Novice Network is in dire need to change

While I understand some servers do not have this issue, there are quite a few that do.

The Novice Network has become an embarrassingly assorted example of pure abuse, putting down others and things that Mentors should not be saying to others. On rare occasions you will actually see Mentors actually helping others. But for the most part many good mentors have left the chat and now they are filled with some mentors who are not even in the same stratosphere of what a mentor should be.

On my server alone, two mentors were perma banned just this week for their actions.

This not only takes the name "mentor" and completely destroys any slight meaning it was supposed to be, but it's also an embarrassing chat room for new players.

It needs a SE official to monitor these chats. And that's pretty sad when a baby sitter is needed

Been awhile since I was in the mentor in the chat but can't mentors kick or silence other mentors?

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Originally Posted by AlphaFox

Been awhile since I was in the mentor in the chat but can't mentors kick or silence other mentors?

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They can but then there is the kick chain. A mentor is removed, then one of his friends will defend his honor and then kick the kicker. Then another mentor will see that as inappropriate and kick that person. Then another person kick that person.

Happens all the time.

Although I dread Novice Chat as a mentor, I'm still in it because there are a LOT of new folks who really need help.

Sadly, the chat is being dominated by "mentors" who, the last thing they ever do in this chat, is to mentor.

Honestly, I think the whole chat should be scrapped and SE should be serious volunteers to head their own. When I was a GM for Everquest 2 we did this. Filled out a legit application if you're serious about it. You get your own passworded chat room where you can assist new players with the Company name next to your name.

This version has just become way too toxic

Mentors are worthless

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Originally Posted by Charlayy

Mentors who are only in it for the rewards and recognition are worthless

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Corrected that for ya.

It depends on the server, cause on Siren the NN is filled with more info mentoring and friendly chatting.

Given that you are on gilgamesh its probably a case of having a higher pop means having more mentors which leads to also getting more bad mentors who only did the work for the crown.

I'd rather run with a player who is terrible at the game and their class but is nice and respectful than run with a so called mentor who's actually just a jerk.

The Novice Network was a cesspool back when I returned right before SB.
In Balmung anyways...
I seen people ask a lot of questions and it's overridden by Trump Covefefe Trap chatter.
Just felt like F2P tier type people acting insane. One reason why I left BDO. Can't take it.
It's sad because I know a lot of people are grown adults but acting like children when
newbies need help is disgusting. I'm not sure how it is now. Other Balmungians can chime in from here for me.

Even before the transfer restrictions like 90% of all sprouts in gilgamesh and balmung were alts, now that new players literally can't get into that server it's just a mentor and returning player chat, so this issue isn't really that major in those big servers.

That said, the channel does need rules, but I'm afraid the reason SE doesn't want to assign real rules to the chat is because they would have to lose GM manpower moderating it.

They basically expect the community to police it, without the proper tools to do so. Best thing we could do is report mentors who are hostile or rude for no reason but even then I doubt we'd see much improvement.

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Originally Posted by AlphaFox

They basically expect us to police it, without the proper tools to do so. Best thing we could do is report mentors who are hostile or rude for no reason but even then I doubt we'd see much improvement.

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I doubt that will amount to anything. It's unfortunate...but I've seen many mentors treat Balmung's version of the novice network as a glorified chat channel for themselves and their buddies. They're dismissive of questions, casually spoil major plot points, kick people for ridiculous reasons...and then even if they're kicked they find a way back in.

It's a server by server thing. Some servers have an awful network, some have a great one. Zalera's one is usually very helpful with 2 or 3 mentors answering questions at any one time.

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Originally Posted by AlphaFox

Corrected that for ya.

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Not even, most mentors are terrible at this game and give terrible advice. They think since they have a lot of gameplay hours they know how the game works but in reality they're not actually informed on job viability, the details of optimization, how to handle more complex fight mechanics, simple positioning, or even how all the rolls synergize with each other. I literally had a mentor tell me monk was worthless and had no utility in SB because people told him monk was bad and people used to shit on its utility in HW, he never read the changes and put 2 and 2 together to figure out things had changed.

I always hear these horror stories, but Hyperions NN is pretty civil and helpful I've noticed.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

I always hear these horror stories, but Hyperions NN is pretty civil and helpful I've noticed.

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I heard the opposite about Hyperion, I've seen NN drama being posted on Reddit related to some Azure guy and constant kicking between mentors, at least three times now.

You're always going to hear stories about the bad side of things. Balmung is not "a glorified chat channel for themselves and their buddies. They're dismissive of questions, casually spoil major plot points, kick people for ridiculous reasons...and then even if they're kicked they find a way back in." from what I see when I am around. People chat, yes, but would you rather the Novice Network just be silent all the time?

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Originally Posted by Annah

While I understand some servers do not have this issue, there are quite a few that do.

The Novice Network has become an embarrassingly assorted example of pure abuse, putting down others and things that Mentors should not be saying to others. On rare occasions you will actually see Mentors actually helping others. But for the most part many good mentors have left the chat and now they are filled with some mentors who are not even in the same stratosphere of what a mentor should be.

On my server alone, two mentors were perma banned just this week for their actions.

This not only takes the name "mentor" and completely destroys any slight meaning it was supposed to be, but it's also an embarrassing chat room for new players.

It needs a SE official to monitor these chats. And that's pretty sad when a baby sitter is needed

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We should just abandon this whole idea. I and many of my friends left that chat, 3 days after it was introduced the first time, because of the issues explained by you above, or sheer amount of non sense spam, that wasn't asked by new players, but by mentors that did have no idea about content or the game itself.

I understand were SE came from with this idea, it does work in some other games, in fact the whole community is build on that. However it doesn't work in games that are a bit more populated, and FFXIV is one of them. Instead of having to babysit people, as you nicely named it, we should just close that whole novice network bs, and remove the mentor crown/roulette's and rewards that came with it.

While this community isn't the best and greatest i've ever seen, on some servers at least, but in most cases veterans do help new players, without even having the mentor status or showing it off. That's how it should be, as well as the forum being a place to ask questions, but it shouldn't be some kind of chat room, that mentors use to talk about random stuff. Or being used as punching bag for the newcomers.

If we need a crown, a chat, link shell or even a reward, to be polite to others and helping out newer players, as well as returning ones, then there's clearly something wrong and we should be looking at that, instead of introducing additional systems that don't work in first place.

I'm sure that the mentor system was designed with the best of intentions, but I feel it has a few flaws.

1. The crown is not a logical "help" symbol--in western society, crowns tend to represent those who are served, not those who are servants. Therefore, it has become tainted because people who wanted it as a power / elitist symbol got it with no intent of helping anyone. A watering can, question mark or happy face might be more appropriate.

2. The skill areas are too broad. i.e. you have to be a tank, healer and dps. Can I do it? Sure. Would I be giving totally shit tank / dps advice since they'd likely get leveled through pvp (if I wasn't honest and did not recommend that detailed questions be asked to someone with that background) since they're not my role of choice? Yes. But I am a solid healer and damn good at the gathering jobs. See a pattern here?

3. You don't need to have beaten Titan extreme to be willing to go to starting cities, show players where things are, run low level dungeons with new dps so they can get in faster (as heals here) etc. The fact that the mentor roulette is one giant blob of stuff that you have to have done all of, rather than something that works in tiers so more people can get help, is a genuine shame. I don't give two craps about the mount--but I would be delighted to get paired with people who need help on the vast areas of the game I am comfortable with, and the current mentor system is unwilling to address that.

4. Instead of things that glorify the mentor, the 'rewards' for the system should be things that can be used to help us improve how well we can help newbies. Imagine if there were ways to do stuff like instantly create raisins or aetheryte tickets or repair kits or certain levels of gear, etc., that would help people up to (just a guess?) level 25 / 30? Imagine if the mentor rewards included things like mentor specific designed versions of the 'teleport to newbie' ability and a two seater mount that had some sort of protection ability for the passenger so we could help them see new areas / get new atherytes? (admittedly that last idea might be too op and make newbies a lil lazy, lol)... or maybe the mount is meant to help people find the sight seeing spots and aether points so it has an 'echo' ability so the person driving the mount can see them even if they've cleared those themselves?

5. The mentor system should potentially work in tiers so that people can become mentors for the things they are comfortable / capable of helping with, rather than the mistaken idea that every mentor in ffxiv knows everything about every piece of content in the game.

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Originally Posted by Ilenya

You're always going to hear stories about the bad side of things. Balmung is not "a glorified chat channel for themselves and their buddies. They're dismissive of questions, casually spoil major plot points, kick people for ridiculous reasons...and then even if they're kicked they find a way back in." from what I see when I am around. People chat, yes, but would you rather the Novice Network just be silent all the time?

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No one's saying for people to not chat...but don't be jerks to new people and ignore them.
The whole point of the Mentor System and NN was to help newbies and guide them.
Not talk about friggin' Trump and stuff. XD
I rather have silence than everyone acting like animals. I DID see a bit of helpfulness in there though, not
enough for me stick around to help though as a Returner.

EDIT: Here's a post about it on Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...eds_to_change/

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Originally Posted by Jybril

No one's saying for people to not chat...but don't be jerks to new people and ignore them.

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To be fair, my comment about chatting was in direct response to "Glorified chat channel" that I quoted from. For the most part the Mentors I see on the NN are a helpful bunch, and while there are issues with spoilers and kicks (There's been some odd drama running around for a while, I haven't quite figure it out yet), claiming that every single mentor on there is like that isn't helping. It's painting a whole bunch of people in a bad like that don't deserve it.

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Originally Posted by Annah

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I've seen MANY sprouts that are just as bad. "You don't pay my sub" bad. SE will never monitor NN, they are better off getting rid of the system entirely.

Please don't get rid of the NN universally just because some servers suck. It's a great place on others. Maybe suspend it on servers where there's too much abuse reported? :(

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Originally Posted by Annah

They can but then there is the kick chain. A mentor is removed, then one of his friends will defend his honor and then kick the kicker. Then another mentor will see that as inappropriate and kick that person. Then another person kick that person.

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I had someone ask me to join the NN, since I got Mentor before SB, in case they got kicked so I could kick the person who kicked them. I flat out refused to do that.

As a Gilgamesh Mentor myself, the OP is definitely exaggerating. Yes, there is a lot of free chat in the Novice Network, but whenever someone DOES ask for game advice, they get answers, usually immediately, and often by ten or more mentors all at once. The Novice Network is still fulfilling its purpose: assisting novices and returners with questions they have about the game.

Some folks, though, seem to feel that the Network should be dead silent unless helping out novices, and even though I rarely participate in the random discussions myself, I'm not sure that I agree. The unrestricted chatter provides a social environment that many novices (particularly those who have not yet found a Free Company to call home) find very inviting. I've lost track of the number of times that a novice has been on the verge of tears because their time as a novice was coming to an end and they were being forced to leave the Network.

There is, on occasion, discord in the channel, whether it be about politics, optimal DPS rotations or (ironically) whether free chat should be allowed in the Novice Network, but it rarely lasts.

It's sad but true that Gilgamesh's Novice Network has been running thin on novices lately, due to the shutdown of new characters, and that does mean that there's been fewer and fewer occasions to assist newbies. Still, the network on Gilgamesh is not bad, by my reckoning.

I left the novice network and I am a new player. I got sick of watching 'mentors' insulting new players and generally making disparaging comments about the player base. It wasn't all of the mentors that were acting this way but it happened often enough that I wanted nothing more to do with the chat room. It troubles me that new players might be chased away from FFXIV because people who are supposedly representing the best of the player base can only type hateful things into their chat.

Make the mentor tag only visible if you're a sprout. That should take away a lot of the "I want everyone to think I'm pro!" attitude towards it.

[QUOTE=LunaFaye;4328498]remove the mentor crown/roulette's and rewards that came with it.
[d/QUOTE]

you can take my crown, my title, and my reward but I love the roulette... maybe just call it ultimate roulette... it's the only roulette that can actually be a challenge

I Recently became a mentor and am striving to be the best mentor I can and to help new players, but I have not yet seen this phenomenon you speak of in Novice Network, I know it would upset me if I saw it.

Lamia's NN was a little iffy. If you asked any question, you would get quick, good answers, but the whole thing felt more like a overly bloated FC chat, so you'd see personality clashes here and there, and often it felt more like the server chat than a help network with multiple fast moving conversations that could drown out legitimate newbie questions.

Im on Adamantoise and the NN is very friendly, i havent even see or heard some insults to other players in my 200h of play.

I'm not in the novice network but my friend who is a mentor is and he sometimes tells me about the ridiculous things mentors are saying. Once they were talking about doing erp or something. ...lol. Sad, considering this server was a preferred one for awhile so we have a lot of legit new people coming in who had never played the game before and the game recommended the server so they picked it.

I think there needs to be a higher bar for being a mentor though. I think it's really sad when I see mentors on DF saying really nasty things to people who mess up or don't know what they're doing. They are representing the company, whether SE realizes it or not. If I were a new player and saw these mentors and learned that they were awarded this title by SE themselves, I would be pretty confused to see them behaving in such a manner. Frankly, I'd probably question if I wanted to play a game where even people who are supposed to be representative of the company were so toxic.

I realize that us as seasoned players don't give mentors that much credit, since we understand how easy it is to get the title. However, new players might not and therefore might see them around a similar level to GMs but with less power. You know?

I spend a lot of time in Gilgamesh's NN. There are a few bad actors, yes. The chat has become a mentor-focused hangout/general chat, yes. But almost every time a newbie asks a question they get answered. Even if it's some obscure settings-related thing that someone probably had to go look up.

Also since Gilgamesh is closed to new characters, what are we supposed to do? Not use the NN? If sproutlings are getting helped and the conversations are suitable for most ages I don't see an issue. Just today there was a huge discussion about crafting and how to make the most bang for you buck as you level, sharing tips on efficiency, and what kinds of things to make so you don't go broke. Even if it's mentors discussing with mentors it's still helpful information.

Asking to get rid of the system entirely is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I agree that mentor status should be harder to get (I've seen Mentors asking some REALLY dumb questions they should know the answers to if they're going to guide others), and it should be easier to lose. But the concept of the system is sound. I like that SE trusts us to behave and regulate ourselves instead of assigning a nanny or two to watch us.

How about some sprouts? What do they feel about it? Their opinion is most important since they're supposed to be the ones who benefit the most from the NN and everything that comes with it.