Please change the Mentor icons to a watering can.

It may be less of an issue in Asian countries, but in Western countries, there are a lot of narcissists who jump on any opportunity to flaunt status symbols. The Novice Network is about helping new players learn the ropes, but the crowns presently used to signify Mentor-status are drawing all the wrong sort of people.

They aren't there to help, they're there to stand out and stand above the novices. Many are derisive of new players and some even ban other players for little more than not liking them or having petty disagreements. Changing the icon to something more mundane won't eliminate the problem, but it's a starting point to simply change the tone of the heraldry used to distinguish Sprouts and Mentors.

As much as I agree with this, people will attribute status to anything. People stand around idling in areas with the black fat chocobo mount because they think they're special for spending $20 on Amazon. Literally anything shiny, that costs real money, or is harder to obtain for new players will be a status symbol no matter what.

A perfectly valid point. But like I said, it's a starting point. I honestly think something has to be done. The NovNet is such an exceptional idea at its core, but leave it to human beings to eff it all up, right? >_<

I'm still grinding my gears to come up with additional possible workarounds. Obviously, this is an issue of human nature, and you can only account for so much of that.

Yes. Please. I have wanted this for so gosh darn long.