Novice network needs to be removed.

[Jeeqbit]

I always find it awkward how terrible the NNs on other servers seemingly are when Cactuar's is consistently chill and helpful.

It's just certain worlds in my experience and in some cases it's just being judged by a single moment that happened when the rest of the time it's great and helping people all the time.

Sometimes I feel like the answers some people give aren't really gauging what sort of need the person has. Their explanations tend to be either super vague or overly detailed (with a focus on endgame rotations for jobs), which might trip up someone who's brand new to the game.

This is an issue sometimes. They want to quote The Balance's level 90 rotation advice to a sprout that wants help with their Sastasha rotation, or they expect the sprout to understand acronyms that we are used to.

I've seen this sort of exchange on other Worlds too. It especially often happens when a more casual Mentor is trying to give a sprout an understanding of their job to a level that's reasonable (the kind that is perfectly adequate for leveling and for casual endgame content) but which may not necessarily be fully polished from a Savage or Ultimate standpoint.

Quite frequently, a more hardcore Mentor will then pipe in and accuse the milder teacher of "misinformation" which tends to degenerate into an argument, which does not in any way benefit the sprout.

This is especially annoying. It's not really a mentor issue as much as it is a people issue. A lot of people are just inconsiderate in my experience.

I find it to be more common from crafter/gatherer mentors because they lookup information on the internet or The Balance in order to get their answers to make up for their lack of experience, which Battle mentors are more likely to have because they have achievements that usually come from battling at different levels.

[Leifei]

Objectively, it has to be said that the whole social aspect of FFXIV is incredibly dysfunctional, much as I've met some awesome folks in my time.

There's no ingame global chat channel, the closest you get to one is NN. If it didn't exist, where (outside social media, we'll get to that later) would returning players, newbies, or people whose previous coteries disbanded make new connections? There's not a lot of random interactions (most chats I see in cities seem to be between groups of existing friends), and that's assuming people are really paying that much attention to the chat while in the city. There's no trade chat as there is in WoW (not that trade chat was always that much better, most of the time it was basically like Fox News if Fox News had RMT and content carry ads instead of regular commercials, but you did get the occasional interesting exchange).

Linkshells seem to be chronically completely dead apart from Hunt ones, even hellos go unanswered even if several people are online. Fellowships are mostly just a bulletin board of Discord links and seem to be little used otherwise.

FCs do not serve as the social hubs that one expects of guilds in most games (it not helping at all that the housing system severely impairs FC growth).

You're basically forced off to social media, and even there things are heavily twisted (largely because of social media platforms' policies, which threaten to severely impair Internet socialization on the whole going forward, really. Feels like sadly, we nerds had our 30 ish years of hope, the popular kids have taken over the digital world too now and our future is solitude and the dark insides of lockers. LOL).

It's really a matter of perspective. Making friends is a learned skill just like how we learned how walk when we were all babies. That said, FFXIV has all of the tools needed for people to build good, close knits communities. To simplify it, it's about reaching out to people as you play. Finding people that are into the same content as yourself within the game(savage, extremes, ultimate, chocobo racing, triple triad, hunts, etc). People that like the same things, tend to like each other.

[Feron]

I agree that the channel doesn't really have the level of moderation it needs but I don't think there's a great solution for it because it is a valuable resource for sprouts.

There are way too many mentor players who treat it like their personal instagram account; who are obsessed with creating a clique environment and digging for attention and adoration, spamming obnoxious stupid in-jokes. I'd say its about 75% inane BS and about 25% actually helping sprouts or answering questions. Maybe more like 85/15. IDK.

The kick function does get abused and there's no real recourse for it. Basically, it seems like if you don't like this wild west atmosphere, don't go there. I try to lurk there just to actually help the people who do ask questions, though finding those questions in a page of babbling is sometimes difficult.

[Hoodcat]

i made a alt last month to lvl with a friend, joined the NN and all it was, was the same 5 people talking over and over booting each other giving generic advice that they didnt even understand.

Gang mentality is real, just alot of people in there 24/7 from loneliness I think, i tried to get in there once on my main, it took forever due to the 100 char limit, yet those guys always seem to make it in. imagine the hours of constantly q'n up for that channel hah.

Seriously thou, the quality of knowledge in there is lol at best, and its like the same 6 people constantly talking ganging up on people they dont agree with and why do they have boot rights?

[ICountFrom0]

I want folks to notice that there's multiple discussions going past eachother in here.

Even when somebody makes a post "novice network of Levithan" you get people from every server chiming in about it.

So, it might be bad there, because folks aint reporting the problem makers.... but it might also be perfectly fine elsewhere.

[NegativeS]

I joined the Novice Network as part of the Returner's Bounty (or whatever it's called) a few days ago, and found that it is almost exclusively ERP, at least on my instance of it.

[Renalt]

If you don't like how the NN is going...you can actually remove it yourself.

https://www.fandomspot.com/ffxiv-lea...ovice-network/

[AngelCheese77]

I joined the Novice Network as part of the Returner's Bounty (or whatever it's called) a few days ago, and found that it is almost exclusively ERP, at least on my instance of it.

Uhm what? ERP in NN? I call bs on that because that is reportable and what Yoshi P does not want

[Rinzen_Ashe]

I moved from one Data Center where it was just elite chat on how wrong everyone was. I thought my new server would be better and it was for like one week. Mentors were getting praised for kicking bots, spammers, vulgarity, and trolling. Everyone seemed to be helping the new people and everyone acted really happy until another flux of players created more alts for the new data center. All of a sudden after just 2 weeks, if mentors try to kick anyone, the whole chat is in an uproar calling them power-hungry. If we had GM's doing this, they might actually mind their manners a bit more but who knows? If mentors were truly power-hungry in the NN, we'd have a lot more accounts just reported and we wouldn't even have time to play.

Mentor Generational differences: First-generation mentors are hit or miss, second and third really try to stick to the rules and help, and forth-fifth gen mentors want to do nothing, and they want other mentors to chill and do nothing. We have fundamental problems with how we all handle the NN.

This is a game with rules. Yes, there is a filter but cursing in any public chat (including NN) is grounds for suspension. RP is fun to talk about but adds, extensive talking about, or invites are punishable. Square wants to keep the rating at 13+ and having the responsibility of being a mentor just means that it is ok to take these spaces more seriously than what people want as a chat box because that is not what it is or is supposed to be. If you got fired at work for breaking rules you wouldn't scream that it's injustice. I def don't want to log in and come into a chat where mentors and sprouts are talking about which characters are kids and which ones they would like to diddle. SFW is exactly what is expected.

Change things or get rid of it!!! Be Better!!!

[NekoMataMata]

Dynamis's NN has actually been really nice. We've had to remove a handful of bots that spammed the chat occasionally(we may have a rogue mentor since some of those bots were removed multiple times), but it's been pleasant.

It's still a normal chat though, rather than a place to ask for help.