Why are newer players more abusive towards mentors?

[RyuDragnier]

The best mentors I've encountered are not in the NN, and they tend to teach people who ask them to personally, otherwise they won't say anything. I've also seen a lot of people badmouth mentors ingame just for existing, even if they haven't said or done anything, and have personally encountered this a few years back when somebody got on my case for being a mentor when we first entered a dungeon. I'm not going to give out tips or something just because I see a sprout icon, for all I know it's a person on an alt. I will give out info after we die once, or if asked a question.

I've been around a long time now. While I know there are good mentors out there, I've run into far more crap mentors. I've already been conditioned to react to anyone wearing the crown with disdain thanks to all the bad experiences.

Am I going to caution new players about those who wear the BK crown? You bet. I don't want them to get the wrong impression of the game when they inevitably run into a crap mentor. I'm going to tell them what I said above - some are good, most are crap. Proceed with caution.

It might help if mentors did more to police their own instead of enabling and encouraging their bs, especially in Novice Network.

You don't need to be wearing the crown to be a mentor. By wearing it, you're asking to be treated differently. Do yourself a favor and take off the crown if you think that's why you're getting treated poorly. It could be you'll find out that it's got nothing to do with being a mentor and that the problem is you've run into a person with a bad attitude in general.

My god the toxicity in this single post...if we weren't on different data centers, I'd have sworn you were the toxic player that treated me like crap just for having the mentor crown.

[Amenara]

Remove the rewards from doing mentor roulette, get rid of trade and battle mentors, make the system force you to renew every other patch or so. Make being a mentor actually something you have to want to unlock vice something you incidentally unlock by playing the game. I think this would help remove a lot of the stigma associated with mentors and maybe make the mentor system actually worth something.

As for the mentor bashing, I do partake in the memeing of mentors for sure, all knowing that I have the crown as well and that I am insulting myself with the memes. Most of the time its in good fun, but if it drops to personal insults or harassment like what seems to be the theme, report whoever is doing the harassing, or better yet, step up and call people out when they are harassing other players, mentor or not.

[Vahlnir]

Honestly, the reputation the Mentor system has is well earned, which is a shame. I used to walk around with my crown equipped, ready to answer what questions I could. But I got too much grief just because I had it on, regardless of how polite or neutral my advice was. So...I took it off. I will hang around my server's NN every once in a while so I can answer questions when needed. But yeah, I'm not going to go out of my way to offer advice. I will wait until it is asked for in any situation. I know better.

[HayaW]

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?

The abuse goes to the percentage of mentors that feel it necessary to display their crown. If you are receiving abuse or harassment just remove the crown. You're still a mentor even if you don't wear the crown. You still get the exp bonus when partied with a sprout/returner. I am a full mentor and have been for a while and I am never harassed for it because I don't show the crown. This is an ez fix. If you got the mentor status so that you can have a crown by your name then you shouldn't be a mentor anyways.

[Faafetai]

To be fair, the majority of people who get mentors to use NN as chat are the craft mentors. The power trippers are usually the PvE mentors.
But of course not always.

That said, craft mentor is really absurd. Just be 90 and do some collectibles you probably did on the way to 90. Nothing that remotely shows you have any knowledge about crafting.

I think crafting mentor is probably the one I would get first honestly. Because the system isn't knowledge based but popularity based, after playing a year I have received 500 coms. I don't com beg, I help when I can, but there is something painful going into a duty with a cat girl in slut glam begging for coms for her mount and knowing the person and knowing they got every com is pretty crushing. I could pull off some well timed covers, reprisal for a mechanic someone is within so they do not take full damage. I could be the only tank alive when the healer is lb3 ing but I know the healer and I know they got all of the coms. I am not annoyed about it. I will never dress a certain way in game or shower my speech in 'pwease gwive me coms for my mentor mount oooh wooo hooo'. I play my best am friendly and try to do my best to help sprouts without mentor status. Staying in a dungeon for 40 minutes after it has ended to help a boosted whm with what skills are fun to use at the level of gubal library is the kind of thing I enjoy doing. You don't need a crown but the roulette would be why I would want it. Not even for whatever reward you get for doing X amount of whatever. Just the fact it pulls from every bit of content.

I would like a system that would test someones knowledge of the different classes, mechanic knowledge of content they will be running, and basic knowledge of the game in general. Personally for me crafting mentor is probably the one I could obtain before the 3 years of playing mark going on my 500 coms within a year margin. It is just the way primal is, so I could see this being different on other servers and for people who have played way longer eventually getting them after playing for so many years. I could also see how it could be abused because it is very simple to get crafting mentor. You don't really need to know anything in the first place for regular mentor. I think they removed the extreme trials from the criteria when I was looking into this recently and it wasn't like that mattered because it was counting undersized duties so no one was going through and learning the extremes before anyway.

I am sure this system works fine on the jp servers, I feel like with NA we need to put up baby gates or something because everyone is very happy with tumbling down a full few flights of stairs if we don't tell them it hurts.

I would like an alternative to a com system or a com system you could actually com people out of a dungeon because the amount of times I have gotten really friendly people. I think I notice to many things but I see when a dps is kicking booty, limit breaking a huge back of mobs, putting faint up on the boss, great positioning uuugggh it makes me so upset when they use the leave duty command and I can never com them.

[Eris4494]

I haven't used my mentor status for few years. You just get mocked if try to explain a mechanic to a duty.

[Reinha]

The abuse goes to the percentage of mentors that feel it necessary to display their crown. If you are receiving abuse or harassment just remove the crown. You're still a mentor even if you don't wear the crown. You still get the exp bonus when partied with a sprout/returner. I am a full mentor and have been for a while and I am never harassed for it because I don't show the crown. This is an ez fix. If you got the mentor status so that you can have a crown by your name then you shouldn't be a mentor anyways.

I would find it pretty masochistic and humiliating to go out of my way to help people who would abuse or harass me just for wearing an icon which signifies that I'm willing to help. If the general consensus is that non mentors are more skilled and knowledgeable about the game than mentors, then who am I to give them advice? They can figure it out by themselves.

My solution was to stop being a mentor entirely and just focus on end game activities instead of low level content. People act more humble and pleasant when they mess up mechanics in the most recent extreme trial compared to low level content. They even appreciate tips. It's funny to think that giving the same tips 4 years from now in the same trial will make the people who finally catch up to this content think you're another one of those "toxic, egotistical burger king mentors who are only in it for the mount".

[Jojoya]

My god the toxicity in this single post...if we weren't on different data centers, I'd have sworn you were the toxic player that treated me like crap just for having the mentor crown.

As was said earlier in the thread:

You just reap what you sow.

Too many mentors are toxic jerks to other players. You're now reaping what was sown by some of your fellow mentors among a player base fed up with mentor toxicity.

If mentors want relations between mentors and the rest of the player base to improve, then they need to work with SE to clean out the trash in the mentor system instead of ignoring it. By not pushing SE to clean out the bad mentors, they're allowing the entire mentor pool to become tainted through association.

For my own part, I don't treat mentors badly no matter my opinion of them. Courtesy is something I automatically give anyone unless their behavior shows they don't deserve it. Respect is something that must be earned. If I don't know a mentor through prior interactions, I avoid engaging with them so I don't risk getting subjected to yet another random lecture about how special they are because they've got a crown next to their name.

You're the one being toxic when you won't acknowledge that many of us have had some very bad mentor experiences over the years and so have legitimate reasons for feeling the way we do.

[LeonKeyh]

"You reap what a minority of people in the same arbitrary group as you sow." - Jojoya 2022

Great update to the classic line.

[Thorio]

As was said earlier in the thread:


Too many mentors are toxic jerks to other players. You're now reaping what was sown by some of your fellow mentors among a player base fed up with mentor toxicity.

If mentors want relations between mentors and the rest of the player base to improve, then they need to work with SE to clean out the trash in the mentor system instead of ignoring it. By not pushing SE to clean out the bad mentors, they're allowing the entire mentor pool to become tainted through association.

For my own part, I don't treat mentors badly no matter my opinion of them. Courtesy is something I automatically give anyone unless their behavior shows they don't deserve it. Respect is something that must be earned. If I don't know a mentor through prior interactions, I avoid engaging with them so I don't risk getting subjected to yet another random lecture about how special they are because they've got a crown next to their name.

You're the one being toxic when you won't acknowledge that many of us have had some very bad mentor experiences over the years and so have legitimate reasons for feeling the way we do.

Gauging your replies, you seem to be somewhat toxic as well. No offense.