Why are newer players more abusive towards mentors?

[LeonKeyh]

But I am getting sick of being painted with a broad brush by some of you people who are butt-hurt that some randoms on the internet gave them a bad day.

I don't give a rip about some mount
I don't even wear my crown.

So kindly take your attitude about the few bad ones we have and shove it.

That's all well and good, but just like the OP did with sprouts, people tend to paint an entire group of people with a broad brushstroke based off of former experiences with people in that group.

The biggest thing is that the most vocal Mentors tend to be pedantic and more interested in "showing off" their knowledge in my experience. A lot of Mentors seem to value answering first over answering in a way that new people would understand. "Where can I get more aetheryte tickets?" being answered with just "GC" is worthless to a new player and I'm amazed at how many Mentors consider that to be a good way of answering. Then, when asked "What is GC?" they just say "Grand Company."

Then there are the pedants that feel the need to correct people without taking into account context. "You don't really need to worry about X" being responded to with "Yes you do. When you do min ilvl synced Ultimates with 1 healer and 3 tanks you need to be able to do it." A sprout doesn't need to worry about Ultimate/Savage content right now or "Doing Heavensward beast tribes is an OK way to break up the monotony of roulettes and dungeon spam." being responded to with XP/hour math equations showing that it's the 6th best way of leveling alt jobs and shouldn't be done, ignoring the fact that grinding xp the most efficiently will wear down your mind.


But, there's also the meme in the community. Almost everyone picks up on the Mentor meme and whenever they have 1 bad experience with a mentor it cements the meme as truth.

[Jeeqbit]

I've been a mentor since 2016 and I never experienced any abuse until very recently. I think it's happened only 3 times, but it's probably because of the malicious youtube videos going around saying awful things about people who share their experience with new/returning players.

I used to have a negative perspective of the mentor system because they were always the ones being rude in dungeons when I was new, but I noticed this tended to be full-crown mentors rather than pve mentors so I chose to wear pve mentor.

I never joined the Novice Network for years because everyone said it was just full of trolling, but one day I joined it and I just saw mentors answering sprout/returner questions all day and helping them with dungeon queues. It completely changed my perspective of the mentor system.

In my opinion, experienced players in online games usually don't have much patience for new players because they know how to play efficiently and they want the people they play with to as well. They want to be in a dungeon for about 20 minutes not spending an hour sightseeing the dungeon. It just so happens that experienced players often become mentors, so it looks as if it's the mentor status that somehow causes this, but it's not, it's being an experienced player that causes this.

[Scaramouche]

The two problems about mentor system are
1) Criteria are useless
2) Exclusive reward

Me having a job at max level doesn't mean I know how to play it.

Me spamming ruin over and over by doing ifrit as a scholar to fish for commendations doesn't mean i'm a commendable player.

Me spamming ifrit unsync 1000 times doesn't make me knowlegeable about pve.

Basically all 3 criteria to become mentor are terrible.


Now you add exclusive rewards that force people to do mentor roulette and when people are forced to do something they don't like, it always end badly.


And since a chad mentor, who is actually very good and willing to help, has the same crown as Billy the ifrit spammer, Chad mentor is outnumbered and outshined by all the Billy.

[Doc_Seraph]

Kupo I just slam them with so much kindness they are forced to leave or join the kupotastic party <3 kupo

[Raoabolic]

The postmodern human hates being criticized even if it's constructive.
The Mentor's main reason to exist is to help new players with basic gameplay mechanics.
Can you see the problem now?

Not like it matters, the game is becoming more and more simplified to the point I wonder why the mentor system exists. Why mentor in a game where anything remotely difficult is kneecapped into becoming a snoozefest.

[Ath192]

Kupo I just slam them with so much kindness they are forced to leave or join the kupotastic party <3 kupo

Yo-- you're not really a moogle?!?! xD Nice to see your face.

[IdowhatIwant]

Being abusive and toxic to mentors is the national sport of Eorzea and the XIV community, this is something provable and observable, it happens much more outside of the game in chat communities like reddit or discord, because you cannot get punished for doing so.

What I noticed, however, is that the longer a person plays the game, the less they parttake in this sport, often times they themselves become mentors, and mostly have no problem with people displaying their mentor crown in duties or in public spaces.

You don't see them immediately point out that someone is a mentor when that someone makes a dumb mistake or a common error, possibly because the joke has become stale.

On the other hand, recently FFXIV had a huge surge of new players, and what I've noticed is that those new players, who first discover that being mean to mentors is socially accepted in the XIV community, begin to go far and beyond above what is acceptable to abuse mentors, sometimes even ingame, in party chat in duties, pointing out that someone has a crown, or sometimes, an ultimate legend title or an ultimate weapon, if the party fails or someone makes a mistake.

I can understand it because this is the fresh new thing they discovered and helps them feel part of the community of FFXIV since everyone else is doing it, but the question nags me at the back of my head: is this a problem of old players making, or is this something exclusive to the new breed of players this game is now attracting?

Cause you all do weird things like demand pictures of feet to help people out in the novice chat.

[Raoabolic]

Cause you all do weird things like demand pictures of feet to help people out in the novice chat.

At least the feet fetishists stay in the PF. No one has to listen to them grumble in party chat about how "the mentor's feet are subpar" when we wipe.

[Saraide]

No because to think its comparable would mean you will now feel bad about bullying people online because they accepted a mentor crown as a symbol of willing to help people. All because some of those did not live up to the expectation. In my NN sprouts usually get their questions answered and occasionally land hands on help. Theres bad mentors too, but I would say thats not the majority.

There is a fundamental difference in attacking someone over something they cant change or over something they can change. You can not change which part of the world you are born in, switching mentor crown on and off however can be done very easily. I am a bit shocked this difference is not obvious to everyone.

[Skivvy]

I don't bash mentors personally at all, but I certainly wouldn't want to be associated with them. You can thank the bad mentors for the perception new players have towards them. Even I've been on the receiving end of several "mentors" on my sprout alt. I think the system is redundant, and should ultimately be removed. At the very least the rewards for being a mentor, and maybe even the crown, need to be removed. It should be about helping new players. Rewards complicate things. You'll get people who only want to be a "mentor" for the crown next to their name, the chat channel (with kick powers), or the eventual mount, for example.

Yeah, the rewards were a horrible idea, and the crown itself should also be changed. I have some friends who have absolutely no intention of helping anyone, but sport the crown because they like how it looks. Change the mentor tag to something mundane (no, not a watering can as people would also just wear that for the looks), remove rewards, and call it a day.

If SE wants to keep 'mentor roulette' and the achievement reward, just change it so that it's called something else, and unlink it from mentors. It is quite a slog, and the achievement is fine, but it attracts the wrong type of attitudes for a mentor feature.


Also, nice miqo. Been awhile for ya. lol