Inviting players to the Novice Network

[Valence]

Just work harder and your NN will be fine. I went on Spriggan, it was a nice NN but very quiet precisely because no mentor actually bothers to do their job, like on most NNs.
Do your jobs, invite players, be friendly and welcoming, and foster a community. You'd be surprised.

[Jeeqbit]

NN 99% of the time is either dead or its few attention seeking mentors jorking each other off so nothing of value was lost and would not be lost if they outright deleted it.

Extremely anecdotal perspective. I've met thousands upon thousands of sprouts who love the Novice Network so much that they do not want to leave, but are forced to when they reach the next expansion. I've answered thousands of sprout and returner questions over the years, who regularly thank me for the help.

That all wouldn't happen without it...

[Purrnauskis]

Extremely anecdotal perspective. I've met thousands upon thousands of sprouts who love the Novice Network so much that they do not want to leave, but are forced to when they reach the next expansion. I've answered thousands of sprout and returner questions over the years, who regularly thank me for the help.

That all wouldn't happen without it...

Yea, they don't wanna leave it because where would they jork each other off then?

[Jeeqbit]

Yea, they don't wanna leave it because where would they jork each other off then?

Just because some humans are like that does not mean all of them are. Dismissing the Novice Network as that but not the entirety of life - real life, the forums, everywhere - as that, is strange.

[VeyaAkemi]

Just work harder and your NN will be fine. I went on Spriggan, it was a nice NN but very quiet precisely because no mentor actually bothers to do their job, like on most NNs.
Do your jobs, invite players, be friendly and welcoming, and foster a community. You'd be surprised.

Unironically the reason I don't frequent NN is cuz of how chat works, we are limited to 4 chat tabs, okay, one is general chat which is usually swarmed by various system messages, one is Battle Log, one is "Event" to focus on NPC dialogue, and one, for me, is "Party", which I dedicate to FC, Alliance and Party chat... and that's it, I can't have a 5th chat tab dedicated to NN, since all my tabs are already taken by things I want to be there, so I just stay out of it entirely.

Ideally I'd have the cap at 8 tabs, I totally could use 8 tabs, 4 is far too few.

[Valence]

Unironically the reason I don't frequent NN is cuz of how chat works, we are limited to 4 chat tabs, okay, one is general chat which is usually swarmed by various system messages, one is Battle Log, one is "Event" to focus on NPC dialogue, and one, for me, is "Party", which I dedicate to FC, Alliance and Party chat... and that's it, I can't have a 5th chat tab dedicated to NN, since all my tabs are already taken by things I want to be there, so I just stay out of it entirely.

Ideally I'd have the cap at 8 tabs, I totally could use 8 tabs, 4 is far too few.

You can rebrand the logs and event tabs to whatever fits your bill and turn them into your favorite channels.
But I do agree that everything when it comes to the UI feels like we're still in the 90s.

[sindriiisgaming]

As part of the duties of accepting mentorship, we are instructed to invite players to the NN using the Player Search function - however there is one colossal flaw that I feel massively degrades the mentorship experience.

• The person you invite can both see who invited them, AND send them a tell.

This has led to me receiving *numerous* unpleasant /tell's over inviting people, nothing outwardly offensive enough to warrant reporting, but enough that inviting people feels like a chore.

If SE could consider removing that information from the invite prompt, it would at least spare me from people on alt characters from being able to verbally harass me for doing as I have been asked.

Other flaws with the system have been discussed at length, such as NN being the default channel for sprouts, not making sprouts aware that the system even exists, not having the ability to remove mentors or sprouts who are persistent in degrading the quality of conversation deliberately etc. however I feel like after 10 years, the system is largely abandoned by the Devs and we are left alone to deal with a poor implementation of what could be a genuinely helpful tool.

Mentorship Is not a job its an achievement. The nn is rarley helpful and most ft / sprouts are educated on it. Do not go around spam inviting randoms to nn. Instead wait and see who asks for an invite. You just put a target on u like this

[Buttobi]

Half the comments on this thread completely missing the point that the game tells you to invite people. No one should feel like a target of harassment for following basic game instructions.

[Purrnauskis]

Just because some humans are like that does not mean all of them are. Dismissing the Novice Network as that but not the entirety of life - real life, the forums, everywhere - as that, is strange.

It is a well known fact people get the easier mentor just so they can go back to NN and jork each other off. They are not there to be helpful nor to be helped.


Even worse in EU because Sqenix never made containment servers for certain nationalities like WoW and any other game does.

[Jeeqbit]

It is a well known fact people get the easier mentor just so they can go back to NN and jork each other off.

It is true that trade mentor is too easy to get and a major problem. However, it's not just people getting it to be a loudmouth - that's a minority of people really.

They are not there to be helpful nor to be helped.

A lot of the ones who get trade mentor are sprouts, and thus there to be helped or pass on what they were answered previously. Many others either get it to use as a "global chat" or because they want to help others.

Unfortunately, I feel that trade mentors are often not experienced enough at this - they google questions or copy+paste them because they don't know the answers themselves from raw experience, and that makes them wrong or inaccurate sometimes.

But really the ones that are really obnoxious or discussing inappropriate stuff are a minority. It's usually just 1 or 2 people that ruin a whole novice network, out of everyone else that is just asking/answering questions.

As was mentioned by other posters here, if you invite lots of sprouts to the Novice Network, it actually ruins the "mentor bubble" so that they get interrupted with sprout questions constantly, and this helps fix the problem of it being just a "mentor chat" in many cases due to the amount of sprouts intervening.

Even worse in EU because Sqenix never made containment servers for certain nationalities like WoW and any other game does.

It is true that certain worlds or regions, are worse than others.

My experience in the NA region, participating in almost every NA world's network at some point, is that even when there is some obnoxious chatter, it's temporary or seasonal and the offending player will eventually unsubscribe, logout or get bored, returning the network to normal.

A network synonymous with trolling can be a completely lovely place the very next month, or the next year. It's just a thing that shifts with player activity and patches.

When the game went viral among streamers, it got especially bad during raid patches because some worlds had trade mentors using twitch language in there endlessly, but it only lasted a few weeks until their subscription ended.