Mentor Requirements

[ItMe]

I'm a strong believer that the Mentor crown should be replaced with a watering can, since that would A) be consistent with the existing plant-based imagery for sprouts and flowers, B) not place mentors on such a pedestal, and C) imply that a mentor's job is to help new players.

God that's such a cute idea~

[Awha]

I'm a strong believer that the Mentor crown should be replaced with a watering can, since that would A) be consistent with the existing plant-based imagery for sprouts and flowers, B) not place mentors on such a pedestal, and C) imply that a mentor's job is to help new players.

A watering can would not change anything. The crown is a unique icon so thus it is sought. Changing it with a watering can is swapping it with just another unique icon that will be sought after. You will still get people becoming a mentor for all the wrong reasons. The meaning behind it would be cute but still does not solve any of the issues people have brought up. The watering can would still become a status symbol just due to the nature of what it is meant to represent.

It could be a poop emoji and it prob would still become a status symbol tied to some level of expectation.

[Dogempire]

I honestly just wish they would do away with the commendation requirement for mentorship, I assume come Endwalker the requirement will be bumped up to 2000, and while I do have that myself, I only really have it because I used to main a healer in HW and StB and play a couple tank jobs currently. Given the current state of job design though, I wouldn't blame someone for wanting to play only dps jobs since at least there's some actual variety outside of spam 1 button for either 10s or the entire fight.

Commendations literally mean nothing since all you have to do for them is queue up as a tank/healer, type "o/" as you load in, don't be rude to others, and simply linger long enough for people to comm you at the end of the dungeon/trial/raid. I don't see how any of the aforementioned has any bearing on a person's ability to be helpful and give out useful advice when asked.

They could easily replace the commendations requirement with a points system that gives points depending on the amount of content you've cleared, with say 5000 points required, and each piece of content cleared giving x points, say:
- 20 points per savage raid clear
- 10 points per extreme (level 61+) trial clear
- 5 points per normal (level 61+) raid clear
- 4 points per trial (level 61+) clear
- 2 points per dungeon

As a rough example, at least then having 5000 points means you've either cleared a helluva lot of dungeons, or you've done more than your fair share of extreme/savage content. You know, the difficult, coordinated content that you don't get comms for?

If I had to choose a person to ask for advice from, I'll take the person who's cleared several savage tiers and who's been raiding since HW over the person who's just done a ton of roulettes as a healer and racked up 5000 comms because of it.

[Dogempire]

A watering can would not change anything. The crown is a unique icon so thus it is sought. Changing it with a watering can is swapping it with just another unique icon that will be sought after. You will still get people becoming a mentor for all the wrong reasons. The meaning behind it would be cute but still does not solve any of the issues people have brought up. The watering can would still become a status symbol just due to the nature of what it is meant to represent.

It could be a poop emoji and it prob would still become a status symbol tied to some level of expectation.

I mean the mentor crown is more of a meme than a status symbol. When someone sees a person brandishing a mentor crown next to their name they're more inclined to associate them with "basement dwelling new player groomer" than "experienced player you can ask for advice."

Anyone who doesn't know about the negative stigma associated with mentors probably doesn't pay much attention to the XIV community, considering how much mentors get made fun of

[Awha]

I mean the mentor crown is more of a meme than a status symbol. When someone sees a person brandishing a mentor crown next to their name they're more inclined to associate them with "basement dwelling new player groomer" than "experienced player you can ask for advice."

Anyone who doesn't know about the negative stigma associated with mentors probably doesn't pay much attention to the XIV community, considering how much mentors get made fun of

Think the meme stems more from the mentor system in general I doubt changing the icon now would change that.

[Wasselin]

I agree entirely. All the issues that seem to circle the mentor system in FFXIV are community/personality issues. Dickheads will be dickheads whether they have a crown or not. There's no higher ceiling that's going to resolve such.



And that I'd say is the right attitude to have. I'd also be inclined to say you don't need a crown to do what you're already doing, but I can see the use of it as a 'look here I can help you!' badge.. probably what it was originally intended to be.

I'd also say the general experience one might have with the mentor/novice network system would very much depend on not only world but datacenter as well. I've seen people in this thread speak of toxic cesspools, and seen people (like you) describe novice network as a helpful and welcoming place.

Well I need to be a mentor to access the Novice Network chat channel right? That's where I was answering questions (as a returner). Although maybe it happens, I doubt people whisper mentors. That feels a little bit harder to whisper some stranger, even if they have a mentor badge, than just putting a question out there in a general chat channel, where anyone can answer it. It's also less efficient because you don't know if that one person will answer you, where as in a general chat channel someone probably will.

I like the watering can idea, although the icon is so small it might be hard to make it legible. It wouldn't be a big change, but it might make it a little bit less charged.

If the Novice Network really is toxic, than isn't chat moderation the answer? It's hard to think of requirements they could put in place that would ensure people aren't toxic.

[Jeeqbit]

Chat moderation is already a thing because mentors can kick from the novice network. This is meant only for very extreme situations where a GM wouldn't react fast enough, such as spamming or refusing to stop a negative behaviour and most of the time these are the only situations it's used for.

People don't normally whisper mentors, but they are more likely to after an interaction in the novice network and a lot of the time I start whispering them to address their question in more detail, especially if there are a lot of other conversations going on at the same time.

[GeminiReed]

Doesn't matter what the icon is people will chase it "just because". Either because they're achievement hunters or consider it a status symbol. One change that would partially mitigate this would be to only make it visible in NN chat or if the mentor queued via Mentor Roulette.

Whispers are less than ideal. Not everybody knows everything. A shared channel has a much better chance of connecting with somebody that can help instead of iterating through all online mentors and hoping they can help. If you funnel everybody into 1:1 conversations that can quickly lead to mentors getting overloaded (eg. the last name starts with 'A' problem) and not everybody is all that comfortable cold calling people.

The other big drawback to whispers is that excludes people on the free trial. Before you sneer those are exactly the kind of folks that the mentor program was set up to handle. New players that aren't sure enough that this game is for them.

[Jeeqbit]

The other big drawback to whispers is that excludes people on the free trial. Before you sneer those are exactly the kind of folks that the mentor program was set up to handle. New players that aren't sure enough that this game is for them.

That's a very good point. The novice network is what a lot of trial players are using to interact with others and get things done that they normally can't because of the limitations and the things mentors help them with help sell the game to them.

[Metalwrath]

Honestly they just need to change the mentor requirements for clearing all the content to having to clear all the content synced.That will help weed out all the casuals who just unsynced everything and auto click vote abandon on ex's in mentor roulete because they dont want to learn the fight and get easy roulettes.