Remove the Mentor crown

[Krotoan]

Yes, because those rare experiences can ruin a person's week or month. SE knows that a single incident can cause someone to quit the game or avoid doing duties altogether. If the mentor crown prevents all of these experiences, then why wouldn't I wear it?

Personally out of the times I've had someone harangue me for no reason in a dungeon run.. a few of them were because I was wearing the crown and I didn't immediately offer help when something went wrong and others used that crown as some sort of giveaway that I thought I was better than them. I still wear it.. cause whatever I still want people to ask me for help.. but it doesn't seem to ward off BM.

[LeonKeyh]

Time played does usually translate into knowledge and experience and this is what you are meant to be sharing as a mentor. Having knowledge and experience doesn't necessarily mean that you perform well enough to do extreme and savage, although I would say the vast majority of the mentors I have talked to over the last few years have done that content.

The nature of questions in the novice network is usually as simple as "where do I spend tomestones?", "how do I upgrade my gear?", "when do I get a mount?" or "why do I only get 300 exp from this quest?"

These type of questions do not require someone to perform really well or to be able to defeat a striking dummy at Stone, Sky, Sea. By the time they would have questions that require you to be this skilled, they won't be in the novice network anymore because their sprout expired.

It seems very common that mentors talk about raids and optimization so I feel that enough of them could meet these requirements. I wouldn't be opposed to tighter requirements but the battle requirements are working a lot better than the crafter/gatherer ones.

Sure, the nature of the questions in novice network can be answered by plenty of people with fewer than 1500 (?) commendations. I feel like we really need to separate Novice Network from the Mentor program because you're absolutely right. Novice Network is typically simple questions that really most people that have been playing for a decent amount of time are capable of answering. So, why limit the number of people that can answer those questions? Why not just make server-wide chat channels for stuff like that? Or, I'm sure that if those people went to a town with a bunch of people and shouted their question that they would get their answer. I imagine that most people are like me and are in NN just to actually have some interaction with people. More chat channels like that would go a lllooooonnnngggggg way and possibly even get rid of the need for NN if it's done right; For example, job-based chat channels, DoH/DoL chat channels.

The thing is, Novice Network isn't the only thing; The Mentor Roulette is there too. The Mentor Roulette is there to match mentors with players so that those mentors can help those players and, sure, there are some slightly "tougher" requirements to unlock mentor roulette but the expectation is for those people to be able to give out encounter/job knowledge.

Regardless though, I'm not saying that this necessarily _needs_ to change. I feel like the complaints about the system are widely overblown and it's "fine" the way it is. But, if we're going to sit down and talk about improvements, I absolutely think that things can be improved.

[Thi]

Just change the crown icon to a watering can or if feeling cheeky, a poop emoji (fertilizer) since mentors are supposed to help sprouts grow. No more BK Crown status symbol.

[lennit]

you can turn it off . by social on the menu bar then click player search , go to party member at the top . right click your name click edit search info . then click mentor and change it to online

[Jeeqbit]

Sure, the nature of the questions in novice network can be answered by plenty of people with fewer than 1500 (?) commendations.

I've seen evidence that these questions shouldn't be answered by people with fewer than 1500 commendations. Trade mentors do not usually have 1500 commendations and in my experience, a lot of them don't know the answers to a lot of battle questions themselves so what they do is quote The Balance or what they googled. This results in them giving level 90 optimized rotation advice to a sprout wanting help with their Sastasha rotation. Someone with a large amount of experience of the game does not need to consult The Balance and Google for their answers all the time.

I imagine that most people are like me and are in NN just to actually have some interaction with people. More chat channels like that would go a lllooooonnnngggggg way and possibly even get rid of the need for NN if it's done right; For example, job-based chat channels, DoH/DoL chat channels.

I agree that it's a great channel for being social. I don't personally want a global chat because that would be chaotic, but ones with the a limited capacity like the novice network and a specific theme like job-based chats would be good. Linkshells only have 1/5th the capacity and it counts people who are offline.

[LeonKeyh]

I've seen evidence that these questions shouldn't be answered by people with fewer than 1500 commendations. Trade mentors do not usually have 1500 commendations and in my experience, a lot of them don't know the answers to a lot of battle questions themselves so what they do is quote The Balance or what they googled. This results in them giving level 90 optimized rotation advice to a sprout wanting help with their Sastasha rotation. Someone with a large amount of experience of the game does not need to consult The Balance and Google for their answers all the time.

But, I don't think that 1500 commendations makes that differentiation. I'm a trade mentor and am always answering battle questions because... well... I have played all of the jobs at a decent level and can answer questions about it because I enjoy learning things. It's usually the battle mentors I see that are talking about level 90 rotations, lining up burst windows, using pots/materia, and ability drift to a sprout and I just roll my eyes. Bringing up trade mentors is good though, because most of them know nothing about the crafting system and just use macros for everything. Even people with a large amount of experience in the game still has gaps in their knowledge and even someone who has only been playing for a year can have a lot of knowledge about a particular subject.

I agree that it's a great channel for being social. I don't personally want a global chat because that would be chaotic, but ones with the a limited capacity like the novice network and a specific theme like job-based chats would be good. Linkshells only have 1/5th the capacity and it counts people who are offline.

Having the option would be nice though; Sure, a ton of people would likely not join, but it'd be nice to have a group of similar people to talk to. I imagine it wouldn't be too different from NN.

[Jeeqbit]

But, I don't think that 1500 commendations makes that differentiation. I'm a trade mentor and am always answering battle questions because... well... I have played all of the jobs at a decent level and can answer questions about it because I enjoy learning things. It's usually the battle mentors I see that are talking about level 90 rotations, lining up burst windows, using pots/materia, and ability drift to a sprout and I just roll my eyes. Bringing up trade mentors is good though, because most of them know nothing about the crafting system and just use macros for everything. Even people with a large amount of experience in the game still has gaps in their knowledge and even someone who has only been playing for a year can have a lot of knowledge about a particular subject.

Battle mentors do discuss these things and some of them are inconsiderate enough to try and discuss it with sprouts as if they are level 90, but it's less likely they will if they actually do dungeon content a lot and 1,500 commendations, 1,000 dungeons and multiple jobs are usually an indication they have.

The problem with trade mentor is that a lot of raid-loggers get it because they don't play enough to actually get commendations or level other jobs. There have been a few servers on different data centers that I've visited right after major patches that are full raid-log trade mentors and it was a hopelessly poor environment for sprouts. Their novice networks got a lot better after those patches died down though.

[Veranolth]

I got my trade mentor because I was crafting during the last season of Ishgard Restoration, and placed number 12 as Carpenter (although I didn't bother using macros I was just scraping by in gil and gear). I've had CRP as my only crafting job with my gatherers at 80 at the time, and I wasn't really that much into crafting/gathering. Trade mentor is just that easy to get.

[Midareyukki]

One of the reasons I wear it is to prevent abuse in dungeons. There are players that prey on sprouts or non-mentors and are rude to them. When I've been on alt characters I have had people attack me for unreasonable things and I would never get such abuse with the mentor icon. When they see that icon they know I have more experience than them so they don't bother saying anything.

Most of the time when I report people it is on my characters that don't have the mentor icon and it's not necessarily mentors being rude, but people without the mentor icon too.

This must be a different thing in other datacenters or regions. In Light the prevalent mindset is to point out Mentor mistakes. Sprouts just generally take crap regardless of whether there's a mentor around or not. But that goes for everyone, really. I noticed you said you had to report people in the EU DC's. Honestly,it really is abuse in general, Mentors will also get it. Like I said, when people see a crown, they mostly just fixate on it and say "not only are you bad, you're a mentor!" when the "mistakes" are just minor stuff.

I wish having my mentor crown on actually helped stave off some situations, but it sure didn't do anything. If anything it just made me uncomfortable xD most comments I've gotten about having a full-mentor crown were that I was just flaunting it around. So I never had it on. And those who still keep theirs rarely ever are useful. Even in the NN itself, only a handful of mentors actually bothered to be helpful. They didn't use their buffs on sprouts, they rarely went with sprouts to help them do dungeons, feedback of their class was just either given in a vaccum or had over-the-top explanations for endgame.

[MellowMink]

I think the mentor crown should be replaced with a watering can; it would thematically fit better since you’re helping sprouts grow in experience.