Delete the Mentor system or rework it.

[Packetdancer]

I always see this accusation and literally no one ever provides proof of it. Just once, I'd love to see someone show a mentor that has outright said, "I'm just here for the crown, screw ya'll newbs"

Honestly, while usually I'm the one likely to point out that many studies have shown humans are really bad at judging percentage/frequency in a way that actually matches objective reality, I can genuinely say that I'm fairly sure the percentage is at least higher than 0%. Because I have definitely encountered jerks of mentors. Not often, but enough to prove they exist and are not MMO cryptids.

I mean, I don't think it's all mentors by any means. It's not even a majority! Heck, it might be less than 5%! (I mean, it probably is less than 5%, potentially by a lot.)

But the ones who are like that -- who snap at sprouts or basically use "I'm a mentor" to try to boss them around -- tend to be very loud and difficult to ignore when they do show up. (And as noted, I have indeed seen them before, albeit not so often.) And even if they are a relatively small number, their loud and in-your-face nature tends to mean they are what gets noticed, what gets remembered, and thus what gets associated with the crown.

Still, you're not wrong either; a lot of the bad perception of mentors is an echo chamber. Three sprouts have a jerk of a mentor in a dungeon and mention it to some friends. One of those friends has had a bad mentor experience, and mentions they've also seen a jerk of a mentor. And over time it balloons into this thing where when new folks show up in game, they get more or less inducted into the court of "mentors all suck", even when it's potentially a very small portion of mentors who do, and their reason for believing mentors all suck is "I've been told by veteran players that mentors all suck."

And in an example of positive bias reinforcement, that means they're likely to see a jerk mentor as proving that opinion true, while seeing examples of excellent mentors as "the exception". (And neutral examples just get mentally filtered out, because they aren't memorable.)

And absolutely none of this changes that the crown has a terrible reputation, deserved or otherwise. Which means the ones who don't want to be associated with that reputation don't wear the crown. Which reduces the number of counter-examples in the wild that no, mentors aren't all jerks... and the cycle continues.