I do not understand the reason for Trade Mentor

I don't think the requirements need to be harder, per se. Just that in getting them, it requires you have a decent breadth of knowledge or experience with the subject.

At least with combat mentor, you have to do the lvl 80 role quests. While you can buy skips, that still means doing class quests and doing the shb questlines. And getting comms means spending time in combat with people you are matched with in DF.

Perhaps make the requirements be something like a collection of achievements. One could be the pentameld achievement -- or a new achievement that actually requires a single overmeld, since there are pieces out there with 5 slots.
Another could be earning a certain amount of white scrip -- this means you can't just craft 300 collectibles at 1 collectability rating.
And having master and folklore books. If nothing else, at least one.

Requirements like those would not demonstrate you being a social or helpful person the way comms might, but at least they would require you have a more robust knowledge of crafting and gathering than just how to level.

The problem is, that Trade Mentor is pretty much a solvable math puzzle that doesn't have variances between different crafters, and even moreso now that they took away a lot of skills.

What would a trade mentor need? Other than gating behind something that can be macro'd? Reminisce about skills that have now been utterly gutted and simplified? (Skill graveyards?). I'm just saying making it "harder" or more difficult to get in isn't going to work. Once you solve the puzzle it's pretty much a done deal. End game Crafting isn't complicated at all unfortunately, it's just more of a gil/time sink.

It would probably be wiser to just separate the NN linkshells for Battle and one for DoH/L in all honesty. It seems the fuss is more about mentors in the Novice Network using Trade Mentor to give Battle Advice. I'd even say PVP also deserves its own as well, but I'm aware that restrictions/tech debt is probably a thing in this case.

You think I need to clear ex primals to be able to tell people how to get chocobo mount? Because those kinds of questions are asked the most in nn.

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

It would probably be wiser to just separate the NN linkshells for Battle and one for DoH/L in all honesty. It seems the fuss is more about mentors in the Novice Network using Trade Mentor to give Battle Advice. I'd even say PVP also deserves its own as well, but I'm aware that restrictions/tech debt is probably a thing in this case.

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I thought the problem was craft mentors not being able to give craft advice, not vice versa. And often battle mentors are able to answer questions the former can't answer so....

Plus

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Originally Posted by Erendis

You think I need to clear ex primals to be able to tell people how to get chocobo mount? Because those kinds of questions are asked the most in nn.

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This. Most of the NiN questions are so generic and "starter" that anyone can answer them, as a returner I always answered as many questions as I asked.
So separating would only cause useless trouble.

The problem is just when you ask specific questions nobody seems qualified to answer.

I’m a new player (started about a month ago) and I had no idea there was even such a thing as a Trade Mentor. I have just been experimenting with the system blindly and doing internet searches for sources when I need to.

That said, I really REALLY like the crafting/gathering system in this game... so much so that I now have 4 of the Hand classes almost 20 levels higher than my highest combat class.

Theres 2 kinds of questions in NN:

Questions almost anyone, even other sprouts, can answer.

Questions you really need to google, as you cannot possibly explain the intricacies of garden crossbreeding, chocobo breeding, triple triad deck building / card gathering, chocobo re-coloring, or advanced crafting in one message worth of text.

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They probably should just do another mentor requirement rework. Just add a global per-world trade chat channel that you can freely opt into, then both delete the crafter crown entirely and change the combat one to a watering can icon to go with the sprout.

Especially given that near-100% of all actual crafting mentor 'advice' is 'just use google for 'ffxiv current patch crafting macro'' they don't need to be in novice network or in contact with new players. That way they can lower the combat requirements back down, too. If anything the goal should just be to get people in there actually interested in helping, not just terrorizing the place with inane social linkshell banter.

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I see nothing wrong with trade mentors refering to crafting macros and such for the "higher" fields of crafting. In PvE, it's normal and expected to look up stuff on the specialised discord servers(?) or wherever. The only difference is that the high-end PvE players needs to memorize some long-ass rotations, which someone else researched, like a school kid, wheras a high-end crafter just has to copy paste a macro, which someone lese resereached. Big deal there.

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Originally Posted by Tlamila

I thought the problem was craft mentors not being able to give craft advice, not vice versa. And often battle mentors are able to answer questions the former can't answer so....

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Well, yes, I'm saying the people in the NN that are currently trade mentors, are basically battle mentors using the trade mentor requirement, not bothering trying to actually do the Battle requirement. If the NN was separated out, there is a probability the community of those networks go into a self policing mode and may actually want people to stay more on topic to each respective chat. This would actually encourage the people in there, that have the badge because they actually are more battle proficient to actually get the badge.

That said, I don't think either requirement is hard to get if you've been around long enough. The Roulette alone with beast tribe nets you 2-3 levels a day.

But usually as these topics come up, the NN linkshell is just basically "buddy buddy secret chat" there's hardly anything productive that goes on in them anyways.

I see a few people here talking about the NN having banter and wanting people to stay on topic, but what you maybe don't realize is that social networking is a part of its purpose. It helps new players meet people and makes the world feel a lot less empty. I also very often see quite a few people mention that they felt weird asking a question in times when the NN was dead silent. Knowing people are there can make people more comfortable, or even more aware, that they can ask a question, instead of forgetting that the chat is even a thing.

As long as people are helping others whenever a question pops up, there's no need to be so uptight about some banter going on. I say this as someone who generally doesn't get involved a whole lot with the conversations and knows they sometimes can get a little out of hand. Just be there for when people need help, you can help make NN be a positive place.

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

Commendationss and Dungeons are really a matter of time, most people already hit those requirements easily so not sure why this is hard.

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The increasing the Commendation requirement from 300 to 1500 ended up stopping a lot of players who preferred to do their daily roulettes with friends or predominately get their tomestones from content that does not give of commendations from renewing their battle mentor status. Some players I knew who started at the beginning of Stormblood barely had 300 coms.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

I see a few people here talking about the NN having banter and wanting people to stay on topic, but what you maybe don't realize is that social networking is a part of its purpose. It helps new players meet people and makes the world feel a lot less empty. I also very often see quite a few people mention that they felt weird asking a question in times when the NN was dead silent. Knowing people are there can make people more comfortable, or even more aware, that they can ask a question, instead of forgetting that the chat is even a thing.

As long as people are helping others whenever a question pops up, there's no need to be so uptight about some banter going on. I say this as someone who generally doesn't get involved a whole lot with the conversations and knows they sometimes can get a little out of hand. Just be there for when people need help, you can help make NN be a positive place.

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There isn't anything wrong with having other banter in the NN per say, if no one has a question, then what is there to talk about? The problem is when banter takes over people asking questions, to the point it defeats the purpose of having a chat to help with said questions.

The issue relies more with the mentors than the novices in chat, For mentors this has become the supercool chat ls where the priority of helping a novice has become second hand. To say that there shouldn't be some kind of self policing to prioritize what the primary purpose of this chat is the same problem as strangleholding the chat to be on topic. So having different chats for NN with the purpose of each mentor status is hardly being uptight, it's just a small level of weeding who should be in those NNs.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

The increasing the Commendation requirement from 300 to 1500 ended up stopping a lot of players who preferred to do their daily roulettes with friends or predominately get their tomestones from content that does not give of commendations from renewing their battle mentor status. Some players I knew who started at the beginning of Stormblood barely had 300 coms.

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Okay....and? if you only want to play with your friends, what's the point of being a mentor that's supposed to help people you may not know? There's mentor roulette, PVP and other content that gave you plenty of time to earn more commendations that you may not go in fully pre-formed. Now having said that the only part that gets tricky is helping out a novice in a dungeon, then you may lose the opportunity to earn a commendation from them because you went in with the novice in a pre-formed party.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

Questions you really need to google, as you cannot possibly explain the intricacies of garden crossbreeding, chocobo breeding, triple triad deck building / card gathering, chocobo re-coloring, or advanced crafting in one message worth of text.

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In situations like this, I sometimes take the person into a party and demonstrate or walk them through the item. I've walked people through gardening one on one and I've learned something of flower growing that isn't in ffxivgardening. It being one message isn't what's important, imo, because I'm not that kind of mentor. But the NN puts me in a place where I can connect to people who are asking for help. Pulling people into linkshells to do the same thing can be helpful, if you have enough mentors that they are available when needed, but you run up against the problem of having to kick people to make room for new sprouts. The NN is designed to try to bring in and maintain a balance of sprouts and mentors, for better or worse.

I think having trade mentors is a good thing. There's even a thread asking about crafting right now. The requirements are way too easy though.

PvP mentors should have their own unlock method too, and maybe we could have more types of mentors who could all join the NN. Open world mentorship unlocked with beast tribes, Eureka, hunts, maps and fates, or raid mentorship unlocked with extreme and/or savage achievements. There are a lot of play styles other than dungeons and crafting and newbies could find that stuff interesting.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

PvP mentors should have their own unlock method too, and maybe we could have more types of mentors who could all join the NN. Open world mentorship unlocked with beast tribes, Eureka, hunts, maps and fates, or raid mentorship unlocked with extreme and/or savage achievements. There are a lot of play styles other than dungeons and crafting and newbies could find that stuff interesting.

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Interesting idea, Reinha

I recall them saying that PvP mentor requirements will be coming at a later date, but can't find the announcement anywhere.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

I think having trade mentors is a good thing. There's even a thread asking about crafting right now. The requirements are way too easy though.

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What other requirements do you think would be needed to answer questions about crafting and gathering? Would making the requirements harder give better answers from trade mentors? If not, why is it a problem if the current requirements are easy to achieve?

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Would making the requirements harder give better answers from trade mentors?

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Yes. You only need to read this thread to see that simply crafting and gathering collectables is not enough to know about crafting.

The one thing I always struggled to understand as a new crafter is how to make level appropriate and higher items in HQ. "Have someone else craft it for you" is not an answer. So I propose to make it a requirement for trade mentors to craft one item in the most recent master book in HQ. It would make it more likely that the mentor knows about scrips, specializations, gearing and rotations than just mass producing low value collectables.