Blizzard, we need to talk about updating the Mentor-System and tools like Dungeon Finder

Community General Discussion
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Continuing the discussion from Just witnessed a dungeon kick:

While reading the above linked topic and comments, I realized that we have currently 2 “Guide” systems in WoW. The obvious “Mentor” role players can pick up voluntarily to access the newcomer chat. And the “Guide” flag on the Dungeon Finder tool ( https://imgur.com/a/Gw1bCud ).

As far as I know, both systems are separated. And I really think that needs to change.

I don’t know exactly how much effect that “Guide” flag in the Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder has on the group matchmaking itself, but I think it is time to fully utilize that checkmark box for a better new player experience.

So, here is the idea.

1. Incorporate the “Guide” flag in the Dungeon/Raid Finder exclusively to the Mentor Role

While there are surely many player that would like to keep the features separated, I think it makes more sense to restrict that checkbox to the Mentor role to give it a pro-active function. Players that aren’t flagged as active Mentor in the game systems, should not be able to check that box.

Instead it should show a tooltip box that says something like:

“This is reserved for Mentors to help new Players learn the game. If you wish to be a Mentor, enlist at [NPC Name] in [Faction City Location](Including a clickable function adding a map marker to the relevant NPC)”

2. Create separated Player Pools for the Dungeon/Raid Finder, with the updated Guide-checkbox incorporated as filter

When a new/returning player uses the dungeon finder within their “time period” of counting new/returning, they can select a different version of this checkbox having the Murloc icon already used for new/returning players in the “Newcomer Chat”. When clicking the checkbox, they get a pop-up when hitting the “Search” Button informing them that “queue times could drastically increase” if too few mentors are enlisted at that time and if they are sure to continue searching a “mentored instance”

If one (or several) new/returning players are selecting this option, they enlist for a mentored instance where 1 of us voluntary mentors is matched with their free slot in the group constellation (as tank, healer or damage dealer role). They can then play the Dungeon with a “qualified” mentor that actually wants to teach.

This means we mentors have to manually enlist with our checkbox in the Dungeon Finder to get matched with them. If we are not listed as a mentor in the Tool but still flagged as a mentor, the game will give us a pop-up asking if we want to continue without mentoring (only once per manual enlistment, if you continue dungeons without leaving the group, you don’t have to confirm again til leaving the group or disbanding it).

3. (Optionally) add a “rate your Mentor” system at the end of the activity

Similar like Overwatch “Endorsement System”, this Mentor-Rating could be added at the end of the activity. But unlike Overwatch, the system will have no special rewards tied to it. It is simply meant for new players to review our performance in teaching. We Mentors can see the rating and as a result can try to improve our teaching of instances and activities based on the score we get.

So, for instance if I would get regularly only (let’s say) 2 out of 5 stars as rating from new players, I can see I need to improve my teaching and be more friendlier. If I get 4-5 stars regularly, I know I am doing a good job.

4. Why Blizzard should do this

The idea is quite simple. New and returning players might want to learn specific/random dungeons step by step, with active guidance from us Mentors to understand and master the game (again).

We mentors want to help new players to learn and enjoy the game. Simple as that.

New players are the blood every MMO(RPG) needs to survive. We mentors should be the heart(beat) that pumps them into the game.

Without new players staying, the game will not grow and slowly die. And I think most of us don’t want to happen, even outside of a player drought crisis.

All I am asking for is that you (Blizzard) give us Mentors the proper tools to actually be Mentors to new/returning Players. See it as player-based “customer support”, since the exact same system you employ across all your games as “Blizzard support”. Not that much effort to let us players do the same ingame by helping new players.

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Dungeons are kind of a big thing in WoW, yet it’s been left so unattended in new players department. You are expected to just opt in at some point, even as it is a completely different experience from anything you could or will do in the open world, and the amount of available dungeons is staggering. Whatever difficulty you encounter (and adapt to) in any of them is irrelevant because chances are you won’t EVER return into the same dungeon ever again. This difficulty is also all around the place in leveling dungeons, and in too many of them there are prevalent traditions of skipping and avoiding.

All in all, there’re lots of improvements to be made.

Your idea is totally not the worst but piling it all on mentors’ shoulders doesn’t sound that promising. No rewards, and there won’t be enough mentors to cover for the solution, but provide said rewards, and quality of mentors will instantly drop. One extra random guy will always be able to spoil everything for everyone, so these threads will still continue to pop up. Most importantly, tuning of low-level dungeons don’t allow you to learn virtually anything valuable besides your pathfinding skills, so there’s no practical need for mentoring until max level. And so on.

They’d probably better start of with designing obligatory newcomers dungeons, several of them, that will teach – and not just show – all of the mechanics you will be required to do when you level up. You would need a number of these dungeons in order for people to actually practice, with ever expanding difficulty. And these dungeons should be opened only for new people, premades, special bots, and probably mentors, although Blizzard should still always announce mechanics themselves with big mid-screen messages. “Normal” dungeons might as well be closed off for newcomers until they join as a premade. That might actually help.

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As it stands only max level character can be mentors, so the mentor system would require an overhaul if you want it to apply in leveling dungeons. Also new players should be able to choose if and how long they are marked as new players, instead of it expiring on its own.

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This isn’t preschool.

One of the biggest issues for new players is being kicked from dungeons. If a buff was added to the group when a new player was in it to saying something like:

A new player has joined your group, be kind and enjoy 10% more xp!

It would help. The new player gets the experiences they need and the rest get something for their time.

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Many things are left unatended for the new players. And its a real shame.

IMO: What blizz needs to do is ditch all this mentor schemes and revamp the new-player experience. Chromi Time in general simply sucks.

IMO these changes need to happen:

STEP 1: Make a brand new continent. Totally made up with a made-up story. Something like the current Exile’s Reach but larger. 4-5 zones.

Also, this new continent should exist with out all the “level up REALLY fast” everything else has. Its intended for new players ONLY, not for old players that want to level up fast. Ideally, one should take 40h of gameplay atleast to complete all this zone.

This continent will get you all the way to 60. At the end, you get a nice cinematic that gives you a resume of “the story so far” up to DF. And some nice ilvl appropriate gear to get started in DF.

Every expansion release, the ONLY thing that needs to change is that an NPC at the end will automatically boost you from 60 to “whatever level” you need to start the current expansion.

So if next expansion max level is 80, then your level is boosted from 60 to 70 automatically, and given an appropriate set of starter gear.

And the cinematic is updated to account for DF as “the story so far”. DONE.

STEP 2: In this new continent, you have space to make dungeons with NPCs (like in Exiles Reach) with increasing complexity. That way, you “prepare” new players for what is to come. Both in mechanics, and specific skills of your character.

You can even include fails: For example, your NPC tank dies and you wipe and have to walk there once again.

You can even do mok areans/BGs with NPCs with increasing complexity.

You can add multiple instances of each and every aspect of endgame with NPCs so that the player knows what is there to expect.

In the end, what is important is that this continent is AWAYS the same after every expansion. Otherwise its a mess for new players. They simply dont get the mechanics, the story, or the social aspect of the game. And I totally understand why new players simply show up and dont know what is going on.

If this is executed, im am 100% confident that there would be a LOT less drama with new players. And all these “mentorship” mechanics would be totally unecessary.

Chromi time should be for the collectors. For people that want to quest through old expansions and read all the fluff, or colect achevements. Nothing more.

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I don’t think that they will implement any separate queue systems, others (for different reasons) have also been suggested but it will exacerbate the queue times for everyone.

I would rather see them let people queue for all dungeons from all expansions instead of having to choose a Chromie section. It’s awful the way it currently works.

I agree some new players do not get a good experience in dungeons. Even if they are playing with a friend it can be rough. I don’t actually know if it would be better if the murloc for new players was just visible to all instead of only mentors. If people would be more patient that way. In FF for example everyone can see your sprout.

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if it´s not preschool then why reward the group with 10% exp instead of star ratings :face_with_monocle:

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And it would be quite nice to be able to activate it for yourself. Sure i am playing this game for quite some expansions now, but if i want to start a new char on a spec i have never played, or even worse another role, i just want to be seen as new player.

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We simply need a system similar to endorsements in overwatch. No need to make it over complicated, I am a guide, but people may wish to mentor a single run without having to become a guide. Similarly, guides may wish to run the odd dungeon without being a mentor, the flag needs to be independent of guide status.

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I’m not a big fan of endorsements, it’s not an amazing system. It penalises you for trying out things instead of sticking to what you’re good at.

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Well, it is an optional player pool with matchmaking after all. It’s not the default one.

Only 1 mentor per dungeon group and raid means that one person covers the entire group.

That means 100 Mentors can cover 400 Dungeon Newbies/Returners and up to 2.300 Raid Newbies/Returners.

And even 100 Mentors doing that is still better than none. It’s meant as an optional way to learn the game. Not an optional way to play the game the entire time. New Players and Returners loose their status as “new/returning” after some time. Which means they will lose access to this feature entirely.

The idea is not to teach players every instance in the game. Just the very basics of how dungeons/raids work and teach them how to succussfull play dungeons/raids and think independently within the gameplay systems.

Regarding the rewards, I specifically didn’t mention any since then people would feel like there this is just some “social grind” to complete to get XY exclusive thing. And that disrupts and sabotages the entire idea of “voluntarily helping”. When people help others voluntarily, they do it out of kindness. Not because they expect to be rewarded for it.

While this is certainly also an option, I doubt Blizzard has really the time for that at the moment. It is much easier and faster to just adjust the Guide-Systems as I mentioned compared to have several small teams sit down and design tutorials for new players instead of new content for the core players.

After all, Blizzard did reduce their team sizes last year.

Level Scaling is a thing. Level 59s still play occasionally together with lvl 10 players in BfA dungeons during leveling. It just scales the damage and HP around and all do almost the same damage. They just need to extend the scaling curve.

I have to disagree on that. Because otherwise insecure people would never even think about facing the game on their own within this system I proposed, fundamentally increasing the amount of new players with demand for a guide compared to the existing amount of guides in the pool. At some point, one side heavily outweighs the other and the queue times would DRASTICALLY increase.

The same issue we Destiny 2 players have technically with the “Guided Games” system (which I took as inspiration btw). That system is rather dumb designed, because it requires for a guided Raid team to have at least 50% of the members being guides, which is 3/6 players. When simply 1 person is enough to guide and teach an entire raid team in LFG with ease.

In D2 case, guides literally get a “queue time >1min” while the guided players get a “Unknown queue time” displayed on the UI. That’s how out of balance it is.

Ok, then let’s say that in the Mentor Dungeons you can’t get kicked. Problem solved. Not our responsibility to shield them forever from the harsh MMO world WoW is sometimes.

That aside, that 10% XP buff is a neat idea, not denying that… But how much use has “+10% XP” for a maximum level character that doesn’t benefit from XP anymore? Just as a hint.

I honestly think everyone should be able to see both the murloc and guide icon. It still makes no sense to me it is so strangely designed to be only visible for the tagged other. Just give people UI settings to disable the displaying of the icon, if it annoys them. But they still can see them in chat separately on/off too.

Hence you can still opt in and out as Mentor in my suggestion. But I get your point. Hence I also said that I can see people wanting the systems to stay separated.

It works in the appropriate environment (such as the mentored Instances I suggested). But yes, in general not a perfect system.

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Only for the levelling up process. By then they will have more experience. Just like sprout status doesn’t stay on forever in FF14.

WoW needs a tutorial about stuns, kicks and interrupts too. They could have made the tutorial island have that in the final dungeon.

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