Do Mentors still have a negative stigma?

[Asari5]

There's feedback and there's being a jerk. A lot of Mentors I've met seemed to think it's OK to be really aggressive in their "feedback" and they bullied new players into leaving the instance. Apparently a lot of people can't tell when they're overdoing it. Every time someone here on the forums complains how "nobody wants feedback anymore", it turns out they were just being nasty and got called out for it.

no no no, i'm talking about cases where you say a single sentence in neutral words about basic stuff and people jump at you.

[Sigiria]

Never seen that happen. Sometimes mentors don't know the fight, so I or another mentor just teach it and we clear. After all, mentors usually know how fights in this game work so you can just say "it's like this mech in this recent fight" and they get it instantly.

Yeah, no that happen. Before the previous expansion I was doing a mentor roulette out of boredom and got Ramuh EX as a tank. Last time I did that fight was still during ARR and I guess the strat changed since then. I explained that the strat I know is MT take three orbs for the thunder buff, take the first TB then OT take three orbs and swap before the second TB.
Only to be met with "OMG you have no idea what the strat is, that could never work" and when I asked for the strat they wanted to use I just got met with a "I shouldn't have to explain the strat to a mentor" and the party promptly disbanded.
Which left me wondering what the hell just happened.

That said, while I only have the mentor crown the few times I do the roulette, most of the times it just goes the same way any other run goes. There isn't much hostility, or if there is people don't vocalize it at least.

[Mouthbone]

There's feedback and there's being a jerk. A lot of Mentors I've met seemed to think it's OK to be really aggressive in their "feedback" and they bullied new players into leaving the instance. Apparently a lot of people can't tell when they're overdoing it. Every time someone here on the forums complains how "nobody wants feedback anymore", it turns out they were just being nasty and got called out for it.

There are rude people, but there also are people that will jump on you if you dare to offer any suggestions to the sprout
Just to give you an example of the situations I've been in:

Me Healer: Hey, you should try doing multiple pulls, I've got you covered
DPS: How dare you suggest to the sprout to go out of their comfort zone? Please don't listen to this weirdo, it's totally okay to do single pulls in a Stormblood dungeon
Sprout Tank:

Situations like these just make me want to never say anything in light party duties
The funny thing is, this only happens in 4 man duties because if someone tried to "You don't pay their sub" in a 8 man they would be laughed out of the room
XIV community has a really weird obsessions with sprouts as if they are little children that need to be babied or can't stand up for themselves

[1313]

You absolutely do not need a crown to be a mentor. I mean, officially, yeah you do, but you can always help ppl and teach them. tbh most mentors are sick of teaching people the same crap over and over again by the time they earn their crown. Usually a trade mentor is just a sprout who didn't wanna leave novice network so there could be some dumpster fires surrounding them. Usually if you meet someone with a full crown, pve crown, or pvp crown, they know their stuff. people usully dont respond well when being educated nowadays, cuz being offended and toxic is a gods damned trend now for some stupid reason. so i dont offer advice unless theyre really screwing up and struggling, or if they ask for it. usually im flat out ignored when i give little tips in dungeons, or when i ask the heaer if they want me to do big pulls or kinda chill. ppl getting introverted out here because the tos is weaponized by the same people who cause the problems in a lot of cases.

tldr dont worry about crowns and labels and stuff, if you wanna help/teach people. just do it.

[Mecia]

Burger King crown, no exceptions :^)

[BokoToloko]

It's funny to me how no one has adressed the elephant in the room that are the mentors who only get the crown because they were farming commendations on guildhest and, when faced with the slightest difficulty curve, they jump out or they reveal the incompetence befitting of someone who, rather than acquire mentorship through experience, they acquire through cheap methods.

But, all in all, just like with normal people, there are good mentors and bad mentors. Just like there are good newbies (who actually take feedback and learn) and bad newbies (like healers who start throwing a tantrum at the mere mention of doing DPS during downtime).

[Jeeqbit]

Before the previous expansion I was doing a mentor roulette out of boredom and got Ramuh EX as a tank.

I've cleared that every time I've got it except once, and on that time one of the sprout tanks just wasn't really a raider while the other sprout tank totally was. It was a bit unfortunate for the other sprouts, who gave it their all.

I explained that the strat I know is MT take three orbs for the thunder buff, take the first TB then OT take three orbs and swap before the second TB.

I think the issue with that usually is that it takes a while for 3 orbs to actually appear. But yeah, tanks have to figure that out to progress and at least get to second phase. If you can get to second phase, then Echo stacks and resurrections can make it a clear eventually.

It's funny to me how no one has adressed the elephant in the room that are the mentors who only get the crown because they were farming commendations on guildhest

That's extraordinarily rare. Trade mentors are often just sprouts so you can't really tell with them, but Battle mentors usually have years of experience playing the game or at least one year playing it non-stop and I find I can normally trust them to know things in duties in a mechanical sense. Like I can just do the mechanic and trust they will do it with me without worrying.

[Valence]

I read a thread here from a couple years ago that people kind of hate mentors and if they have the mentor crown, it's an automatic bad sign to most people.

Does that stigma still exist? Do most mentors hide their mentor status most of time? Would be nice to be able to help new players, but not sure the mentor system really makes that possible.

The stigma exists mostly on social media in my experience. It's mostly made of fairy tales and unicorns, which a lot of tropes are made of tbh. I haven't seen much of it in the actual game after 7 years on several NNs, but I've heard some NNs are really crummy so... The mentor roulette is more toxic sometimes I believe, but I don't use it. It's a different type of mentorship than NN.

What matter is that you want to help new players, or others in general. You don't need much more than this. All mentors have their own specific fields where they're competent and knowledgeable, and that's where you can help. And even at a baseline level, the bulk of the help new players usually require is when they get their first mount and how they do get it, or just finding nice players to help them through dungeons, crafts and whatnot. If you're ready to just help them run through things, you're already doing the brunt of the work in any NN. The other big part is to actually invite new players (and I mean, in masses, not speaking about the cute sprout you met somewhere, you need to invite a lot and make people feel welcome, which in my opinion is the secret sauce of keeping NNs relatively healthy and wholesome through the addition of constant new blood).

But really, there is no ingame metric of what makes a good mentor or a bad mentor. The only metric is you being a decent human being and willing to help them sprouts.

[Zadood]

But really, there is no ingame metric of what makes a good mentor or a bad mentor. The only metric is you being a decent human being and willing to help them sprouts.

It's kinda sad that the concept of "Let your deeds and actions speak about your character" is getting more and more uncommon, and now peoples are looking at numbers to gauge whether a person is kind or not.

While it's understandable that those number is a simple and easy way to vouch for a person's character, but I think we shouldn't be too reliant on it to judge a person.

[Valence]

It's kinda sad that the concept of "Let your deeds and actions speak about your character" is getting more and more uncommon, and now peoples are looking at numbers to gauge whether a person is kind or not.

While it's understandable that those number is a simple and easy way to vouch for a person's character, but I think we shouldn't be too reliant on it to judge a person.

To further expand upon it, and while I am a high end raider/pvper and probably fall into the semi-hardcore or hardcore categories of players, and I have academical knowledge of a lot of systems, tiering, rotational depth, savage/ultimate experience and whatnot, the times all of this actually come into question in NN is almost nill (but not completely). The actual mentors doing most of the heavy lifting are the ones actually answering kindly to sprout questions, and the ones queuing up with them for their sprout dungeons or roulettes, which I also try doing. And the too few ones actually mass inviting sprouts. It's important honest work.

The kind of very specific knowledge I have though, or the same way that I know next to nothing when it comes to gold saucer things, well another mentor will be a gold saucer expert and will be able to answer to new players when they have questions on gold saucer stuff. So even if you don't know everything, one, you don't even need to, and two, someone else who has the expertise in it will have the answer anyway. And the ones that have very little academical knowledge can still help sprouts more directly in their dungeons or quests and whatnot. There is no shortage of help one can provide no matter one's own specialization in the game.