Mentors Guidlines

[Vladtheimpailor]

I was hoping not to have to do this, but it seems to me that someone should set some clear guidelines as to what is and what is not acceptable in the Novice Network chat.

-Do not give out incorrect information. To often I've seen new players ask some pretty common questions. However, the answers they are given are, for the most part, inaccurate. If you don't know the answer, research it, don't just tell these new players whatever sounds good to you. For example, telling someone who had a question about materia that it isn't necessary to slot their gear with it isn't accurate at all. There are guides out there that can explain it. Point them in that direction.

-Keep your gripes about how other players are playing their characters to yourself. You are NOT doing anyone any favors by complaining about it. Nor is it your place to tell other players how they should be playing their classes. Everyone has their own play style, respect that. Giving an answer like, "Nothing wrong with encouraging good gaming habits." is just the wrong answer. You play how you want to, let others do the same.

-Keep sensitive or insulting conversations or statements off the channel. There's no need for it. New players join the Novice Network to ask for guidance, not to watch you act a fool in chat. You want to do that, then you and your friends needs to get yourselves a linkshell and keep those discussions there.

-Stop using the Novice Network channel as your personal chatting area. They gave us linkshells for a reason. It's to easy for a new player's question to get lost in the chatter when that's all that's going on.

-If you are a mentor, familiarize yourself with your specialty. This may fall in line with the first note about bad info, but it deserves its' own bullet. To often I have seen mentors that, instead of researching the answer themselves, ask for answers to questions they should already know by now.

-You are not an all powerful player. Nor do you know everything there is to know about the game. I mentioned it before, but I will say it again. Being a mentor does NOT give you the absolute right to tell other players what skills they should be using during a raid, or how they should be playing their characters. That is you're own personal preference, keep that to yourselves.

-Direct players to useful forum posts or websites regarding their questions. Trying to remember which quest starts when and what always leads to bad info. Offer them the title of a video on youtube instead of posting an entire url. It'll be less messy that way. As an example, I have often directed players to a database website for fishing in FFXIV. It's what I have used all along, and it has helped many others find exactly what they need and when.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. At a glance, the mentor system is a terrible one. So let's fix it together and make it the useful tool for information that it deserves to be.

[Jeeqbit]

Mentors, in my experience, don't tend to give out incorrect information. I see some people complain that mentors give incorrect information but that is not what I see in practice.

While they should explain how materia works and what it is for, it's also correct to append to it that materia doesn't matter until level 80. It doesn't. Most of the time, they will gear sync in dungeons, which removes the effect of materia and they are upgrading gear so often that it's just not worth confusing a brand new player with. Telling an already-confused new player to worry about materia and stat priorities when it literally doesn't matter in a dungeon is not worth it. Dungeon bosses already melt without this materia and very few things have an enrage in story content.

-Keep your gripes about how other players are playing their characters to yourself.

I agree with this point. Everyone plays for different reasons - such as roleplaying, to chill with friends doing dungeons, to live in a fantasy house, to own a virtual garden. It's fair to identify the sprouts that express interest in "being good" and helping them to be that by pointing them to optimization guides - but if they don't seem to care about challenging content or being good then it's not worth forcing it when the majority of the playerbase doesn't even do savage.

-Keep sensitive or insulting conversations or statements off the channel.

This is something done by sprouts just as much. Some people just don't know how to conduct themselves properly in general and that's a general thing in my experience. If you see it from mentors more often it's probably because sprouts are only there for a limited time compared to mentors, so the minority of sprouts who do it quickly grow out of the channel unlike the minority of mentors.

-Stop using the Novice Network channel as your personal chatting area. They gave us linkshells for a reason. It's to easy for a new player's question to get lost in the chatter when that's all that's going on.

I agree with this to a degree. I treat these conversations as questions themselves and try to answer everything. Sometimes the conversations are about the game and still educational, prompting questions from sprouts, but sometimes I agree they are not, such as if they discuss a film release.

Sometimes sprout questions actually get lost amongst lots of other questions, so unfortunately that is always a possibility even when it's not being used as a personal chatting area.

-If you are a mentor, familiarize yourself with your specialty.

It's acceptable for a mentor to ask a question they genuinely don't know, even if it falls within their own category (trade, battle or pvp), but I agree that if they ask a lot of questions about their own specialty then it's going to reflect badly on themselves and at that point they should reconsider being a mentor.

Being a mentor does NOT give you the absolute right to tell other players what skills they should be using during a raid, or how they should be playing their characters. That is you're own personal preference, keep that to yourselves.

I would argue that, usually, no sprouts are up to the current savage raids unless they used a story skip. I would argue that returners are not usually in the Novice Network long enough to be caught up to the current savage raids. For that reason, savage raid advice is almost never relevant in the Novice Network.

I do see some mentors provide savage raid advice to sprouts - going as far as to provide optimization links to poor level 16 sprouts who haven't even done a guildhest or a dungeon yet, nor unlocked more than 2 of their attacks. Overwhelming them like this is inconsiderate but I've seen it happen from trade mentors in particular.