The problem with the mentor system

[Anarnee]

Yes, it is. On several servers, no matter if it's high-pop or low-pop, the novice network is mostly useless.

I think this is a cultural difference. I had the experience that the NN is awful on EU and the player base there is super negative about it, while on NA, the NN is full of people willing to help and yes we meme about it but people are not as hostile about it as they are on EU. Every server has their own community, and I've seen some drama in the NN but I certainly see lots of people helping others in the NN all the time on NA and a lot of mentors take their role seriously. (People taking time to kick bots from the NN, and don't hesitate to kick people trolling new users, etc.)

Of course I'm sure that not all of EU is like that, and my experience on EU servers if far more limited, I only have three characters in EU, where as I have a lot of characters on different NA servers.

The system is not perfect, but saying that it's completely negative is ignorant.

I do want the crown to be changed though. I always liked the idea that the mentor symbol should be a watering can, so we can water the sprouts.

[RajNish]

But anyone claiming a majority of mentors are bad, or claiming that the mentor system is full of toxicity should not be taken seriously. And that's a good chunk of people complaining.

Sorry, but you cannot tell people what to take seriously. Your experience or their own. We do not want to turn a blind eye to the problem, that's all.

Not saying the game wouldn't benefit from a change. Just saying people need to stop crying wolf.

These topics arise regularly, year after year, for several years. This means that there is a problem. The fact that the developers changed the number of recommendations means that they have already tried to solve this problem. We are trying to help them with this, at the beginning of the thread, adequate measures were proposed by OP and other people. You have discounted all of this, calling it a wolf’s cry.

[Snowdove]

As I said before, I like the mentor system and never had a problem with it.


The crown is very helpful for new players to identify someone who is willing to help...as long as that person who has the crown is willing to help and not as a status symbol. I have no idea how to "fix" the system so we can make that distinction.


But I will say something anecdotally:


Look at my join date. Now look at my character level. That is not because of a new job. It's been two years and I haven't made it any higher.


FF14 is intimidating to new players, and the lack of a world chat makes the game feel very isolated. It doesn't have a good recruitment system for Free Companies, so finding one is hard for some people who are shy to talk to people out of the blue.


So I play for a bit and then disappear because of that in game loneliness.


Novice Network is really helpful. But it wasn't until last month that I got into it as a "returneee" because before no mentor invited me and I was too shy to ask one to invite.


I shudder to think what I will do when NN isn't available to me. Probably disappear for a while again.

[Thamorian]

Sorry, but you cannot tell people what to take seriously. Your experience or their own. We do not want to turn a blind eye to the problem, that's all.



These topics arise regularly, year after year, for several years. This means that there is a problem. The fact that the developers changed the number of recommendations means that they have already tried to solve this problem. We are trying to help them with this, at the beginning of the thread, adequate measures were proposed by OP and other people. You have discounted all of this, calling it a wolf’s cry.

These threads keep popping up because FF14 is a very popular MMO with a very large player base. This coupled with the fact that people in general are far more likely to complain about something versus giving a compliment. This is just human nature. So yeah it's more likely we see threads from a few individuals complaining about mentors, but we don't hear about people peoples positive experience with mentors being posted as often even though people do have positive experiences more often, whether they realize it or not. Probably easier to recognize the bad over the good. That and there's no curated barrier from becoming a mentor. Someone who just plays the game regularly, especially if they primarily player as a healer or a tank who also leveled one of each role for something other than mentor purposes such as having the ability to fill any role in a raid or so they could get role quests done, or maybe so they could the all jobs 80 mount, or maybe they just like seeing all their jobs at 80. Anyone can become a mentor given enough time, you don't have to work for it specifically and most mentors didn't work for mentor specifically, they just played the game regularly and happened to meet the requirements. The small percentage who worked specially for mentor is not the normal, but even from this small percentage of people, I would think most came out to be ok mentors, as in not bad/rude mentors. There are more people who meet the requirements for mentor than you probably realize, and many of them choose to not wear the crown.

Also, something extra I keep having to comment on, why is it when we get these types of threads and OP runs into a couple bad mentors, that somehow those one or two experiences represents all mentors and mentors are treated as a monolith (even though we can be sure they ran into mentors they had no issue with and took no notice of, because nothing negative happened) but anyone not a mentor gets a free pass for their attitude relatively? If I run into a toxic samurai, can I treat everyone who mains Samurai as a toxic monolith? Same thing, no one is curating who can and cannot become a samurai. What if I ran into a toxic raider? Are all raiders toxic now? What about high ranking feast pvpers? Again, no one is curating these groups, it's only their own work. You may think it sounds silly and stupid but it's the exact same principle being applied.

[Sathona]

The problem with the mentor system is that it exists.

I get why they made it, but it just doesnt work.

[SturmChurro]

If the symbol was a big steaming pile of horse manure, with flies and stink lines added for extra authenticity, then it would change things.

I would literally go get my mentor status back right now if the mentor symbol was a poop symbol.

The problem with the mentor system is that it exists.

I get why they made it, but it just doesnt work.

Finally a voice of reason! So true!

[EaMett]

Sorry, but you cannot tell people what to take seriously.

I can suggest people listen to those with more objective opinions rather than those that over-inflate issues and appeal to hasty generalization and bandwagon fallacies. And I do.

Also, SE haven't tried to fix anything. First off, it's rare to not have the commendations required by the time you have the dungeon requirement, that change was pretty useless by itself. Furthermore, with this expansion we will have roughly triple (at least double) the amount of content than we had back when the old system was set up. At best the change was just readjusting to make sure mentors had an equivalent ratio of experience-to-content than before.

These topics arise regularly, year after year, for several years. This means that there is a problem

It means there's a problem in each individual case. At best you can argument that issues arise at a certain frequency which is consistent with the reality that some mentors aren't fit, and that, absolutely nobody is contesting. It, however, doesn't mean there's a systemic problem as people keep claiming.

And at no point have I discounted that the system could be improved.

[Sathona]

I would literally go get my mentor status back right now if the mentor symbol was a poop symbol.

Finally a voice of reason! So true!

I mean i play like a year but from discussions ive seen from the past, ingame , discord servers, forum and reddit discussions it just seems like no matter what they do it will be always problematic.

I'd rather they invested on something else and just remove this mentor system entirely, just create some achievements and once certain ppl achieved them they can help others in Novice Networks etc, no crowns no statuses.

[MomomiMomi]

I mean i play like a year but from discussions ive seen from the past, ingame , discord servers, forum and reddit discussions it just seems like no matter what they do it will be always problematic.

I'd rather they invested on something else and just remove this mentor system entirely, just create some achievements and once certain ppl achieved them they can help others in Novice Networks etc, no crowns no statuses.

And I've been playing since before the system was introduced and have seen a lot of positive come from it. Once in a while you get bad mentors, sure. But it isn't as frequent as people make it sound.

[HeulGDarian]

Ho boy here we go again.

Mentors Who are currently answering on this forum. Do not fall for this trap as you can see no matter how much you explain how many counter examples you bring and how much you deny their sayings they Will not trust you nor change their opinion. These threads are made for one and only reason to provoke you, to test your patience and to force you to act in the way they describe Just to say that they are correct. When someone can Come here and say fck all Mentors without being judged about it, when they ask that you bring proof when their argument has 0 back up behind it and not to mention when a well known troll tries to fan the flames even more, these all are enough circumstancial evidence on the foul play this handfull of peeps are playing here.