uhm , if u like or find some mentor helpfull and nice.... feel free to ask for a friend invite...so u can keep in touch with him/her :)
humble request from someone who just came back to the game after a 3 year absence, and has found herself a complete noob, thus starting a new character:
cool it with the bot-hunting, kick-happy behavior in novice chat. i was kicked from the novice chat by a mentor while simply minding my own business and questing, with "reason:RMT". This assumption was based on nothing but my job (archer) and lack of other jobs (I JUST STARTED! thats why im in novice chat...).
It sucks to get locked out, publicly accused of being a bot by some random overzealous kicker, and its a pain to get back into the chat. Please at least send people a tell or something.
It's always interesting reading this kind of thread from the perspective of playing on a Japanese server. Before the last patch I couldn't get into the channel often and it was generally 100 AFK mentors versus 1 newbie (who probably didn't need any help anyway). So it was pointless.
Nowadays it's more balanced; sometimes there are more sprouts, sometimes there are more mentors. Even when sprouts do or say something foolish they're given gentle advice and most people use it to say 'hi' and make the game community feel closer when they're out doing quests and finding their way around. My server is extremely low pop so having the sense that other people are playing is really helpful, especially other sprouts who you might struggle to find at first. Nobody has asked any questions that are even remotely difficult while I've been logged in; it's just standard stuff that anyone with a bit of patience and experience can answer while they stand around waiting for their group.
When I accepted the mentor status the pop-up messages were quite firm about how mentors should be prepared to act like representatives. It's disheartening to read that people are using the channel as a way to show off and put other players down when they try to help on other servers, and I think you should definitely report them for it; bullies ought to have their access to the channel permanently removed if they can't treat other players with proper respect. From my experience I don't think this issue even exists on non-English-speaking servers so I hope that S-E is taking the problem seriously for those affected.
Since it's so easy for someone who regularly roulettes to grind the 1,000 dungeon requirement, perhaps make it so people who receive a certain number of reports after abusing their powers will have their mentorship stripped by a GM until they earn it in another way (e.g. at the moment, if they earned it through dungeons they'd have to re-earn it through the gathering/crafting qualifications to be given a second chance)? It may be harsh, but acting like a jerk in the novice channel damages the game's reputation and disrupts things for others. I heard they were hoping to add alternate ways to qualify for mentorship in future so if the trolls want to work their butts off only to be stripped of their privileges each time they bully others, perhaps they'll eventually start being more considerate. And if they don't learn, they can't be a mentor any more. Their call.
It's been many weeks since I last managed to get into the NN, but I do have to say that certain "simple" questions by newbies have importance all throughout the game and therefore can lead to heated discussions.
There was an instance where a new CNJ complained about being bored only casting Cure over and over. I basically told him "you only need to cure enough to keep everyone alive and can spend the rest of the time in cleric stance dpsing like everyone else".
Unsurprisingly, that led to a big fight about the whole "healers should/shouldn't dps"-issue and so on.
Personally, I don't consider people good healers who just twiddle their thumbs for up to 20 seconds until they finally have to throw a heal to the tank again. I think them talking newbies into a "don't let those hardcore a**holes push you into doing something that isn't your role"-mindset is dangerous and further dumbs down the general populace of the game unnecessarily. (they probably think the same about me though :D)
And then we have the people who are even worse, having all classes leveled but no idea about ANYTHING. Recommending STR to tanks, recommending STR to NINs, or telling new healers to only go for MND (although this one is debatable and not flat-out wrong; but the chance to run out of MP as a fledgling healer is basically non-existent).
Of course you don't need to play every class perfectly in endgame to be a good mentor - but if you do, chances are you know what you are talking about in comparison to the dude who rarely manages 400 dps on Sephi EX in 220+ gear, because he only spams True Thrust over and over :rolleyes:
I don't want to speak for all servers since I'm sure some servers might have attitude problem from some mentors, or even a clique trying to control the network, but I felt appropriate to point out that, if you had a bad experience in the network before the last patch, I really encourage you to give it another try, after they made the network manual invite for mentors it weeded out a lot of bad mentors who just wanted the crown, I'm not saying you wont encounter bad apples, but they're a much less common occurrence now.