surely, the "Extreme" difficulty would only have a similar difficulty spike. Only for sprouts to be sorely mistaken and get punished for not knowing that the difficulty spikes up from Extreme, onwards. It honestly feels like there's a missing difficulty gap between the "Hard" and "Extreme" modes that would've helped communicate things better for sprouts.

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.

Having been a mentor for a while, but not being too far in the progress of the achievement, the extremes are the thing that make me hesitant to queue that roulette half the time. I do want to teach, but I gotta have the mental wherewithal to be ready to do so for an hour, and some days I do not have the time to commit to that. I will queue as tank when doing so tho so at least I don't have to go into teaching about where to hold the boss and things like that. For the whole Novice Network thing, yeah I use it like a general chat when there are down times in it, but I will legit try to help when there is someone asking a question. As for solutions other than your time thing, I'd agree with the others maybe split the queues up for like extremes and such, and incentivize the mentor extreme with a higher reward since that'll be involving a lot more teaching.

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.

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 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.

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.

I didn't even know there was a mount for Mentor Roulette. I have mentor unlocked, but not enough content done yet to even do a mentor roulette. When I turn mentor status on, it's to help people level up with the XP bonus, and I've also noticed that when I'm explaining content to new people, other players are more inclined to wait a minute before continuing if the explainer is a mentor. I've tried to invite new players into novice chat to help them out, but for the life of me, I've never been able to get in it myself because it's always full. So I've kind of given up on that, and I focus my mentor efforts on FC members, and when I get into duty finder with new people randomly.

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.

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.

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.

Do the other players who get matched with a mentor in mentor roulette know that they got someone from mentor roulette? I feel like that might cause some of the misunderstandings? Like personally i never thought about it and just assumed everyone in my party came from the other roulettes or directly queued up for that specific dungeon or trial (excluding ex trials cus that queue more often than not takes way too long and i would rather get my friends or PF it)

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 RU-vid 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 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.

The main thing that stopped me doing mentor roulette is that people don't want to be mentored. they don't care if there abysmal at their class and potentially even dead weight holding others back. they don't care if you have basic friendly tips to help them do their job properly. you can dress your words with flowers and perfumes and smiles and dances, but people often don't take kindly to finding out they're not perfect. if I'm not silently speed running and offering 0 input then often I'm ignored or chastised for trying to teach struggling players fight/role/job mechanics. peoples egos are simply way too fragile.

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 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.

Did it ever happen that an achievement got changed (be it reward or requirements)? Not sure how to fix the problem. Maybe give additional rewards to the mentor if the players feel a mentor did a good job being a mentor?

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?

Cae, your interactions and views soon after publication here are incredibly high. I predict sustained channel growth.

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).

I queue for mentor roulette on almost exclusively healer and I actually like getting ex trials most of the time (rathalos ex sucks every time but that's, like, fine - I just mostly queue on healer because I know how to spot heal through newbies taking accidental damage and rathalos takes that option away) but it's SO FRUSTRATING to get an ex trial and have the tanks pull over and over while you're trying to explain how the mechanics work, or just have people bite your head off. Especially if it's a later ex (I got Tsuku ex once, somehow) or an earlier one where you just plain have to do the mechanics (Ramuh, Garuda, Leviathan), there's no reasonable amount of "carry" you can do to get the party to clear if nobody wants to listen. I'm more than willing to stay for the full hour, provided people actually are taking the feedback into account, letting me (or other people in the party) set up waymarkers, etc. but I'm way less willing to sit there and let someone who finished ARR yesterday chainpull a boss and tell me to be quiet because... they wanted to go into the fight blind? Going into normal content blind is fine, I get it, but if you absolutely NEED to clear ex trials for the first time blind, *especially* if you're totally new and have very little gamesense going into it, that's a job for party finder. Chances are it'll take multiple instances, and at that point it's just wasting people's time. Not just mentors, either! I've run into people when I get ex trials who are just queueing into them to farm, and their whole hour is getting wasted too. It's one thing if you're willing to learn and you're listening but you just don't *get* it; maybe you're just not ready for that kind of content yet. It's a whole other ballgame when you're ignoring people trying to explain how to do the mechanics, or worse yet being argumentative with them over it. It's just kind of a fucked system, but at its core it's not *bad.* The requirements to become a mentor are super low and are "farmable", which lets a lot of people in who are just.. not very good at the game. I pretty regularly see pfs up from people asking to be unsynced through old nraids/other optional content so that they can do mentor roulette, which is so antithetical to the base concept that it amazes me. On the other hand, the playerbase needs a serious attitude adjustment, since "why don't mentors actually TEACH anything???" and "why would you tell me how to play, you don't pay my sub" are very common and often simultaneous thought processes. They want mentors to load into an instance and explain all the mechanics (which I usually don't do because that's annoying and everyone has the right to eat shit and die to new content at least once, lol) and also not say anything at all. They ask how you're supposed to learn how to play the game, but if you say "hey, can you use an AOE during this mob pull, I'm pulling aggro" is some insane overstep. It just sucks. I get why people just want to take the 30.

I think you hit the nail on the head with the suggestion of having the achievement be time-based rather than completion-based... it'd be nice if something similar could be done for the offtopic uses of NN. I mean, I don't think some off-topic social chatter in NN is a problem (and I think some sprouts also appreciate it a lot), but it'd be nice if it was more opt-in/opt-out separately from "the place to ask questions". I think the requirements set upon mentorship are also probably a bit flawed, especially how unbalanced the combat and TC mentor requirements are... and not to mention that there's plenty other content in the game not covered by those two niches too. I guess we'll see if they change things up in any way with the next expansion...

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.

I've been pulled into guildhests when a group was trying to get 10 done before reset of the challenge log. I've been pulled in for a dezemel darkhold that was in progress that just couldn't find a tank. On the other hand, I've been pulled into beard EX where the concept of "count to three" and "tank swap" just ... didn't process for anybody.

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.

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.

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 unlocked full mentor recently, but roulette hasn't unlocked because I need to do ShB EX clears. There's also a bug with it disappearing for some mentors. I do want the mount of course, but I also like being helpful. The NN channel I like because it's chatter I don't get with my FC since it's dead for reasons I won't get into. But I do like answering questions and helping how I can when I'm not in the middle of a duty. With the roulette not unlocked yet I do see it as an issue that EXs are a part of it since those have been relegated to forming parties to complete. But those other problems are worth addressing. I'm very happy with the recent 24 man raid changes to get more variety in my daily runs. One thing that could be done is a point system where you earn points towards the mount and you get more points based on a multitude of factors like length of dungeon, number of sprouts, how long it took, etc. You could even introduce a point penalty where you lose them if you abandon too many times a day or week. There are legitimate times to abandon like emergencies or in my dumb case, queuing as the wrong job.

i want to get enough comms to be a mentor one day, because i like explaining and helping new people. I might need to bone up on some of the tank role stuff for trials or extremes in general but still. maybe we could have the achievement also count commendations given to mentors in the roulette, incentivizing them to genuinely be nice and helpful. or have it ask the sprout who queued into it if the mentors helped them, and have that count toward either doing better toward to mount perhaps, or if they say no, maybe losing the mentorship, or causing SE to look at the log of the run and reevaluate if the player deserves to be a mentor or not.