A mentor kicked my dog!

[Gula]

I maintain the only way to fix this would be to make it less shiny. Make it something boring, with a specific intended purpose being, to actually mentor new/returning players as it was meant. There would be less of them, but the few that there would be would probably be there for it's intended purpose.

Swap crown with watering can. Consistent with sprout and flower for new and returning players. Mundane, people will ask what it means. Ez. Crown without context, especially if you're used to Chinese mmos, looks like an elite status symbol.

[Aristotle]

Swap crown with watering can. Consistent with sprout and flower for new and returning players.

This is actually such a cute idea. I love it.

[Nyvara]

Swap crown with watering can. Consistent with sprout and flower for new and returning players. Mundane, people will ask what it means. Ez. Crown without context, especially if you're used to Chinese mmos, looks like an elite status symbol.

This got mentioned in another thread maybe even by you? I thought it was a cute idea! I might even mentor then! I dislike the crown for some reason. Plus a watering can makes you think of helping things grow not the be all end all expert in everything (king).

[Gula]

This got mentioned in another thread maybe even by you? I thought it was a cute idea! I might even mentor then! I dislike the crown for some reason. Plus a watering can makes you think of helping things grow not the be all end all expert in everything (king).

I know it has been mentioned before, which is why I brought it up.

And that's a good point about the king's crown. I think I'm half decent at content. I have never done SAVAGE or Stormblood's EX's outside Susano and Lakshmi on launch. And that's it. I don't like the idea of people thinking I should know just because I have a crown by my name. I want to help new players. Guide them around the interface, early class/job questions and answer lore related stuff. Not effortlessly recite every aspect of Ravana (Hard).

I know I can do this without a crown, but I think the perspective of a brand new lv1 should be taken into account.

[Ssmiley_Bjakkzz]

What is a mentor!?

Someone dear for you, loving team partner, your best good friend, teacher you admire.

[Penthea]

They can be skilled players without vocation for mentoring, one thing doesn't imply the other.

I didn't say they couldn't. I was stating that some people want a crown because they think it might make others think they're good at the game. As opposed to getting the crown because they actually want to mentor.

Just because they are skilled and have no vocation to teach doesn't make them worse.

What I meant by worst players is players who are legitimately bad at the game. As I already said before, one of the worst players I had ever seen got a mentor crown.

If you want to talk about standard again than do it with the metric example that you use so we can compare metrics.

Okay then, that player who I was on about rarely had anything resembling a rotation. They used stuff randomly very frequently. Their dps was barely above tanks, if that. They got a rdm to lvl 70 and managed to not know how the dualcast mechanic worked. Their tanking consisted of little other than spamming flash. When they were asked to do things better, because they very noticeably had to be carried in ex and savage, they threw a fit. I can't comment on how they were as a healer, they didn't play one during the time I knew them.

That is not to say most mentors I meet are this bad. I rarely see any players this bad. That player is an exceptional case. Most mentors I meet are at least decent at the game. But this doesn't change the fact that one of the worst players I ever met was able to get the crown. The skill ceiling to getting the mentor tag is obviously too low. It should have been impossible for that player to get it.

And before anyone asks why I don't have it, it's simply because I don't want to tank. You don't need to have the crown to help others anyway.

[Halivel]

So what is it, community? What do you want from mentors? What makes you happy? Because it seems to me mentors need to be

• Always able to offer instruction
• Never give unsolicited instruction
• Good at all the content (yes, even if they're new to it)
• Good at whatever job they're playing (even though they might be leveling it still)
• Patient and willing (and able!) to carry everyone through everything

So, basically... people want to see them as their puppy that has encyclopedia in the head and do everything what they want them to do, hm.

Just to be fair, there are a lot of people, who sucks at being mentor. But there are also tones of players who completely ignores real mentors when they try to carry them. Or players who treat mentors like a shit just because they had bad experience in the past. How, the Hell, would anybody to want to be a mentor in community, where you try to be cheerful and helpful, but players can't say even thanks or whine, and whine, and whine instead? Of course there are 2 mentors in 10 people with crowns. Mentor system is not bad or wrong. Community is.

[Blokeymon]

Anyone trying to defend mentors and the Novice Network would do well to make a character on Cerberus and join the Novice Network there.

I got my crown a looooooong time ago, and immediately put it on. I was proud of it, although I was more proud of the fact my FC created a Linkshell called "Players Help Players" whose sole purpose was to help both new and old players alike, back before the Novice Network was even a thing!

Into the channel I go, and in no more than 5 minutes, I withdrew from the NN, removed my crown, and nope'd the hell out.

Why?

Because it was being used as a public linkshell where the same four people circle-jerked each other, mocked players new and old alike regardless of question, and gave objectively bad advice as gospel goodness... and kicked anyone who disagreed or provided evidence to the contrary.

My own attempt to remove them was met with some vitriol, and ended with a mass-kick of random people as "punishment", of which I ended up being one punished.

Some time later, I dipped my toe in again, and remained silent, only watching. Nothing had changed, it was still the same toxic round-table as it had been before. Attempting to offer different opinions saw people quickly kicked.

And last night, one of my own FC members, still a new person, said out of nowhere:

"Well, the novice network is a horrible shower of [expletive meaning poop] and I wish I'd never bothered".

So if you want your nice, rose-tinted world view of Mentors smashing into dust in front of you, join Cerberus's Novice Network.

If you do, and you find nothing wrong, well I have some bad news for you...

[Mirassou]

Anyone trying to defend mentors and the Novice Network would do well to make a character on Cerberus and join the Novice Network there.

I got my crown a looooooong time ago, and immediately put it on. I was proud of it, although I was more proud of the fact my FC created a Linkshell called "Players Help Players" whose sole purpose was to help both new and old players alike, back before the Novice Network was even a thing!

Into the channel I go, and in no more than 5 minutes, I withdrew from the NN, removed my crown, and nope'd the hell out.

Why?

Because it was being used as a public linkshell where the same four people circle-jerked each other, mocked players new and old alike regardless of question, and gave objectively bad advice as gospel goodness... and kicked anyone who disagreed or provided evidence to the contrary.

My own attempt to remove them was met with some vitriol, and ended with a mass-kick of random people as "punishment", of which I ended up being one punished.

Some time later, I dipped my toe in again, and remained silent, only watching. Nothing had changed, it was still the same toxic round-table as it had been before. Attempting to offer different opinions saw people quickly kicked.

And last night, one of my own FC members, still a new person, said out of nowhere:

"Well, the novice network is a horrible shower of [expletive meaning poop] and I wish I'd never bothered".

So if you want your nice, rose-tinted world view of Mentors smashing into dust in front of you, join Cerberus's Novice Network.

If you do, and you find nothing wrong, well I have some bad news for you...

Wow, I'm sorry that happened to you. I agree about the NN, some are really horrible (imo).

I transferred recently to play with friends - but I first checked the Network on my destination server, because you can get a good idea of the community.
Perhaps that's an unfair yardstick, but if the NN sounds like Barrens chat, I am most likely not going to land on that server.
The one I left - well, it had the same few people monopolizing it for their private channel, usually drowning out any legitimate questions that new players had, or soliciting sarcastic/snarky answers to those questions.

[Penthea]

I transferred recently to play with friends - but I first checked the Network on my destination server, because you can get a good idea of the community.

The NN on Moogle gives a seriously bad and incredibly inaccurate image of the server.

First of all it's almost completely in french, which is in stark contrast to the rest of the public channels that are mostly in english. Usually when you see a non-english language it's just a fc advertising. Secondly it has a great deal of incredibly unhelpful people who have no intention of using NN for its intended purpose, and instead use it as a linkshell to pose. Outside of NN I have found Moogle to be a super chill server.

So in short don't look at NN to get an idea of what the server is like, because chances are the rest of the server doesn't reflect that.