Novice Network/New Adventurer Suggestions

Please address this:

The Novice Network is just full of spam. I haven't helped a New Adventurer without actively seeking.
(Could be solved by allowing New Players to be partied with active Mentors. Us Mentors had to go through windows of disclaimers, we know the score. Having said this, if a Mentor is displaying Mentor status, that Mentor should have a New Adventurer assigned. If a Mentor wishes to stop helping out, then the Mentor should turn off his status, like an Uber driver.)

The Mentor roulette only benefits the Mentor.
(There is already a nice lv 20 bonus for a Mentor and New Adventurer party, could we perhaps make the roulette more relevant for New Adventuers and not Mentors)

At the end of the day, I love helping others out. I don't require a reward, the adventure itself is a reward. Being a Mentor should be about helping others explore this game we have all come to love.

Hopefully it will get better with changes already planned (like more inclusive qualifications for new adventurers that should ensure there is a much more healthy presence of new adventurers to occupy the channels' mentors more prone to ... distraction. That said, if it's actual spam, the offenders should certainly be reported and kicked.

As for the mentor roulette...it's not ENTIRELY to benefit the mentor. I know I filled a slot recently for a new player's guildhest with the thing.

So...hang it there. It will get better. =)

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Originally Posted by EveK

Hopefully it will get better with changes already planned (like more inclusive qualifications for new adventurers that should ensure there is a much more healthy presence of new adventurers to occupy the channels' mentors more prone to ... distraction. That said, if it's actual spam, the offenders should certainly be reported and kicked.

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On my server, the Mentor to Adventurer ratio is like 5:1 around 100/100 Mentors maybe 26/412 New Adventurers. It looks more like the trade channel from WoW than anything else.

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Originally Posted by EveK

As for the mentor roulette...it's not ENTIRELY to benefit the mentor. I know I filled a slot recently for a new player's guildhest with the thing.

So...hang it there. It will get better. =)

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I feel like it only benefits myself and other already experienced players.

what I'd like to see, as someone who is on her 2nd char, and have been playing since beta, is an option to either never join TNN, or just disable it, period, cause its madly annoying to have to ask for someone to kick me whenever im on my 2nd char and zone in/out of places.

Being able to turn off the auto rejoin is coming soon. In the meantime, you can adjust your chat filter settings to hide all of its messages (two settings: one for the chat, one for its announcements).

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Originally Posted by EveK

Hopefully it will get better with changes already planned (like more inclusive qualifications for new adventurers

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It's more like they're essentially eliminating the whole concept of new adventurers, since anyone can take that title and it'll be impossible to know who is actually new. :( I don't see how that's going to improve anything, at least not while the NN is segregated the way it is.

I think it's time for them to give up on the Novice Network entirely and just add an open /Advice channel that lets anyone ask advice and anyone give advice, without trying to segregate and certify the participants. It would probably have been a better idea to begin with. (Unfortunately, I don't see that as likely to happen.)

I understand the information about the future plans is not yet very clear, but our understandings seem to vary greatly. Based on the translation I read of Naoki Yoshida's response here on the forums, it will not at all be "anyone can take" the new adventurer status. It will simply be more inclusive but still rule out the more experienced players.

I'll look up the exact quote for you...

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...95#post3628695

"“New Beginner” status will remain until players complete the main scenario quest “Before the Dawn” and when their play time exceeds 168 hours."

So that's a single week of playtime and getting to the point where they can touch the Heavensward content.

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Originally Posted by EveK

"“New Beginner” status will remain until players complete the main scenario quest “Before the Dawn” and when their play time exceeds 168 hours."

So that's a single week of playtime and getting to the point where they can touch the Heavensward content.

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So all ARR players are treated as "New". That's two years worth of content. I've been playing avidly ever since ARR released, yet this would still count me as "New" simply because I've chosen not to register Heavensward, so haven't done the leadup quests to it. They're just treating all players of the base game as if they were newcomers regardless of how new or experienced they actually are.

(That is, unless the "and" from that quote is a mis-translation. If they actually mean until you either reach “Before the Dawn” or exceed 168 hours, that's quite a bit better. I still think 168 hours is way too long to consider someone a newcomer, though. Calling it a single week's worth of playtime glosses over the fact that at a typical couple hours per night, that's three months worth of playtime for someone who plays every day. The current 40 hours is a far more realistic measure.)

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

So all ARR players are treated as "New". That's two years worth of content. I've been playing avidly ever since ARR released, yet this would still count me as "New" simply because I've chosen not to register Heavensward, so haven't done the leadup quests to it. They're just treating all players of the base game as if they were newcomers regardless of how new or experienced they actually are.

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From what I remember, you could self remove the sprout icon "New Adventurer" before, don't know if you can still do that.
As for your progress already, I think that status only applies to newly created characters.

From what I see, they will try to make newly made characters, new players, and the ARR experience much smoother.

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Originally Posted by MaisonLooi

From what I remember, you could self remove the sprout icon "New Adventurer" before, don't know if you can still do that.

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Sure, you can turn your own off, but that doesn't mean you can expect other people to have turned theirs off when it no longer applies. Therefore with the proposed changes, seeing the sprout icon on somebody might possibly mean they're new or might just as possibly mean they've been around for ages but never turned the status off. In other words, it ends up meaning nothing at all.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

Sure, you can turn it off, but that doesn't mean you can expect other people to have turned it off when it no longer applies. Therefore with the proposed changes, seeing the sprout icon on somebody might possibly mean they're new or might just as possibly mean they've been around for ages but never turned the status off. In other words, it ends up meaning nothing at all.

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Regardless they are new or not, there are a number of benefits for retaining the sprout icon, so unless you want to remove it I don't see the need to.

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Originally Posted by MaisonLooi

On my server, the Mentor to Adventurer ratio is like 5:1 around 100/100 Mentors maybe 26/412 New Adventurers. It looks more like the trade channel from WoW than anything else.

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Hello old <<TW>> member I've been meaning to ask someone actually and this might be a bit off topic.
but what is the chat like in Tonberry between mentors and novices? I've heard negative things about it on the NA side but nothing about JP side of the mentor channel.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

Sure, you can turn your own off, but that doesn't mean you can expect other people to have turned theirs off when it no longer applies. Therefore with the proposed changes, seeing the sprout icon on somebody might possibly mean they're new or might just as possibly mean they've been around for ages but never turned the status off. In other words, it ends up meaning nothing at all.

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Well I'm not interested in distinguishing players that are new or experienced, if someone needs help, they need help, if they kept the sprout on there is a high chance they need help.

If it is an experienced player with a sprout, they most likely have nothing on the server, the community would benefit from that player keeping their sprout because of the benefits.

If you really want to know who is and isn't a new player, just ask.

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Originally Posted by Yasuhiro

Hello old <<TW>> member I've been meaning to ask someone actually and this might be a bit off topic.
but what is the chat like in Tonberry between mentors and novices? I've heard negative things about it on the NA side but nothing about JP side of the mentor channel.

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Well like I said before...

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Originally Posted by MaisonLooi

On my server, the Mentor to Adventurer ratio is like 5:1 around 100/100 Mentors maybe 26/412 New Adventurers. It looks more like the trade channel from WoW than anything else.

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Originally Posted by MaisonLooi

Well I'm not interested in distinguishing players that are new or experienced, if someone needs help, they need help

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Which was my point in the first place, that SE should stop trying to segregate and certify the participants in what's essentially a help and advice network. (Plus I also said that if they're going to try and do so anyway, that the least they could do is leave it somewhat accurate, and now they've totally blown that as well.)

People at all levels are going to need help or advice from time to time, whether they've just started the game or have been playing for years and have multiple level capped jobs but are now branching out and trying something new. Similarly, people at all levels can offer answers and advice. (In many cases, a brand new player who just learned how to do something themselves may be far better qualified to answer when another new player asks how it works, whereas the people who have been at level cap since just after the game started would have to try to remember something they did years ago and just hope that both their memory is accurate and that the rules haven't changed since then.)

SE's Novice Network divides the playerbase into three groups, and essentially at random (or at least based on rules that have nothing whatsoever to do with needing help or being able to provide it, and that now don't even have anything to do with how new or experienced you are) SE decides to say people in group A get to ask questions only, but shouldn't be offering any information or advice, while people in group B can answer questions (that they may or may not know the answer to), but shouldn't have any questions of their own, and people in group C should stay out of the whole advice offering business, so they're not even allowed into the network for it.

They've way over-complicated the system and made it far worse for all three groups in the process. If it were just an open /Advice channel, that everyone could use, then people could ask for help when they need it and offer help when they have help to offer.

Echoing the above, about players needing help at all levels regardless of experience, I came across a Majestas wielding WHM in a level 50 dungeon roulette last night. She was not aware of mechanics for the dungeon as a healer as she had not played through the 2.x series as a WHM. Therefore to encourage players diversifying and learning mechanics from differing viewpoints it would be beneficial if:

a) there were rewards/achievements for clearing each dungeon in each different role as tank, healer, DPS

That would probably entice new players to try out different roles and therefore indirectly learn how to play in addition to the mentor system.

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Originally Posted by Altanas

Echoing the above, about players needing help at all levels regardless of experience, I came across a Majestas wielding WHM in a level 50 dungeon roulette last night. She was not aware of mechanics for the dungeon as a healer as she had not played through the 2.x series as a WHM. Therefore to encourage players diversifying and learning mechanics from differing viewpoints it would be beneficial if:

a) there were rewards/achievements for clearing each dungeon in each different role as tank, healer, DPS

That would probably entice new players to try out different roles and therefore indirectly learn how to play in addition to the mentor system.

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I like that idea, but people can be carried through so that would kinda void that, but that's on point
i find giving advice to experienced players to be difficult because often they take it as an insult even though i try my best to explain it in a nice manner, but when the advice is taken to heart, it's the best!

Have they done something to the mentor network? I am a mentor and it never puts me in the chat, nor do I get a message saying that the chat is full.

Yes, Keira. /nnetwork will toggle the auto rejoin.