I purposely avoided the newbie system thing when i got spammed to join one, i just wanted to play and was confident enough in my own ability to adapt and learn. It worked fine. I don't care if a person is a mentor or is not, i care if they're a dick or not.
thus was the nature of nerd sub-cultures for a long time. you had to put in the effort to learn on your own before 'mentors' would even acknowledge/help you that's organic gatekeeping, and i for one sorely miss it
@@calmexit6483 He is the main character from ff9, a thief that has an heart of gold and falls in love with a princess, also is the only person in his world that has an monkey tail.
I left the Novice Network day 1 due to spam. I'd rather simply google something than have my chat bar fly by as people rant about politics or their favorite anime. Afterwards I would frequently get re-invited to it when entering major cities, which only further cemented my disdain for it. I found out much later (after recommending your videos to a friend) that I'm on the same server as you, and that you personally helped my friend learn how to tank via NN. I'm glad people like you are trying to improve it, I probably would have stuck around if discussion was limited to game-related questions and answers.
Game related discussion only gets boring pretty fast. We don't all live in a FF14 bubble. We try to avoid politics but talking about anime and other games? That's cool. Can learn about interesting stuff. And most of us try to get any questions answered when they crop up.
@@WeskAlber I wrote this comment before you got to the community discussion in the video. I personally didn't have trouble making friends in the game, so it wasn't something I was looking for in the NN, but I could see how it would be a valuable outlet for others. As a complete beginner I didn't know how to customize my chat bar, if I had known that I could filter it into a separate tab I wouldn't have minded the discussions at all, (and probably would have joined them too). I guess my feedback would be, create a separate tab for it by default so as to not overwhelm new players.
I endured a little longer, but left, when the NN resorted to discuss if Bahamut (or whatever Primae it was) would be a fuckable Antropomorphic. The Off-Topic Spam was kinda out of hand sometimes and i reguarly didn't get answers or witnessed others not getting answers. When i could help, i did, but given i left the NN on day 5, i was of not much help most of the times.
@@ny4nk0 100% agree with this. One thing sprouts really don't know is how to customize the chat. Back in the day I too left NN due to chat clutter, when I could have just put it in a separate tab.
Though we've never met across the NN, I want you to know here that you are the Mentor who has helped me enjoy my 14 experience more than any other. Your many guides allowed me to move from completely overwhelmed into what may be my favorite game.
As good as this comment is, I don't even play the game. I don't have a computer but am saving up for one to eventually play 14. That being said, in preparation for playing, I've watched all the class guides videos wesk has put out and some others, like this one, was waiting for this one to pop actually. So yeah, never met him, but Wesk is my mentor too. Haha 😀
Actually one of my biggest gripes is that the system kicks you when you no longer have a sprout icon. I mean, what's even up with that? People are sprouts waaay into endgame because of the lack of in game resources, and having players be unable to join just because they reached an arbitrary time estimate? Yikes
@@dantelundell9386 ikr? You log in one day, alone in the desert wondering what happened lol. They should just let people stay until they find they want to go.
Hey Wesk, hearing about this subject from the other perspective was a real eye opener. I have not been wronged by the system myself, as I just chose to carve my own path when I started playing the game, but a couple years into the game now at least felt a bit skeptical about the system and how well it was actually working. And even though I don't have any particular strong opinion on mentors themselves as to me they are just players as well, it's very clear to see you're very passionate about helping people and helping this game in general. Your content stands to prove this as well. As much as you say yourself that you're some nobody, people like me who have watched all of your guides getting into the game would still like to thank you for all that hard work.
Related to the discussion bits around 16:00 teaching is its own separate skill. You need knowledge of a subject matter to be able to teach it, but that knowledge alone does not make you good at explaining and teaching it, and when teaching a novice, the teaching skill can be more important than any actual specialist knowledge most times (since the basics have to be learned for the more advanced stuff to build upon)
I agree with pretty much everything you have brought up except for the "world chat section" to a point. Honestly I get what you are saying, it's fair that the NN is basically a global linkshell there is nothing inherently wrong with that on paper. However, the major problem that I have personally experienced and as such will never go back onto NN as a novice player, is that the NN feels extremely cliquey. I won't mention the data center because I feel like it will detract from the point. But basically the NN on the Data Center I was on (for 1 month) was filled with the same 15 - 25 people daily where most of the conversations had nothing to do with advice or helping and instead were focused on things outside of the game (favorite anime, video games, movies, etc.), when discussions did turn towards the game it was mostly gushing over things like story beats and characters. I didn't really see people asking questions often and when they did, due to constant random conversations a lot of questions were missed or if answered were answered by 5 different people 5 different ways. Not much help. The issue that drove me out of the NN however, was the fact that at the time I was leveling a dragoon and had reached a quest I was having trouble finding (granted I was being dumb and didn't realize the quest marker was sending me down a canyon that I had thought you couldn't go down). At the time people in the NN were pining over Estinien as a few of the members had finally beaten HW for the first time and everyone was gushing about how amazing he was, often in a non-pg13 way. Whatever though, the problem for me was once they found out I had met Estinien in the previous quest they asked me how I liked him. When I answered that I didn't really care for him and that he seemed kinda generic (this was ARR dragoon quests, and while I still don't think he was the most amazing character he did grow in HW). I was bombarded by hate from people telling me I didn't understand how story development works, and why I was playing this game if I couldn't appreciate good writing/characters. Not a single person in that group of 15ish people jumped in to be like: "Hey stop guys". Everyone just kind of descended on me, like I had insulted a single member of a frat and everyone in that frat had to jump in to defend that guy. It sucked and while a mentor did personally message me to apologize and help me out, I left the NN the following hour. Granted this is all anecdotal and I know for a fact that all NN are probably not run that way, but it was a bad enough experience that I feel something has to be done, there has to be better way for NN to ask questions instead of the equivalent of a cliquey linkshell.
Wow those people were really annoying and stupid :( people get too attached to characters and their opinions about them they lose their minds. I'm sorry you had to go trhough that. I never experienced ckiquey behavior in the time i was on the Novice network. Yes, there were really familiar names everytime, sometimes talking about random stuff (mostly about the game still) but they were never obnoxious or rude. And i don't mind people just chatting there, and i swear most of the time a question was asked people were righht there to help and give directions. Servers somehow have very different experiences
@@petrus9067 That's why I didn't want to bring up which server I was on, because it just leads to: "Well my data center isn't like that", "Just join a different data center", "Oh you're on that data, that makes sense, those people are like that there". Sort of answers, which never really address the problem. But yeah, the NN that I was in was definitely cliquey. At least 5 of the most frequent posters definitely knew each other IRL, because they constantly talked about visiting each other, sleeping over, partying IRL, personal stuff that you would talk about with friends on a discord. Which I think is a problem with the NN, as it can basically become this very cliquey place. And I mean, I'm not saying that's wrong, but it is very alienating to new players to join the server and feel like they aren't a part of the in-group.
Interject with your favorite anime and games and movies. Discussion is to be encouraged by everyone. I can't say much for them missing questions, but 5 different answers isn't inherently bad either. They could all be valid answers depending on the question. Things aren't so simple to always have a single right answer. Your biggest issue seems to the simping on Estinien and ERP. I made the distinction for this reason. Talking a bunch is a-ok. Attacking people, ERP, etc, those aren't just bad in NN, those are bannable offenses, Period. If you can't say it in /say, you're not allowed to say it in NN. Which is the key thing people tended to miss with the talking bits. Talking is great. It makes a lot of novices feel like there's a real community going on. Public ERP, not allowed and is not part of talking. And this is also why we need many different types of people. It prevents cliques from forming and dilutes the pool and prevents public ERP stuff. Estinien doesn't even have THAT much development compared to many other characters people tend to hate on so I also find your story super ironic lol. Like, he basically is one note even through HW, growth or not.
@@WeskAlber Oh wow, thanks for answering! As to your points: I agree that discussion is fine and I definitely engaged in the occasional random discussion myself. The problem that I have is that to a new person joining the NN, it can sometimes feel like a clique. This can be off-putting to new players because it gives you that sense of being the new kid in school, except you didn't join during the first day of school but halfway through the year. Now obviously you are right, and joining in with the conversations is the best way around that, but it definitely can give off that: you're clearly not part of the in-group feeling. I didn't expand on the 5 person responding 5 different ways thing because I didn't want to make an already long post longer. But what I meant by that was less 5 correct different answers and more like, 5 different answers where the mentors would begin arguing amongst themselves on who was giving the better answer. While the Novice is sitting their trying to figure out which one is right answer. For example someone asked what the best rotation for their lvl 50 machinist was that they were using the skills A, B, C, D in the order: C, A, A, B, D. And then someone would respond: No use: A, A, C, B, D it's better, to which another mentor goes: No you should use: B, A, C, A, D, and then another mentor jumps in and is like: Na fam you're both wrong use this one instead. And then they start arguing. That sort of answer, and while you're right that they may all be valid as the answer can be complex with many moving parts, it doesn't really help the Novice to be bombarded with so many answers, regardless of whether they are right or wrong. I wouldn't call it ERP specifically because their was not actual erotic roleplay more than it was just people simping on the character stuff like: "Man, if I was gay I'd f*** Estinien", "I'd want to give Estinien babies", "When they revealed his face at the end, I almost dumped by boyfriend there and then", ect, etc. In various different flavors, for most of the day/week. I'd say it also more of a "flavor of the day/week" sort of thing because other times it would be other characters too. Once everyone was simping for Mongeim (I think I spelled her name right?) for the whole day when I mentioned having met her. One of the mentors is an artist and posted their DeviantArts each time they drew something new so I think people just kind of pined over whichever character she drew. I dunno, major simping, but not sure if you'd label that ERP? I agree that multiple different types of people will prevent the clique like behavior, or just they'd just create smaller cliques within the NN. I also agree that Estinien wasn't my favorite character or the most developed by the end of HW, but I am in Stormblood now and I've heard that he's in it (for some reason?) so maybe that will change. What the NN taught me was that if I'm going to levy criticism against the game, do it with some praise first or acknowledge the thing that you are criticizing is actually good. I've watched enough players (myself included) getting dogged on for levying any sort of criticism towards the game on the NN I was in. Which I think is a wider community issue than it is specifically tied to the NN.
As a newbie (no longer a sprout because I beat Shadowbringers, but still VERY MUCH IN NEED OF HELP) I want to thank you for all your work in the novice network. I have watched your guides and it made my rotations so much better but I always ask for help in dungeons I'm not familiar with and accept advice. (You made my dragoon rotation so good in a trial the tank got mad at me because I was generating too much enmity.. I don't know what to do with that.) I wish more people were willing to chime in, and I don't know how to help improve this system but I appreciate the way it is. However, the one time someone told me to "go stand in a corner" was pretty harsh.
WeskAlber is a hero to a lot of new players ( like me) that simply don’t understand the guides from other content providers that talked wayyyyy over my head. Your 1-80 guides have helped me to not just learn new jobs but relearn jobs that I had already leveled. Learning how to make a rotation, when the best time is to use what skills and WHY, breaking down skills into layman’s terms are all the reasons I think your guides are GOLD. Basically, the guides on this channel have been my class/job mentor for the past year and I’m extremely grateful for the detailed content provided.
I attempted to read every comment and respond to many! Thank you all for the support on this one and please share it around! Got another busy day today but I'll try and catch new comments tonight!
As a healer main, I’ll generally commend the tank if they make my job extremely easy, and commend the DPS if I don’t have to even look in their general direction beyond normal expected damage. If someone new is struggling and apologizes for struggling, I’ll give them a commendation as a way of letting em know I appreciate their effort (as well as tell them it’s no big deal in chat, it’s fine) For me, commendation is “you respected the party and everyone’s time”, avoided mechanics instead of relying on gear and healing to tank it, asking for help if you need it, being friendly and polite. It’s difficult to generally tell if DPS is doing their rotation exactly right as a healer, but I do keep on eye on dots and debuffs on the bosses. I appreciate your guides being detailed and helpful by assuming the viewer doesn’t immediately know things. Gathering and crafting guides that are basically like “reach level 20 then go to the diadem/firmament for the next 60 levels there you go you learned how to craft”, with no explanation of what skills are used for or why to go there in the first place. “How to play (class) guides” generally never actually explain when you should or shouldn’t use certain skills, or leave out things like how close you should follow the tank as a healer or how enmity generation works, or why you should use AOE in groups of three or more even if your other fancy buttons have higher potency. For me, helpful advice should aim from the perspective of the player they are aimed at. The new tank who doesn’t understand why his party keeps getting hit maybe doesn’t know that they need to hit the enemies first to draw their attention. Letting a tank know “you need to have your stance skill on and hit the enemy at least once to provoke them, using AOE attacks makes this easier in groups”, is more useful and actionable than “you need to generate enmity when pulling, or they attack your party”, which is meaningless to someone who doesn’t know what enmity is or how to generate it or why you need to do that to prevent them from attacking. Expanding on that with “healers healing you draws enemy’s attention even when they are not attacking, so keep an eye on enemies near them and see which enemies are indicated as “green” on the enemy list, that means they are targeting your party”, gives them actionable information, and also clears up some misconceptions they might have (“why is my healer pulling instead of letting me do it?”) and let’s them know what they can do to solve the problem they might encounter frequently when first learning. Sprouts sometimes need better advice (but also to take the advice they are given, because I have definitely encountered players who just wanted someone else to blame). I especially agree with the idea that a variety of mentors are needed, you need a variety of experiences. I leveled dragoon to around 53 before deciding I didn’t really like the rotation and play style, and if a newbie asked me what I thought of the class, I would probably say that the rotation is very involved and might not be new player friendly, while my buddy who leveled it to 80 might say instead that the Dragoon feels really strong in single target combat and let’s you feel like you’re doing something active instead of pressing the same couple buttons consistently. Both of us are right in our experience, but we’d give very different ideas of the class. Having both of our viewpoints could help someone new decide if they wanted to play dragoon, maybe they want a complicated class that feels active, maybe they want to just press the same two buttons, but now they know what to expect going in. Either of our views on their own might turn someone off of the class before they even tried it, or might give them the wrong idea of how the class plays. I don’t have any experience with Novice Network since I wasn’t invited when in early levels, and because I have a lot of friends who play, and I’m the kind of person who does a lot of my own research, even on classes I don’t plan on playing in case I need to understand how their class works. So in general I’ve learned a lot second hand. From my experience with other MMO’s, I think any system would benefit from having a public forum rather than (or maybe in addition to) a public chat. (Perhaps there is a forum?) socializing is good, but I would really love a searchable, persistent area where frequent questions can be looked up, and helpful threads compiled. There’s a lot of stuff in this game that you might not ever know about without specifically being told. Easily searchable public threads (no signing in!) are a great way to make information accessible. As much as I enjoy video guides as something to listen to while doing something else, having a clear concise post somewhere is a preferable tool for me. I’d rather have a post that lists the bosses in the dungeon and the mechanics in simple terms (stand on the glowing red platform to avoid dying from the Doom condition the boss puts on you) instead of having to scroll through a 20 minute dungeon guide video that says “pick up the ads and don’t stand in the AOE” for 75% of it. Clear and concise is what I want when I look for specifics (when should I use Repose in dungeons?) vs long and involved is great for getting a general feel (how does a spell casters role actions come into play?). Searchable forums do a lot to let you have both, without getting bogged down. You’ll see this a lot with “class handbooks” for dnd/pathfinder classes. Want to know how to build a cleric from the ground up? Want spell suggestions? Or do you want to know what kind of magic items you should buy for one? Press control-F and there you go. I’m sure discords exist for this, but having to join a discord just for a single question is a pain, and the discords generally not being moderated consistently is generally unpleasant in my experience. Having to search several channels just to find a bunch of posts with people asking the same question and being told to go to a specific channel that has a link to a google doc with a broken link to a video that was removed for being out of date, is not a great experience in any game. So, there’s my two cents from the perspective of someone who has had no experience with it. That’s what I’d want from a novice network, and how I personally prefer to learn.
I remember playing as a BLM in level 80 roulette, and we managed to have a PLD who didn't know how to tank, not even the bare basics such as mitigation. Tried giving advice as I've been tank main for a very long time till recently, and the guy got pretty offended from what I could tell, by being pretty sarcastic in his tones with comments like "okay mister expert", bare in mind I'm not even a mentor. I would go into the mentor thing, but I can't play all roles well, not even in theory (healer is my kryptonite); so I don't wanna drag myself in because of that. I can only imagine how many scenarios like this you mentors have to put up with, alongside other players throwing insults at you all. All of my sympathies go out to you lot
That's the big issue. Bad players are blamed on mentors all the time on places like reddit. But take Mentors out of the equation.. bad players still exist. They still refuse advice. There are bad mentors, but every bad player wasn't due to mentors. These people exist and will always exist even if mentors never did. We can't do anything if nobody will listen.
The number of burger king tanks who dont know you should do NOTHING but spam AOEs in pulls and dont use even Reprisal is simply staggering. Like if you're a Sastasha lv15 newbie fine w/e but if you're over like Brayflox level and INDIVIDUALLY attack enemies you're going to give people coronaries.
@@andrewan1225 I've never seen mentors like that tbh, but they do exist. Wesk Alber does mention things like this in the video, and the system to how you get recruited should be change if you ask me. In my case, I usually just see mentor tanks that are just, okay, which I'm fine with. Maybe they're more better/comfy with healer or DPS.
I wholeheartedly welcome all advice without question. I had the whole mitigation situation happen to me as my Gunbreaker and a player kindly asked me if I had those so I said no. They then told me which skills to use and I quickly set up my hotbar with the mitigation skills included. I'm now a great tank thanks to that one player and I genuinely hope they're doing well now
So many truths in this video. As a mentor I appreciate all the information and awareness and time put into this video. Thank you for your hard work. I see you in game often and I had no idea you had a TH-cam channel. Definitely subscribing!
From what I've seen about the watering can suggestion, people seem to be more interested in filtering out the 'prestige' factor of the icon. They'd probably be fine with the type of player chasing the watering can to hear it from them. I think it's more about reputation and interpersonal relationships. "How dare you assume you are better than me, with that crown." But that's just an assumption on my hand after seeing people speak on it.
I just fail to see how the watering can is any different. If anyone is truly acting "better than you" with the crown... it's because the crown means mentor. If anyone is truly acting "better than you" with a watering can... it's because the can means mentor. And then it comes down to the issue being non-mentors anyway. Lotta people assume it's a "I'm better than you" attitude when it's just "I know info, I am giving you info that is good."
I was playing on my alt on Midgardsormr the other day when I got an invite to NN. I immediately thought "oh I'm not the sort of 🌱 they are looking for here" and declined the invite. Especially after watching this video, I wish I had just accepted it. My previous experiences with the NN on Gilgamesh revolved around rude sprouts and mentors with a short fuse but I didn't really give it a good chance. Being where I am with my main (about halfway through Stormblood) I am beginning to realize how far behind the curve I am in terms of game knowledge and skill and in no way, shape, or form does having an alternate character on another world absolve me of my inadequacies in this game. There is always room for improvement and, particularly in the case of those mentors who go out of their way to invite new adventurers, there are players out there who have much they could teach me.
Even I have plenty to learn. I get the nickname "weskipedia" sometimes due to my deep knowledge of the game... but I'm still wrong sometimes. We all have room to learn. And all sprouts are welcome, even alts. Can act as a mini-mentor if you're so learned you don't need NN.
@@WeskAlber that's sort of what I've done in my alt's FC for some people. Since Midgardsormr has the RT70 buff right now there are a lot of brand new players and some new alts. The FC I am in is comprised entirely of brand new players except for myself and two others. I have tried to teach some of them the skills that I have but I know I can only bring them so far. After watching this video I will be sure to recommend them to the Novice Network if they think it will help them but I will also try to make sure they go into objectively if at all possible.
I just cant agree with the commendation for tank or healer. They are in shortage which causes longer queue for dps. If they decide to become a tank or healer, they deserve a commendation. But if they are very bad and unwilling to take advice then absolutely give commendation to a good dps player.
Yo, I remember clutching hard in a Shadowbringers dungeon while leveling up my Summoner. The healer kept dying so it fell to me to usually heal. Final boss, the tank died so I raised them, then the healer died (no surprise there) and I raised them quickly. Once we finally beat the boss, I got zero commendations for saving the run which upset me a bit but what really got me was how the healer who was a toxic asshole to me got the commendations because of their glam. I'd love to help new players, I got every requirements but the commendation requirements are what's holding me back greatly because I don't really focus on glamour. Only time I got a full team commendation was when I beat the final boss as the last standing player as my Machinist (this wasn't my main character either. My main is on Goblin and has a total of eight classes maxed out I believe).
I only knew you are a mentor in this video. Your my 1st day video series is a very good guide that really made for novices’ point of view. I followed most of it and now gone to Heavensward in a comfortable position. In non English data center like Kujata, novice network is kinda like a general chat room for English speaking players and players mostly enjoy the discussion and talk. We can even get help for some content like Bahamut. There are players who “graduated” but returned as mentor just for the chat room alone. Personally I had a game in the lost city of Amdapor where we got wiped many times because of not knowing how to mark the door in Dioboloss fight. Then there was a mentor who didn’t give up on us and coached us to victory. It’s good to know that there’s mentors who give their best. I hope you continue your efforts with the same enthusiasm.
Sadly, realistically, there is no way to "fix" the mentor system outside of small suggestions like ones that you provided. Why? Because no matter what you do, even if SE handpicked best of the best players to be mentors and paid them money to do it, there would still be people disappointed in the way that mentor system works. Why am I so certain about it? Because there are plenty lazy, incompetent, angry and purely bad teachers irl. And those people don't grind silly internet game, they make a decision to go to university and study to be a teacher. If we can't filter out shitty teachers that way, there is no way we can do it in a silly catgirl erp game.
The only reason I got 7 commendations, is because I ran into a random 7-man party in DF. I also didn't use the novice network, but so far I haven't had any bad encounters with people who have the mentor icon.
THANK YOU! I use all of your rotation guides, and I finally feel like I've gotten experienced enough to participate because I WANT TO HELP players and make a better community. I looked for comments on joining, and I am really HAPPY you put this out!~
Comms are tricky sometimes anyway because your teammates will often peace out ASAP, so it's easier to just pick someone at random and throw a comm their way. I've been picking dps specifically for a while purely because they don't often get comms unless they were a troll or something, at least that way they get a few here and there.
I'm a (trade) mentor that don't usually use the NN to chat, and I only answer the occasional question when I'm sure of the answer and/or when no one answers it first. I do feel like trade mentors are not taken as seriously as "real" mentors, since it's so easy to get, so I honestly don't feel confident enough to answer complex questions or help people with a lot of content...you didn't talk about it in the video, but I do wish the requirements for trade mentors were higher, not only because it's so easy and there's a lot of sprouts that are able to get it before even losing the sprout, but also because being a little more time consuming would make trade mentors be taken more seriously. Even though I love crafting, it's one of the main things I do in game, I feel like it doesn't mean anything. People don't look at it and think "oh, she's a crafter, maybe she could help me!", they probably think "easiest way to get to NN huh". So it feels embarassing to leave the icon on. Like I'm bragging over nothing. Other than that, I love the system. Mentors helped me a lot when I was just starting out, and it's fun to read the NN, get to know how people are in that server and feel like a part of the community.
I started on Siren about a year ago and kinda ignored the Novice Network while I was leveling but I would look at it from time to time and have only seen people being helpful or using it for casual conversation. I would say that it's a good system but it definitely needs more structure. On the note of commendations, if I'm a healer or tank, I give it to the other healer or tank. When i play dps, i give my commendation to another dps. I only started doing this when i started playing all the roles and began to figure out that most people were doing this too. The only exception is when one person saves the whole run.
You hit it right on the nail when talking about hiding the crown for me. my feels! Thank you for this video, it has given me hope and inspiration to continue what i believe being a mentor is all about in this game.
Regarding your point in the One Player is not All Players paragraph: there is plenty of people who say that novices who run around like headless chicken are the bane of this game. This doesn't make flaming mentors right, of course, but it's a behaviour I've seen a lot, at least on Chaos, especially when it comes down to alliance raids. My view on the matter is clearly biased, since I only lost my sprout status in December. However, I doubt that having to download ACT just to make sure I'm not sandbagging an entire instance like I've been told time and time again was part of the intended learning curve for this game. I guess my point is: people will attack other players based on their icon no matter what it is. At least the sprout icon can tell other players: "I'm new to the game, please be patient"; is there really a need for an icon that says, mid instance: "I'm an experienced player, you can ask me anything"? Especially if, as you said, some people's experience far surpasses their execution. [And before anyone assumes I'm flaming and/or boasting: I fall into this category as well: I know by heart the MSQ dungeons up to HW thanks to the time spent as a free trialer, but still clip my rotations big time when tackling content I don't know well. I doubt I'd be a good mentor.] I think I said this in the poll's comment section, but in my opinion the Crown icon shouldn't be shown at all times, like dungeons, trials, raids etc., but just when in the Novice Network or, idk, overworld.
That's my point though. One person is not all people. Plenty of novices learn just fine. The ones that refuse to learn are their own section of people.
People insulting or bickering novices in normal content are truly stupid, especially if they don't even try to explain the mechanics in a comprehensive manner. Just saying "A adds B belly C chains" for someone who started playing last week and reached WoD is not gonna be very helpful is it
Hey Wesk, I really like this video! I think it's what got me to get into mentoring. You know, be the change you want to see in the world. Exodus NN is very nice and it feels good to give back to the community that helped me along the way when I was new. I really don't get it when people say NN or mentors are bad because I've never really experienced any of that. Not even sprouts, really. It's usually returners with an ego who treat everyone like dirt that end up being the issue.
I *do* hold Mentors to a higher standard than other players. All too often have I out dps'ed a mentor as healer, I feel that the mere notion that a player that can't aoe or use damaging spells (on HLR) is somehow allowed to teach new players with any sense of authority is beyond ridiculous. This is because mentors reach sprouts early and might instill their bad habits on them. I do however agree strongly with your point about reporting unfit mentors and - to some extent - I am also guilty of not doing my part by not reporting.
If reporting wouldnt be so annoiying to actually do. I would love a system like in WoW. Rightclick, choose a category and maybe enter a few words if you feel the need to. Log and everything important to that is saved and send to the GM´s to look at.
The bit where you mentioned healers who wouldn't do dps being mostly negative hit a little hard. When I was trying to go for my first Shiva EX clear, I was healing as WHM and my co healer was doing nothing but spamming Medica and Medica 2. We failed that instance and voted to abandon with about 5 minutes left of the hour. The second attempt I actually had a competent co healer, except they didn't have LB on their bar. Found that out as Shiva was at 10 percent, and the only standing members were them and one tank, I'm calling for Healer LB3 and after we wiped they said "I didn't put it on my bar, it's there now though." We cleared it the next attempt. Moral of the story, everyone makes mistakes, but healers making mistakes is the most noticeable.
After watching this, you've convinced me to join the novice network (and I'm on midgardsormr!). I've only heard the stereotypes so thank you for the counterpoints.
Mentors are just players too. And like anyone else, nobody knows everything. The trick is just recognizing that and sticking to your strengths. Help people on stuff you know and don't spew BS on stuff you don't know. In a sensible world, you'd think that ought to be pretty easy. For example, you mention macros early on in the video. Macros are generally not good for combat because of their non-queueing nature, but there's so much more nuance that people will benefit from knowing. A mentor (or anyone) being immediately dismissive doesn't provide any value. - Macros make non-queueing skills (sprint, LB) *more* responsive. You should be macroing these. - Macros are used extensively in high level feast for accurate targeting (silence the healer for 2s because you're trying to burst someone within the next gcd), and to avoid telegraphing target selection - Macros can often complement ground target skills, or skills that benefit from callouts (res, invuln, etc.) - Macros let you do a LOT of things you can't otherwise do; e.g., "/mk attack " gives you an auto incrementing target marker that automatically puts 1, 2, 3, etc. depending on what's available; "/c " lets you pull up peoples' profiles without clicking on them; and the list goes on... (I can honestly list like 20+ things)
Dismissiveness wasn't even mentioned. Being wary, was. And being wary is a good thing, because most newbies are asking about macros to macro skills together, which should never happen. - Macros would be value neutral for Sprint/LB in that case. Macros have no queueing either so I'm not seeing the point for that one. - I don't quite know how high level PVP is played but I feel like that's doable with the same effect as non-macro? How does that work. - Ground target skills become less responsive but it is a macro I do use. Raise macros 9/10 times are trash because they aren't "Raising " Any raise macro besides this, is bad. Further, half the time, both healers already used raised before the macro went off. Invulns you should tell the healer pre-pull if it's a dungeon but it could help inattentive healers if you need to in a Trial. - Marking stuff is useful in all of like, 1 trial. Kill orders aren't a thing outside Mog and you can type those commands without a macro. Macros aren't doing anything special. They're typing text.
@@WeskAlber I agree being wary is good. But in your example at 5:20, "why would you even want to know how to do that?" doesn't set things up for a nuanced discussion. I mostly see this kind of phrasing from people who just remember "macros=bad" at a very shallow level. The point is, macros are a great QoL tool. And like any other tool, you want to make the most of it when it makes sense (and avoid it when it doesn't). But the pre requisite to that is knowing how it works. - Macros are evaluated one line per frame. So when you repeat the thing you want to run 14-15 times, it gives you a mini queueing window of maybe 100~150ms depending on your fps, vs. nothing for pressing the button directly. - It's doable without macros too, in this case it's more of a preference that most people prefer. There are special placeholders for feast enemy targets - Marking is more about not overwriting existing markers. You can type them, but you can't compare pressing a button vs. stopping to type mid-combat. It's the difference between something viable and something not. Maybe I see things differently since I come from a software engineering background, but it reads like the less extreme version of saying code is nothing special because you can reproduce all the calculations by hand. Maybe I'm just personally wary of generalizations. For example when people ask about "what's the best stat for xxx" I make sure to briefly mention a lot of these recommendations are rough rules of thumb because of things like stat tiering, which they can search up if they're interested. I wouldn't want another mentor to say "why do you care about formulas? just meld in this order"
@@lr6891 I think you're looking too deep into my example, since I didn't want to spend forever talking about macros in a Mentor based video. but I also think that you have to give examples... proves my point.
@@WeskAlber So basically: Macros have their use, but not in a Rotation. Use them to do things like Prep the Arena, Trigger Pull-Timers, Post the most important Mechanics into Chat or run a Crafting-Session.
There has only ever been one guy who took time at a random roulette dungeon to give me pointers, and my initial reaction was genuine anger. If he didn't like how I was tanking then he could go tank, was what I thought. But then I mulled it over for a while and knew he was right. The message was to learn when to use damage mitigation, and I didn't know when, then to always have mitigation on whenever possible. I usually consider myself a patient man, so me flaring up with that much anger for something I was wrong about startled me. He literally popped the advice in chat and left. Didn't even wait for a reply. Now I understand why. I may have been angry with him for a moment, but I'm truly grateful to that mysterious person the most now. I hope people get past that anger and take in the advice that weskalber and the rest of the mentors give, even if it's after the initial encounter.
One thing I think could help would be to try to enable ways to give specific advice. Maybe have mentors for specific jobs for people who want to learn something more than what usually gets asked in NN, the system does sometimes provide good advice (for me the biggest help was an explanation of endgame gear lockouts on midgard) but with so much happening at once in NN asking some questions sometimes I felt nervous like I was interrupting something else. While job guides are a way to help players who are actively looking for help, so is a google search for how to unlock mounts, but novice network presents a way to get that information in game, so many people complain about bad players and if we cant have job guides to properly teach ideas like burst windows and general rotation logic, then mentors for a specific job could help a lot. I dont know what the requirements should be, but that’s an issue for mentorship as a whole. (Edit: yes I know this is ironically all very general, but to use a job I know well as an example, having someone explain how to prioritise using dancer procs and cooldowns, or avoid rotation drift with flourish.
Super high end advice would be nice to have but also, a topic I didn't bother with in the video, is the Balance. There seems to be this attitude in the corners of the playerbase that "NN is trying to be the Balance" which isn't even close. Some of us in NN think elitism and being a dick on purpose isn't good and I've seen no small amount of Balance mentors act like they are too good for NN. Those who aren't in that group, I am glad for. So best you're gonna get are people like me, who are pretty good but aren't gonna be able to give you every little optimization possible. Plus, that level of optimization is too much for novices typically. You're not even in ShB when you get kicked out. Any level cap novice, used a level skip. Often novices get confused at even basic talks about savage content, let alone high end optimization. And that's ok I'd say. Most the playerbase doesn't raid at all, even if I encourage trying it out.
@@WeskAlber yeah that’s understandable, it may be that the jobs I’m most used to are jobs that start at high levels s I’m kinda naturally focusing on that but I feel like some way to help at least learn generally what a player should be doing, even something simpler like song order for bard (which matters from 52) could definitely be a way for early players who aren’t sure where to look for advice on how to improve may go. But I do see your poi my about keeping NN focused on new players rather than those looking to fully grasp a rotation or hyper-optimise
As much as I would like to be a mentor I know it's not for me because I know I'm really bad at explaining things and tend to be quiet. I'm also still learning things myself and I've been playing on and off since 1.0.
A sort of, alternate yet really minor band-aid fix I thought of in regards to the mentor icon was rather than limiting when the icon is displayed, why not add more for say, pure cosmetic or another way to flex certain achievements. The way I see it, many newer players at first glance who don't know anything about the novice network, much less about player search will see the crown and assume it's some sort of cosmetic to add on top of your title that's displayed around your name. The icon itself doesn't even need to be associated with player search. Like titles, they can just equip these icons to show off something they did, or something they wanna show off to people. This of course will not completely deter everyone from getting the crown as there will still be people who want it just for the looks, nor fix the inherent problems and bias associated with it, but at least adding more options would probably thin the herd, even a little bit? Icons associated with certain achievements, milestones, or other activities that display what that person did or accomplished, even if that icon itself has no intrinsic value, could be a start in trying to give the mentor icon less of a negative connotation, and mentors can still display that icon if they wish to truly use it as a means to reach out and help others in need. There might be some caveats I overlooked so feel free to discuss with me this band-aid fix I proposed.
Omg, that interjection dude, all serious until that point inteh video, now its' just hilarious, i can't stop laughing, tyvm for at least trying to make it light hearted LMAO
Wesker sent me back here to watch this after a little back and forth in the comments of a mentor roulette video. I gotta say that I now understand why comms aren't a great requirement for mentors. And honestly, as a player who joined just before Endwalker, I had no idea the Novice Network was a manual invite. I'll have to start taking time to invite sprouts.
Great video. I couldn't agree with the part about novice network being friendly more. I'm on Diabolos in the Crystal DC (US) and the environment in Novice Network is great. People are friendly, questions are answered, and when questions aren't being asked, there is often funny conversations but these will stop to answer ff related questions. I'm an ex WoW player and I can say this is such a breath of fresh air. Not dealing with the shit of WoW's trade chat while getting real help and friendly chat is wonderful. If people are getting their questions answered, how is friendly chat a problem in any way? At all?? It's not. When I finally finish Shadowbrings, I'm going to really miss the Novice Network and frankly, going through the paces to become a mentor myself one day is an appealing goal. I want to be able to give back. Anyhow, thanks for this video. I love the amount of thought and work you put into them.
This is my first ever comment on youtube. I never really cared about youtube comments because they're often just spammy stuff, or just random people trying to push their own agenda. I'm pleasantly surprised that your channel has quality comments; must be because your videos are so helpful- so severely underrated and underwatched ;) Hope your channel grows, and the community grows positively around it. I think one of the issue about commendation is we're given the ability to commend anyone too early. As a beginner, it's incredibly hard to tell who is good and who is not (because you're just busy trying to learn...). So I naturally just gravitate towards cool looking people, friendly people, or just funny people. Even when I get better, that habit doesn't change :/
It's not any easier to tell who's good or not at higher levels unless you're a very experienced player who knows how to play all jobs. Which, expecting everyone to be good with every job is a bit rough an ask.
I'm surprised but really happy to hear that Siren's NN experiences were mostly positive now. Siren is my home server and when I was using the NN mentors were incredibly rude and unhelpful. This was back in 2015-2016 however so I'm glad to hear things have changed for the better!
I personally didn't know about the NN, and when I was going through that part of the story I wasn't paying that close of attention to what was being said and never got invited so I agree that there should be a function that a paying member auto joins or once you get to level 10 or so you get a notification that pings you asking if you want to be a part of it.
this is a fantastic video discussing a very important topic but I NEED TO KNOW how to you made other players flashy abilities not come up on the screen i keep dying in my dungeons because i cant see mechanics
Me lvl73 novice doing lvl63 Stormblood MSQ: "Wait... There is a novice network?" I mean, I knew there were mentors and they have own roulette, but I never knew about novice network. Maybe I didn't actively looked for it, since I play on a Japanese data center and my knowledge of Japanese is just enough to casually talk with members of my FC, but I'm not sure about actually taking advices ^_^.
There is one issue that I did notice with the reddit post you used: did the OP notice any gameplay changes after he gave advice? Some of those 'no response' results could have actually taken the advice, like the DRK player starting to use unmend to pull after the OP gave out the advice for example.
Some missing context for the top parses in FFLogs: DNC and BRD have some damn high variance because of Feathers/Repertoire. Parse/Speedkill runs like those likely used those jobs because of high how their RNG can roll - imagine getting Flourishes & Feathers on nearly every action, or Repertoire on every DoT tick! That said, that scrub had the wrong approach to begin with; even if he was right in that Dancer *wasn't* speedkill/parsing meta, it doesn't change the fact that you're supposed to bring what you're good at, not what puts out the most DPS on its own, and every job can clear everything just fine - the challenge of high-end content is from playing the encounters while also keeping up with your own rotation (and procs). Look at the first clears of new raids once the encounter's been out for a while, and you'll find that it's mostly grays and maybe a green or two, with wildly disparate jobs for different groups. Wasn't one of the Stormblood Ultimates first cleared with DRK, which was percieved as the worst tank of the three back then?
35:12 I never knew this was where you could report this kind of stuff! I thought you could only ever report RMT activity since that's the only option given under Report when you select someone. While I hope I never need to use this functionality, thank you for showing me where it is!
The problem is as a complete beginner people might not know how to do that (or that it's even possible). I personally didn't want to seem rude by asking, "hey guys is there a way I can not see your chat all the time?" so I just left. I think if it was its own separate tab by default it would be a lot less invasive, and people might stick around longer to give it a fair chance.
I have a good experience with the novice network and mentors. I don't use it often, but when I did ask for help, I got it. I was carried through coils, guided through deep dungeons, and my UI questions were answered. Though there is drama in the NN, that is attributed to a troublesome few. When so many people gather in one place, of course there will be trolls and annoying people. That's how it is everywhere.
I'm still fairly new to the game, but I never joined the novice network because I tend to just google/youtube my questions and hope there's good answers out on the internet. So far i found the solution to most of my problems this way, but hearing you passionately talk about the mentor system really makes me want to try joining the NN. Thanks for the great video
An in-game source of info is very convenient for many, especially PS4/5 players. But glad to have another person aboard. Hope your local NN isn't too hard to make a good place
Wow, you had some genius suggestions and incredible insight, this is an amazing video. I wasn't gonna watch it all but your thoughts are all engaging and, I guess epiphany-giving lol. Stay amazing.
You literally taught me everything I know about jobs in this game from when I started in level 1 last year septmember, to me being level 80, now to me having dps , tank and healer at level 80. So I guess I'll listen to you talk for over an hour ,lmao
hey man love your videos, no one even needs a mentor if they just watch your content :P I admire people like you who are passionate about helping others learn! keep up the good work.
While, I do think there are a handful of issues, the biggest issue I have is the separation of mentor ships, or rather the lack there of. Some people probably think splitting the Crafting/Gathering mentorships from Battle mentorships is enough, but I personally feel like PvP should be split off into it’s own separate mentorship, because PvP is VERY different PvE in XIV. And there are a lot of knowledgeable and helpful people in PvP who don’t meet the requirements for mentorship as is. As for current mentors, there are certainly bad apples, that much is true in every group of people over a certain size, what that size is, I couldn’t tell you, unless mentors are curated to a very specific degree. I think there is no perfect mentor system, and I think XIV has one of the better ones, people who wear the crown put themselves out there for all kinds of shit, but that’s hopefully because they want people to come to them for betterment. I personally don’t make the cut for mentorship but I still do my best to help, because once I can make the cut, I can set myself as an example
Honestly the whole perspective on Mentors and the NN is now made worse after Asmongold started playing XIV. For some reason his entire community irrationally hates mentors simply because they are mentors, and it doesn’t help that his community make up the majority of the new influx of sprouts coming into the game to begin with. They’re probably going to disregard any proper advice given to them and respond with toxic hate just because their favorite streamer does so all the time in his streams. The hatred towards mentors is only going to get worse from now on because of him IMO.
Ah man there is so much I want to say with regards to this video but honestly a TH-cam comment doesn't do it justice. As someone who actually has tutored and taught a class I agree with basically all of your points. And I feel like I could make my own 1 hour video providing my own experience to back up your claims. Also I feel like Wesk saw my point about the racism in NN and actually made a point to talk about it in the video and I appreciate that. Great video all around.
I'm a trade mentor, not because I'm that good at the game,but because I want to help people or even craft some stuff for some sprouts that are willing to accept help. I only turn the crown in closed parties tho, ppl tend to talk down on me when I have it on and even being resurrected/commended gets harder. In duty finder or random teams is like asking to play in hard mode. I recognise I'm not that good at fighting, that's why I prefer the trade icon, but to avoid a harder time I help without making use of the crown. .. I'm happy that a couple of sprout groups wanted to be my friends and invited me to the discord server, I believe that anyone can appreciate a helping hand, just if you're willing to give it or take it
It's a real shame cause I like helping new people but novice chat is just a ghost town. I'll say that I am here to help if anyone needs it and I'll get no responses of any kind.
A fellow tradecraft mentor working on their battle mentor here. In my personal experience, if you wear the crown regardless of what type they are you're considered as a full mentor by most people regardless so I have to be both knowledgeable and experienced incase anyone asked. I admit I wanted the Mentor status because of the crown icon as a way to motivate myself, but deep down I always wanted to be mentor to help new players because it's fun to help others. So I always try to learn and practice new stuff, heck I even watch several guide videos so I could practice in my spare time. There are times where I have been harrased and flamed by others in dungeon/roulette runs because they say I'm being an elitist or that I shouldn't nagged them about how they play because is their playstyle when in reality I was trying to explain mechanics or trying to recommend/explain them certain skills to improve their playstyle. Heck, I've been flamed just because I'm a mentor. While people come to the game to have fun, but I also realised that time is also an essance so I try to clear trials/dungeons/raids daily as efficient and timely as possible while still having fun. At some point you gotta have to be good at your job you're maining, because let's be honest here; unless you like to spend 40+ mins in a dungeon with your Trust NPC or have some ungodly amount of free time, you don't want to be in a dungeon for 40+ min long with 3 other random people who probably have other commitments after this. Trust me, I have had that experience of people being bad at their jobs/role and have to spend more time than necessary in a dungeon that makes me want to cry because I felt like I'm being a shitty mentor as I cannot help them despite offering help, I don't want to get harrased or being come off as rude to newer players. I even have to put off some of my other commitments just to help these players and sometimes they told me to fuck off or don't criticise how they play. I had to turn off my mentor status just so I could have at least peace to myself and not get attacked. Being mentor has both the good and the bad, but generally it differs from mentor to mentor. I genuinely have helped people and they were kind to me, most of them are good experience but I will occasionally run towards some bad apple.
I wholeheartedly 100% agree with you on the aspect of engagement. Everyone believes there gonna be great at something without realizing the responsibility and process at which to actually be great. And they become the very thing that they railed against. I'm not a mentor but I try to do my part in helping new people because I love ffxiv and I want the community to continue to grow and be successful.
I think an important point too is that the crown doesn't and shouldn't mean "I'm a perfect player who will make no mistakes this duty". People see a mentor make a dumb mistake and will just troll them for it, when we all make mistakes, the fun of the game is just learning from them. I think we also need to be sure to give positive feedback as well as negative. If I see someone saves us from a wipe, I'll give them some kind of happy or cheer emote at least. Its important for mentors to try and model good behavior both gameplay-wise and socially. Admitting you messed up a mechanic is a good way to talk about the mechanic, I think a lot of people don't know mechs and are just saved by chance or good healers that they don't have to do them. But rather than ask or talk about what to do for the mechanic they just say nothing.
I literally got the two sides of the coin back to back. I was emptying my journal and just needed to do Shiva and Ramuh extremes. Both times it was party full of sprouts and one mentor. With shiva the mentor didn't say a word and dropped after the second wipe so we needed to look for a new tank character (I was the other tank and had no idea what to look out for) and the new tank was able to guide us to beat it. With the Ramuh even before we started the mentor opened with Q&A about the boss mechanics for all roles and the whole fight they kept shouting out mechanics and their explanation was easy to follow so we were able to beat it on the second try.
The fact your group was willing to listen is a major part of the picture too. This predates the asmon rush so I think that nowadays more people are willing to listen to directions on average. People see it is hard, want to win and will listen to win
I had a run of ifrit extreme through the DF as a sprout. Thought I'd try these "extreme" things, lol. We got two mentors and the rest first timers. One was fine and told us about mechanics, even though you could tell they didn't really want to be there, they sucked it up and and helped us out to clear it the third or fourth run. The second mentor was awful. They just degraded everyone for getting hit by mechanics, called us trash, and told us to watch videos and never que for extremes in DF again. The bad mentor was so bad, that I DID indeed never que for a duty finder extreme again because my experience was so soured. It's hard not to let that one bad mentor dictate how I feel about queing for content and the system. But the bad apple really did overshadow the better mentor. And I say "better" rather than good, because they were still a bit rude even though they were giving sound advice about mechanics. I should have reported them for being so toxic but didn't even know I could do that. Having played for a while, I started giving advice to other players, even while not a mentor, on content I was confident on and have seen first hand how awful some folks can be when you say anything. I've seen tanks deliberately not put on their stance because you reminded them they forgot, lol. I want to do the mentor thing, but both of these types of experiences have kind of soured me to the idea if I'm being honest. I haven't met the requirements yet to join it. Many good points in ths video. I will add one thing I think is important for mentors. Patience. And it's certainly not mentor specific, but mentors shoild have it. Too often I see it where new players are learning content, wipe, and half the party dips out instead of taking the time to go through and allow the learning. We were all new players once.
started playing for the first time 2 weeks ago and been enjoying leveling slowly in literally all classes lol. I wish I knew how to join the novice network, I was given the option to join it at one point but failed to officially do so. I have been thoroughly enjoying all your 1 to 80 ability guides and has helped me figure out what dps I would off spec as when not wanting to tank. I appreciate the effort you put into the videos and will learn as I go
im not a mentor, but there was this one astro in World of Darkness, where they absolutely ignored me. i asked them to switch of noct sect since i was playing SCH. they were only using aspected benefic and and always out of mana, refused to listen to any advice i gave. im pretty sure they didnt even look at the chat. What hurts though is when i had looked at their search info. they had over 13 jobs at level 70 (me and my friends assumed they bought the level skips + story skip). and this was their first time in WoD. they got lost in the first boss arena for at least 3 minutes too. i wanted to help but they completely ignored me. just. aughh. it was by far the worst WoD ever.
Sounds like a experience I had a few weeks ago. Just replace World of Darkness with Puppets Bunker. And I wasn't the healer. We had two astros as healer, one astro asked the other about which sect they want to use so that the first one could change acordingly. But the bad astro never replied and didn't even use a sect apparently. I never played astro so I don't exactly know what refusing to choose a sect does for your toolkit, but according to the good astro in this group you just gimp yourself without any reason. And the dumbest thing about this raid was: at the very beginning the bad astro even admitted that he hasn't played as astro for a long time and he still refused to take the advice from another player.
Man the whole having to be invited to the network is really frustrating, heck I didn't even know about it before I got returner status. When you talk to the smith in hall of the novice the 3 subtopics about mentors and new adventurers should really be swapped. I remember talking to him seeing the options and going I can think about being a mentor after I do a dungeon bye.
We don’t need the mentor system with creators such as you around, thanks for all the guides you make. Been playing off and on for a couple years now and I’m still not a great player but that’s due to my own faults, and physical ability (have really bad arthritis in my hands) but you have definitely helped me and others get that extra leg up in our gameplay.
The issue is that while content creators like Wesker make amazing guides, they aren't in game and therefore new players have to seek this information out of their own motivation.
Commenting mostly for the algorithm, but I fully agree that the mentor is currently a your mileage my very kind of system. I’ve had mentors in duty roulette who were healers who refused to DPS and yelled at me in party chat for making them do all the work as their cohealer. Even though the issue was I was using near entirely OGCD healing as Astro or Scholar, and so all they could see was me “Spamming Malefic/Broil.” Apparently if it’s not on my cast bar, I’m not actually healing. But I’ve also had extremely helpful, really skilled players as a mentor too. Who take the time to explain mechanics when asked and also just doing really well in their role. It’s unfortunate that the many bad experiences with mentors I’ve had stand out in my mind more. But… that’s the price of the unique icon I suppose
I know the venting at 44:00 was meant to prove a point against the obviously incorrect guy, but every time you said DNC or BRD, my MCH heart died a little inside. That 2% representation is rough.
A lot of the problems you mentioned, like crown-hate and daily abuse in the NN... doesn't seem to happen on Moogle, or on the rest of Chaos from what little I see when server-hopping. That might be down to a culture difference between the NA and EU servers, though. Not that we have no drama, but it's more of a monthly thing than daily.
I'm one of those mentors that doesn't wear the crown. Due to not wanting to being trolled by other "mentors" you know the kind that wears the crown but says your good advice isn't only crap but wrong to the one sprout that's in the party. Or being insulted which results in the run becoming just full of salt. Or being just ignored. Heck even on the rare time I do try to mentor and i give a person multiple chances to improve because they're doing something that they shouldn't be taught or think is a good thing due to no one ever wanting to try and correct bad behavior before they're in a late game dungeon or raid before I initiate a kick I still get called an elitist. I also don't join the NN due to it making my chat go at ludicrous speed. Also I don't want to deal with some people I know that would be in Midgardsormr's NN. I'm not sure how it should be fixed or what the requirements should be. I just know that people need to realize mentors are people and that they might not know every single bloody thing in the game nor the whys for things like why you should use X during a rotation either as a battle class or non. I do think something should be in place to try and weed out those who only got the crown as a status symbol. Part of why I enjoy your videos is you don't expect people to be always having the optimal experience in a run.
That's the problem, the crown drawing hate for no reason. Let's start just hating on sprouts because of their icon. Makes just as little sense and is just as pointless. And I don't know who you're trying to avoid, but blacklist is there.
@@WeskAlber OH, I get it. It's dumb and gets so full of hyperbole on the forums that people will go "ok where on the doll did the mentor touch you?" Or wite threads with "I got kicked by a mentor and then they ran over my granny, shot my dog and stole my lunch money". Then spend time deflecting about how it could have been for a good reason or not even a mentor that initiated the kick. Just oh it HAD to of been a mentor that did it. Most of the old timers who most likely wouldn't know my current main, but knew my old one of Tazer Smurf which for some is associated with a fairly disliked individual. Also part of why I stopped raiding as said individual has been seen as a Toxic dumpster fire when they get mad.
Someone on Reddit posted this video and I responded before watching it. Talking about how horrible mentors that I've come across were. They were either bad players or mean to people that they were trying to help. After watching the video, I was reminded of the people that I have attempted to give advice to and how it was either ignored or devolved into them threatening to report me for "harassment." I _still_ think that the requirement for the mentor program is ridiculous. It's basically just "play long enough as healer/tank." But the suggestion for savage is ridiculous. I just had my daughter in December and don't have any time to do a lot of the harder content, but I have leveled all jobs (except BLU, in progress) to level cap and feel like I could absolutely help out new players. This was a good video though, I agree with all of the points made here and would love to see a better system.
I saw that post I think. One guy accused me of making "hot take videos for views." Ah yes. The like, 4k views total I get on my "hot take for view" videos. That's way more than my... millions of views across my 1-80 series... Venting aside, their attitude isn't dissimilar to the community wide problem of people not being willing to take advice. Everything is immediately to be expected as an on purpose ATTACK rather than liking something or having strong opinions otherwise. It can't be just helping for help's sake. Help in itself is calling you a shitty loser who can't play games and should go die. Meanwhile the people who ACTUALLY say those things are hopefully being reported, banned, and generally unwanted in this community. People acting like they're above the issues, when they're part of it and blatantly saying they want to be part of the problem... It's ironic, honestly.
Hello Wesk, I've wanted to watch this video for a while and had to chastise myself not to do it earlier actually. What reminded me of it ultimately was the (relatively) bad and perfunctory video zepla made on the subject, which was then of course commented by big streamers like Asmon... just to make memes out of it. The past month with the big player influx has been relatively annoying in that regard. Inviting sprouts to the NN was constantly met with "NO WAY, I HAVE ONLY HEARD BAD THINGS ABOUT THE NN" and the likes, just because of how blown out of proportions this has turned out. And as you might guess, the only effect people have with that kind of dumb echo chamber is... well, pushing people away from the actual system designed for new players, including good mentors and new players alike. It just drives wedges between everybody, between sprouts and mentors, mentors and mentors... And is a general nuisance to the experience of new players, even if only indirectly at times. Anyway for starters, this is my experience, not to toot my horn, but just to explain where I come from: I am not stranger to helping and tutoring people in the game. I have added a few of my stones to the mch theorycrafting on the balance, done video guides and a lot of visual guides and resources for mch raiders, helped for years answering questions, etc. I have been on the NN since almost its inception, have gone through a few servers and networks, and finally settled for Twintania for ShB where I decided that I wanted the clean slate of that brand new server's NN to be the best experience possible for new players. For which other mentors and me worked my ass off for years, and I'm quite happy with the result. My own experience usually is that you NEED to actively, constantly foster new blood (spamm invite mass sprouts all the time) to recycle the bad apples under new enthusiastic new players, you need to constantly go all your way to answer in details every question there is while also proving to be the most welcoming and chill player there is. You also need to be able to cleanse or purge trouble makers, whether sprouts or mentors, in order to not let fester bad atmospheres. Once you manage to slowly but surely build a community culture around it, it usually proves to be the strongest barrier to any kind of toxicity or stupidity, and new players will love it. It's a lot of work, but the result is worth it. One little thing that proved to be a success beyond measure on our server actually, was to create a (not public!) separate NN related linkshell, where we would invite some of the good mentors in but most importantly all the cute/nice sprouts active on NN, and sad to graduate. Guess what? A lot of them grew up and are now full fledged active mentors and some of the finest I've seen. I'm still incredibly surprised by how this developped, but actually picking up the people with potential, that seem to go well with the system and love it...? Well they're your mentors of tomorrow, and they'll stay engaged. Anyway, that's my take after long years on what worked for me, and the server I believe. On the savage requirement question then, as someone that actively raided for multiple savage tiers, took part actively in the balance materials and whatnot, I can safely say that those people that ask savage or mentor roulette reqs have no idea what they're talking about. You don't need to be able to tell new players how to get past fucking Hello World phase or Advanced Relativity, but to tell them when and where they get their first chocobo, or to remind them about the hall of the novice. You don't need to be a math wizard personally trained by TJ/ Allagan Studies to explain how their class relies on strength as a main stat. All you need as a requirement is something that can't be measured ingame: the willingness to help others and guide new people. If there is sometimes some mentors handing out blatantly false info? Yes, it happens, and that's where having a community of many mentors all with their different strengths and specialties will help seal the deal. But savage raiders? Let me laugh, they're not immune to misinformation and bullshit either, oh no... damn no. They're actually the ones with the strongest cases of Dunning Kruger i've ever met, especially the ones on NN. The amount of meta bullshit they manage to spread around is ungodly... not to mention, totally inappropriate on a channel for new players, that certainly don't need to get told that "bArD iS In A bAd SpOt BeCaUsE i SaId So". So yeah... raiding requirements? Idiotic beyond measure. You also raise a very good point on endgame guides or balance guides. The game and community truly lacks approachable guides for newbies and leveling, and it's definitely not raiders that usually provide those. Knowledge vs Execution is also a big, no, gigantic fallacy that you commonly find everywhere in the raiding community and the balance overall. More and more they recruit their own mentors out of good players, so based on execution, and less and less we get actual savant mentors. Trying to apply execution on NN is even more pointless, since it's probably one of the places where it matters the less. On Hammer mentors now. It's true that the requirements are way too short. They should have at least ensured the players actually finished ShB, which was kinda the case before Firmament, but not anymore due to it. You end up with hammer mentors literally being there asking sprout questions. Not that I mind them doing so, always happy to see people ask questions and whatnot, but seeing a hammer mentor icon doing that raises... questions. Otherwise though, ironically, I've seen a lot of those show up with stars in the eyes, willing to help as actual mentors, only to be rebuked by gatekeeping burger kings that keep dunking on hammers and dismissing them just because they're hammers. When in fact, hammers are usually the most helpful for sprouts looking to be helped to clear instances or get better queues on my server... My main problem right now is frankly speaking, the gatekeeping. The "you don't pay my sub" memes. The "git gud" crowd. The ones that constantly will try to inprint their most optimal (in their mind) way of playing upon others, that will inevitably say one day or another "you shouldn't waste the time of your party by being a bad". Those are the worst, especially when they try to get into mentoring. Some are constantly bitching about how bad their party of the day was, or will be negative about everything all the time, and it tends to be extremely toxic for the general atmosphere of the channel. They, in short, suck all the fun new players can get. They'll participate into making insecure players even more insecure. They'll try to impose a raiding mindset onto every casual instance in existence, where people are just learning their jobs, chilling in casual content, or just having a happy time with their life because said content specifically doesn't ask them to make big DPS checks, heal checks, or complex tank maneuvers. Content that specifically forgives almost anything. And they'll even be happy with dying. And then you get that mentor gatekeeper that shows up, and turn them into "you don't pay my sub" strawmen (i'm not speaking about ice mages or forbidden chakra monks or whatever unicorn horror story you might have heard blown out of proportion everywhere). It's.. really one of the worst thing besides the mentor memes, because those are insiders, and they're in to gatekeep and push for elitism where it doesn't belong. (continued down)
I don't wear the crown. I consider that this icon should be removed from the game. I've always been tempted by that watering can idea because it's cute and doesn't quite carry the same message as an arrogant king crown, so I believe it would be a little better, but I'll admit that I'd be rather happy without any icon. The drawback would be however... new players are told about the NN and have to be able to find mentors. So the icon above the head is quite convenient... but this would also assume that new players actually go look for them. I'd bet that almost no new player really does that. At best, for the few I've seen that want to be invited in the NN (yes they exist here and there, those sweet summer children), they usually write in /shout chat or just in /say, asking for help or to join. I've extremely rarely been actually contacted personally through /tell by a player to get an invite, and the handful of times it has happened was by a more advanced player, or an alt. Also used to be more a thing on NA? Not sure, being on EU now. Honestly, they could get rid of the icon no matter what it is (and just keep one in the NN chat proper), and also get rid of the achievement mentor mount rewards and anything like that, that the game would overall benefit from it. Less mentor roulettes filled? Yes. More quality in mentor roulettes? Also yes. Maybe the game also needs more obvious incentives and introductions to the actual Party Finder so that new players actually go through there for extreme content. And the game also needs a fucking storymode Coils SE please... There is indeed a problem with the amount of silent mentors ghosting the NNs. But in my experience I don't think there is that actual many that are on it without even having the chat. Some probably, but a lot of them are also there because they didn't want to leave the network when graduating... And came back as mentors. A lot of sprouts, a majority in fact, never really speak. It's even more blatant than for mentors, yet they stay on the network. And while some of them probably have it turned off and forgot about it, there is a surprising amount of them they are just content to be.... silent. And read. And learn or listen. As an example, when some specific arguments arise, especially of the heavy kind on subjects that probably have no place on NN... you suddenly see a lot of totally unknown sprouts showing up out of the blue to ask people to shut up or move on. It's heartening in a way, but sure is surprising when it happens. Same on the mentor side, how many times have we had ghost mentors nobody heard about, that suddenly kick someone because of an unfortunate macro spamm. Just to power trip. Dunno. But they're here and actually pay attention at times, for lot of different reasons. However, yes, the channel cap and all the inactives are a problem. The recent influx of players made the NN constantly totally full, even in the mornings. The cap needs to be raised, or maybe the channel to have several instances, but I hate that idea. It would allow a lot of shit to happen and destroy hard built communities, if the problematic people take advantage of being on an instance without much policing at a time. But yes the autojoin is a major factor. Your idea on offering any novice past a point to join is all well and good but it's the same at any level really. It opens the gate for bots (they take a LOT of space, and some of them are actual advertisers) and that's the reason why everybody has to be invited manually except returners... And it sucks yes (but I dont want to imagine the capacity problems with sprouts, we're already constantly full past mid day here). But until the problem of bots remains a problem, I dont see how to automatically invite sprouts. Overall I'm glad to hear that your little community on Midgardsormr sounds very similar to ours here on Twintania. Glad not to be the only one. Anyway... I'll have to apologize for the rant about my own experiences, that anyway tend to echo yours pretty well. You'll probably not see that late of a comment among all the other ones, but thank you again for making that video.
You have been my mentor, I have watched you job guide videos since my return to ff14 (of which I left b4 HW dropped) my toon was still on wold of darkness. Basically I forgot how to play the game, so I went to a new server and made a new tool and started from scratch. That would not have been possible without your videos (especially the tank class vids) your drk vid, gave me the confidence to take on tanking again.
Logged on today to see the network was currently full and was genuinely sad. On Marlboro I get nothing but a positive experience from the novice network playing as a returning player with a year off trying to relearn the game and onwards.
This reminds me when I tried to tell someone that peloton was an out of combat movement skill in the nicest way possible bc they kept using it *exclusively* in combat and never out, thus nullifying it's effect. When I pointed it out, they just said "I don't care" they were definitely not someone I would consider positive after that
I like the icon idea, I would make a good mentor but only for Black Mage as that's been my main from the get go, I know it inside and out and would happily help others become a good black mage. Stick me on any other job and I have to look up guides to make sure I'm doing the job properly >.
Really happy your channel is still picking up steam. We need more quality FFXIV creators like yourself. As for this video, thanks for -pointing out the issues with some 'beginners guides' being very beginner unfriendly. when you started posting yours, I knew you were gonna get a following soon because you were supplying a very high demand that other creators thought was already supplied. -going against the idea of 'emoticons makes it nicer', it feels extremely patronizing, especially when sometimes you get those very clearly passive aggressive ones -that interjected rant
- That was less pointing out about the guides but yeah, it's a side effect of my point. It's a common I get a LOT so how newbie friendly are these guides when I think even mine have newbie unfriendly bits? - Nice to one person is not nice to another. This is a fact. - Thank the asshole who doesn't even know what meta is despite humping it, I guess lol
Funnily enough, i once had a discussion (partly about me) about "A mentor should be running dungeons with new sprouts X times a day/week/whatever". I think it started because one or two sprouts were using the NN as kind of a party finder the entire week, asking every second hour or so for a carry. I will gladly answer any question if i know the answer and have time, but im not in the NN to carry sprouts through dungeons all the time. That seemingly was very bad. I am a bad mentor for some of the others just because i dont carry sprouts through dungeons all day? Im also one of these mentors who basically gave up trying to teach people in DF. Its just wasted effort 90% of the time and though im sorry for some sprouts who could and would have taken advise...im done. For the "Its a world chat"....I think the biggest counter argument is, that there are FAR to many "Mentor" player who got crafting mentor just to stay in NN to casually chat while not knowing anything nor trying to answer anything. (And the other 80% completly silent players in the chat)
Personally, I wouldn't say you're a bad mentor for it. I do not try to carry sprouts through content either. I simply have my Mentor status visible when I am willing to answer questions that anyone may have, and toggle it off when I am not. A Mentor's job is not to help you complete the task, but to help impart the tools and information you need to complete the task yourself.
i think wesk has alot to say about this guys
I think so too 😨
🤣
I purposely avoided the newbie system thing when i got spammed to join one, i just wanted to play and was confident enough in my own ability to adapt and learn. It worked fine.
I don't care if a person is a mentor or is not, i care if they're a dick or not.
that's rather his point. :P
thus was the nature of nerd sub-cultures for a long time. you had to put in the effort to learn on your own before 'mentors' would even acknowledge/help you
that's organic gatekeeping, and i for one sorely miss it
"You don't need a reason to help people"
- Zidane Tribal, FFIX
Damn. That’s essentially my motto in life. When do you meet this character?
@@calmexit6483
He is the main character from ff9, a thief that has an heart of gold and falls in love with a princess, also is the only person in his world that has an monkey tail.
I left the Novice Network day 1 due to spam. I'd rather simply google something than have my chat bar fly by as people rant about politics or their favorite anime. Afterwards I would frequently get re-invited to it when entering major cities, which only further cemented my disdain for it. I found out much later (after recommending your videos to a friend) that I'm on the same server as you, and that you personally helped my friend learn how to tank via NN. I'm glad people like you are trying to improve it, I probably would have stuck around if discussion was limited to game-related questions and answers.
Game related discussion only gets boring pretty fast. We don't all live in a FF14 bubble. We try to avoid politics but talking about anime and other games? That's cool. Can learn about interesting stuff. And most of us try to get any questions answered when they crop up.
@@WeskAlber I wrote this comment before you got to the community discussion in the video. I personally didn't have trouble making friends in the game, so it wasn't something I was looking for in the NN, but I could see how it would be a valuable outlet for others. As a complete beginner I didn't know how to customize my chat bar, if I had known that I could filter it into a separate tab I wouldn't have minded the discussions at all, (and probably would have joined them too). I guess my feedback would be, create a separate tab for it by default so as to not overwhelm new players.
@@ny4nk0 we guide people to that a lot, for this reason.
Note: I'm on the same server with Wesk.
I endured a little longer, but left, when the NN resorted to discuss if Bahamut (or whatever Primae it was) would be a fuckable Antropomorphic. The Off-Topic Spam was kinda out of hand sometimes and i reguarly didn't get answers or witnessed others not getting answers. When i could help, i did, but given i left the NN on day 5, i was of not much help most of the times.
@@ny4nk0 100% agree with this. One thing sprouts really don't know is how to customize the chat. Back in the day I too left NN due to chat clutter, when I could have just put it in a separate tab.
Though we've never met across the NN, I want you to know here that you are the Mentor who has helped me enjoy my 14 experience more than any other. Your many guides allowed me to move from completely overwhelmed into what may be my favorite game.
As good as this comment is, I don't even play the game. I don't have a computer but am saving up for one to eventually play 14. That being said, in preparation for playing, I've watched all the class guides videos wesk has put out and some others, like this one, was waiting for this one to pop actually.
So yeah, never met him, but Wesk is my mentor too. Haha 😀
Actually one of my biggest gripes is that the system kicks you when you no longer have a sprout icon. I mean, what's even up with that?
People are sprouts waaay into endgame because of the lack of in game resources, and having players be unable to join just because they reached an arbitrary time estimate? Yikes
And if you've made friends there, it sucks even more.
@@qamarqammar7629 And you don't even get a warning to let you know in advance :/
@@dantelundell9386 ikr? You log in one day, alone in the desert wondering what happened lol. They should just let people stay until they find they want to go.
Hey Wesk, hearing about this subject from the other perspective was a real eye opener. I have not been wronged by the system myself, as I just chose to carve my own path when I started playing the game, but a couple years into the game now at least felt a bit skeptical about the system and how well it was actually working. And even though I don't have any particular strong opinion on mentors themselves as to me they are just players as well, it's very clear to see you're very passionate about helping people and helping this game in general. Your content stands to prove this as well.
As much as you say yourself that you're some nobody, people like me who have watched all of your guides getting into the game would still like to thank you for all that hard work.
Sadly I will be out all day but I will get to responding to comments when I can! Enjoy!
Related to the discussion bits around 16:00 teaching is its own separate skill. You need knowledge of a subject matter to be able to teach it, but that knowledge alone does not make you good at explaining and teaching it, and when teaching a novice, the teaching skill can be more important than any actual specialist knowledge most times (since the basics have to be learned for the more advanced stuff to build upon)
I agree with pretty much everything you have brought up except for the "world chat section" to a point. Honestly I get what you are saying, it's fair that the NN is basically a global linkshell there is nothing inherently wrong with that on paper. However, the major problem that I have personally experienced and as such will never go back onto NN as a novice player, is that the NN feels extremely cliquey.
I won't mention the data center because I feel like it will detract from the point. But basically the NN on the Data Center I was on (for 1 month) was filled with the same 15 - 25 people daily where most of the conversations had nothing to do with advice or helping and instead were focused on things outside of the game (favorite anime, video games, movies, etc.), when discussions did turn towards the game it was mostly gushing over things like story beats and characters. I didn't really see people asking questions often and when they did, due to constant random conversations a lot of questions were missed or if answered were answered by 5 different people 5 different ways. Not much help.
The issue that drove me out of the NN however, was the fact that at the time I was leveling a dragoon and had reached a quest I was having trouble finding (granted I was being dumb and didn't realize the quest marker was sending me down a canyon that I had thought you couldn't go down). At the time people in the NN were pining over Estinien as a few of the members had finally beaten HW for the first time and everyone was gushing about how amazing he was, often in a non-pg13 way. Whatever though, the problem for me was once they found out I had met Estinien in the previous quest they asked me how I liked him.
When I answered that I didn't really care for him and that he seemed kinda generic (this was ARR dragoon quests, and while I still don't think he was the most amazing character he did grow in HW). I was bombarded by hate from people telling me I didn't understand how story development works, and why I was playing this game if I couldn't appreciate good writing/characters. Not a single person in that group of 15ish people jumped in to be like: "Hey stop guys". Everyone just kind of descended on me, like I had insulted a single member of a frat and everyone in that frat had to jump in to defend that guy. It sucked and while a mentor did personally message me to apologize and help me out, I left the NN the following hour.
Granted this is all anecdotal and I know for a fact that all NN are probably not run that way, but it was a bad enough experience that I feel something has to be done, there has to be better way for NN to ask questions instead of the equivalent of a cliquey linkshell.
Wow those people were really annoying and stupid :( people get too attached to characters and their opinions about them they lose their minds. I'm sorry you had to go trhough that.
I never experienced ckiquey behavior in the time i was on the Novice network. Yes, there were really familiar names everytime, sometimes talking about random stuff (mostly about the game still) but they were never obnoxious or rude. And i don't mind people just chatting there, and i swear most of the time a question was asked people were righht there to help and give directions. Servers somehow have very different experiences
@@petrus9067 That's why I didn't want to bring up which server I was on, because it just leads to: "Well my data center isn't like that", "Just join a different data center", "Oh you're on that data, that makes sense, those people are like that there". Sort of answers, which never really address the problem.
But yeah, the NN that I was in was definitely cliquey. At least 5 of the most frequent posters definitely knew each other IRL, because they constantly talked about visiting each other, sleeping over, partying IRL, personal stuff that you would talk about with friends on a discord. Which I think is a problem with the NN, as it can basically become this very cliquey place. And I mean, I'm not saying that's wrong, but it is very alienating to new players to join the server and feel like they aren't a part of the in-group.
Interject with your favorite anime and games and movies. Discussion is to be encouraged by everyone. I can't say much for them missing questions, but 5 different answers isn't inherently bad either. They could all be valid answers depending on the question. Things aren't so simple to always have a single right answer.
Your biggest issue seems to the simping on Estinien and ERP. I made the distinction for this reason. Talking a bunch is a-ok. Attacking people, ERP, etc, those aren't just bad in NN, those are bannable offenses, Period. If you can't say it in /say, you're not allowed to say it in NN. Which is the key thing people tended to miss with the talking bits. Talking is great. It makes a lot of novices feel like there's a real community going on. Public ERP, not allowed and is not part of talking.
And this is also why we need many different types of people. It prevents cliques from forming and dilutes the pool and prevents public ERP stuff.
Estinien doesn't even have THAT much development compared to many other characters people tend to hate on so I also find your story super ironic lol. Like, he basically is one note even through HW, growth or not.
@@WeskAlber Oh wow, thanks for answering! As to your points:
I agree that discussion is fine and I definitely engaged in the occasional random discussion myself. The problem that I have is that to a new person joining the NN, it can sometimes feel like a clique. This can be off-putting to new players because it gives you that sense of being the new kid in school, except you didn't join during the first day of school but halfway through the year. Now obviously you are right, and joining in with the conversations is the best way around that, but it definitely can give off that: you're clearly not part of the in-group feeling.
I didn't expand on the 5 person responding 5 different ways thing because I didn't want to make an already long post longer. But what I meant by that was less 5 correct different answers and more like, 5 different answers where the mentors would begin arguing amongst themselves on who was giving the better answer. While the Novice is sitting their trying to figure out which one is right answer. For example someone asked what the best rotation for their lvl 50 machinist was that they were using the skills A, B, C, D in the order: C, A, A, B, D. And then someone would respond: No use: A, A, C, B, D it's better, to which another mentor goes: No you should use: B, A, C, A, D, and then another mentor jumps in and is like: Na fam you're both wrong use this one instead. And then they start arguing. That sort of answer, and while you're right that they may all be valid as the answer can be complex with many moving parts, it doesn't really help the Novice to be bombarded with so many answers, regardless of whether they are right or wrong.
I wouldn't call it ERP specifically because their was not actual erotic roleplay more than it was just people simping on the character stuff like: "Man, if I was gay I'd f*** Estinien", "I'd want to give Estinien babies", "When they revealed his face at the end, I almost dumped by boyfriend there and then", ect, etc. In various different flavors, for most of the day/week. I'd say it also more of a "flavor of the day/week" sort of thing because other times it would be other characters too. Once everyone was simping for Mongeim (I think I spelled her name right?) for the whole day when I mentioned having met her. One of the mentors is an artist and posted their DeviantArts each time they drew something new so I think people just kind of pined over whichever character she drew. I dunno, major simping, but not sure if you'd label that ERP?
I agree that multiple different types of people will prevent the clique like behavior, or just they'd just create smaller cliques within the NN.
I also agree that Estinien wasn't my favorite character or the most developed by the end of HW, but I am in Stormblood now and I've heard that he's in it (for some reason?) so maybe that will change. What the NN taught me was that if I'm going to levy criticism against the game, do it with some praise first or acknowledge the thing that you are criticizing is actually good. I've watched enough players (myself included) getting dogged on for levying any sort of criticism towards the game on the NN I was in. Which I think is a wider community issue than it is specifically tied to the NN.
As a newbie (no longer a sprout because I beat Shadowbringers, but still VERY MUCH IN NEED OF HELP) I want to thank you for all your work in the novice network. I have watched your guides and it made my rotations so much better but I always ask for help in dungeons I'm not familiar with and accept advice. (You made my dragoon rotation so good in a trial the tank got mad at me because I was generating too much enmity.. I don't know what to do with that.) I wish more people were willing to chime in, and I don't know how to help improve this system but I appreciate the way it is. However, the one time someone told me to "go stand in a corner" was pretty harsh.
Why need mentors when you have wesk vids.
Cuz I'm just one loser in a wesker cosplay. I'm far from the sole voice on the matter
WeskAlber is a hero to a lot of new players ( like me) that simply don’t understand the guides from other content providers that talked wayyyyy over my head. Your 1-80 guides have helped me to not just learn new jobs but relearn jobs that I had already leveled. Learning how to make a rotation, when the best time is to use what skills and WHY, breaking down skills into layman’s terms are all the reasons I think your guides are GOLD.
Basically, the guides on this channel have been my class/job mentor for the past year and I’m extremely grateful for the detailed content provided.
Some People say hes still saying Dancer. Dancer. Dancer.... :D
When you repeat a word that many time it starts sounsing so weird JAHFJDBDSS
I attempted to read every comment and respond to many! Thank you all for the support on this one and please share it around! Got another busy day today but I'll try and catch new comments tonight!
45:00 had me in tears. Never heard Wesk show even mild perturbation so that was hilarious.
As a healer main, I’ll generally commend the tank if they make my job extremely easy, and commend the DPS if I don’t have to even look in their general direction beyond normal expected damage. If someone new is struggling and apologizes for struggling, I’ll give them a commendation as a way of letting em know I appreciate their effort (as well as tell them it’s no big deal in chat, it’s fine)
For me, commendation is “you respected the party and everyone’s time”, avoided mechanics instead of relying on gear and healing to tank it, asking for help if you need it, being friendly and polite. It’s difficult to generally tell if DPS is doing their rotation exactly right as a healer, but I do keep on eye on dots and debuffs on the bosses.
I appreciate your guides being detailed and helpful by assuming the viewer doesn’t immediately know things. Gathering and crafting guides that are basically like “reach level 20 then go to the diadem/firmament for the next 60 levels there you go you learned how to craft”, with no explanation of what skills are used for or why to go there in the first place. “How to play (class) guides” generally never actually explain when you should or shouldn’t use certain skills, or leave out things like how close you should follow the tank as a healer or how enmity generation works, or why you should use AOE in groups of three or more even if your other fancy buttons have higher potency.
For me, helpful advice should aim from the perspective of the player they are aimed at. The new tank who doesn’t understand why his party keeps getting hit maybe doesn’t know that they need to hit the enemies first to draw their attention. Letting a tank know “you need to have your stance skill on and hit the enemy at least once to provoke them, using AOE attacks makes this easier in groups”, is more useful and actionable than “you need to generate enmity when pulling, or they attack your party”, which is meaningless to someone who doesn’t know what enmity is or how to generate it or why you need to do that to prevent them from attacking.
Expanding on that with “healers healing you draws enemy’s attention even when they are not attacking, so keep an eye on enemies near them and see which enemies are indicated as “green” on the enemy list, that means they are targeting your party”, gives them actionable information, and also clears up some misconceptions they might have (“why is my healer pulling instead of letting me do it?”) and let’s them know what they can do to solve the problem they might encounter frequently when first learning. Sprouts sometimes need better advice (but also to take the advice they are given, because I have definitely encountered players who just wanted someone else to blame).
I especially agree with the idea that a variety of mentors are needed, you need a variety of experiences. I leveled dragoon to around 53 before deciding I didn’t really like the rotation and play style, and if a newbie asked me what I thought of the class, I would probably say that the rotation is very involved and might not be new player friendly, while my buddy who leveled it to 80 might say instead that the Dragoon feels really strong in single target combat and let’s you feel like you’re doing something active instead of pressing the same couple buttons consistently. Both of us are right in our experience, but we’d give very different ideas of the class. Having both of our viewpoints could help someone new decide if they wanted to play dragoon, maybe they want a complicated class that feels active, maybe they want to just press the same two buttons, but now they know what to expect going in. Either of our views on their own might turn someone off of the class before they even tried it, or might give them the wrong idea of how the class plays.
I don’t have any experience with Novice Network since I wasn’t invited when in early levels, and because I have a lot of friends who play, and I’m the kind of person who does a lot of my own research, even on classes I don’t plan on playing in case I need to understand how their class works. So in general I’ve learned a lot second hand. From my experience with other MMO’s, I think any system would benefit from having a public forum rather than (or maybe in addition to) a public chat. (Perhaps there is a forum?) socializing is good, but I would really love a searchable, persistent area where frequent questions can be looked up, and helpful threads compiled. There’s a lot of stuff in this game that you might not ever know about without specifically being told. Easily searchable public threads (no signing in!) are a great way to make information accessible.
As much as I enjoy video guides as something to listen to while doing something else, having a clear concise post somewhere is a preferable tool for me. I’d rather have a post that lists the bosses in the dungeon and the mechanics in simple terms (stand on the glowing red platform to avoid dying from the Doom condition the boss puts on you) instead of having to scroll through a 20 minute dungeon guide video that says “pick up the ads and don’t stand in the AOE” for 75% of it. Clear and concise is what I want when I look for specifics (when should I use Repose in dungeons?) vs long and involved is great for getting a general feel (how does a spell casters role actions come into play?). Searchable forums do a lot to let you have both, without getting bogged down. You’ll see this a lot with “class handbooks” for dnd/pathfinder classes. Want to know how to build a cleric from the ground up? Want spell suggestions? Or do you want to know what kind of magic items you should buy for one? Press control-F and there you go.
I’m sure discords exist for this, but having to join a discord just for a single question is a pain, and the discords generally not being moderated consistently is generally unpleasant in my experience. Having to search several channels just to find a bunch of posts with people asking the same question and being told to go to a specific channel that has a link to a google doc with a broken link to a video that was removed for being out of date, is not a great experience in any game.
So, there’s my two cents from the perspective of someone who has had no experience with it. That’s what I’d want from a novice network, and how I personally prefer to learn.
Not a mentor but I have been recommending your guides to people who were struggling with a class
I remember playing as a BLM in level 80 roulette, and we managed to have a PLD who didn't know how to tank, not even the bare basics such as mitigation. Tried giving advice as I've been tank main for a very long time till recently, and the guy got pretty offended from what I could tell, by being pretty sarcastic in his tones with comments like "okay mister expert", bare in mind I'm not even a mentor. I would go into the mentor thing, but I can't play all roles well, not even in theory (healer is my kryptonite); so I don't wanna drag myself in because of that. I can only imagine how many scenarios like this you mentors have to put up with, alongside other players throwing insults at you all.
All of my sympathies go out to you lot
That's the big issue. Bad players are blamed on mentors all the time on places like reddit. But take Mentors out of the equation.. bad players still exist. They still refuse advice. There are bad mentors, but every bad player wasn't due to mentors. These people exist and will always exist even if mentors never did. We can't do anything if nobody will listen.
The number of burger king tanks who dont know you should do NOTHING but spam AOEs in pulls and dont use even Reprisal is simply staggering.
Like if you're a Sastasha lv15 newbie fine w/e but if you're over like Brayflox level and INDIVIDUALLY attack enemies you're going to give people coronaries.
@@andrewan1225 I've never seen mentors like that tbh, but they do exist. Wesk Alber does mention things like this in the video, and the system to how you get recruited should be change if you ask me. In my case, I usually just see mentor tanks that are just, okay, which I'm fine with. Maybe they're more better/comfy with healer or DPS.
I wholeheartedly welcome all advice without question. I had the whole mitigation situation happen to me as my Gunbreaker and a player kindly asked me if I had those so I said no. They then told me which skills to use and I quickly set up my hotbar with the mitigation skills included. I'm now a great tank thanks to that one player and I genuinely hope they're doing well now
So many truths in this video. As a mentor I appreciate all the information and awareness and time put into this video. Thank you for your hard work. I see you in game often and I had no idea you had a TH-cam channel. Definitely subscribing!
From what I've seen about the watering can suggestion, people seem to be more interested in filtering out the 'prestige' factor of the icon. They'd probably be fine with the type of player chasing the watering can to hear it from them. I think it's more about reputation and interpersonal relationships.
"How dare you assume you are better than me, with that crown."
But that's just an assumption on my hand after seeing people speak on it.
I just fail to see how the watering can is any different. If anyone is truly acting "better than you" with the crown... it's because the crown means mentor. If anyone is truly acting "better than you" with a watering can... it's because the can means mentor.
And then it comes down to the issue being non-mentors anyway. Lotta people assume it's a "I'm better than you" attitude when it's just "I know info, I am giving you info that is good."
I was playing on my alt on Midgardsormr the other day when I got an invite to NN. I immediately thought "oh I'm not the sort of 🌱 they are looking for here" and declined the invite. Especially after watching this video, I wish I had just accepted it. My previous experiences with the NN on Gilgamesh revolved around rude sprouts and mentors with a short fuse but I didn't really give it a good chance. Being where I am with my main (about halfway through Stormblood) I am beginning to realize how far behind the curve I am in terms of game knowledge and skill and in no way, shape, or form does having an alternate character on another world absolve me of my inadequacies in this game. There is always room for improvement and, particularly in the case of those mentors who go out of their way to invite new adventurers, there are players out there who have much they could teach me.
Even I have plenty to learn. I get the nickname "weskipedia" sometimes due to my deep knowledge of the game... but I'm still wrong sometimes. We all have room to learn. And all sprouts are welcome, even alts. Can act as a mini-mentor if you're so learned you don't need NN.
@@WeskAlber that's sort of what I've done in my alt's FC for some people. Since Midgardsormr has the RT70 buff right now there are a lot of brand new players and some new alts. The FC I am in is comprised entirely of brand new players except for myself and two others. I have tried to teach some of them the skills that I have but I know I can only bring them so far. After watching this video I will be sure to recommend them to the Novice Network if they think it will help them but I will also try to make sure they go into objectively if at all possible.
I just cant agree with the commendation for tank or healer. They are in shortage which causes longer queue for dps. If they decide to become a tank or healer, they deserve a commendation.
But if they are very bad and unwilling to take advice then absolutely give commendation to a good dps player.
Yo, I remember clutching hard in a Shadowbringers dungeon while leveling up my Summoner. The healer kept dying so it fell to me to usually heal. Final boss, the tank died so I raised them, then the healer died (no surprise there) and I raised them quickly. Once we finally beat the boss, I got zero commendations for saving the run which upset me a bit but what really got me was how the healer who was a toxic asshole to me got the commendations because of their glam. I'd love to help new players, I got every requirements but the commendation requirements are what's holding me back greatly because I don't really focus on glamour. Only time I got a full team commendation was when I beat the final boss as the last standing player as my Machinist (this wasn't my main character either. My main is on Goblin and has a total of eight classes maxed out I believe).
When you walk away for a couple minutes to check on dinner and you come back to "dancer, dancer, dancer, dancer, dancer, dancer"
I only knew you are a mentor in this video. Your my 1st day video series is a very good guide that really made for novices’ point of view. I followed most of it and now gone to Heavensward in a comfortable position.
In non English data center like Kujata, novice network is kinda like a general chat room for English speaking players and players mostly enjoy the discussion and talk. We can even get help for some content like Bahamut. There are players who “graduated” but returned as mentor just for the chat room alone.
Personally I had a game in the lost city of Amdapor where we got wiped many times because of not knowing how to mark the door in Dioboloss fight. Then there was a mentor who didn’t give up on us and coached us to victory. It’s good to know that there’s mentors who give their best. I hope you continue your efforts with the same enthusiasm.
Sadly, realistically, there is no way to "fix" the mentor system outside of small suggestions like ones that you provided.
Why? Because no matter what you do, even if SE handpicked best of the best players to be mentors and paid them money to do it, there would still be people disappointed in the way that mentor system works.
Why am I so certain about it? Because there are plenty lazy, incompetent, angry and purely bad teachers irl. And those people don't grind silly internet game, they make a decision to go to university and study to be a teacher. If we can't filter out shitty teachers that way, there is no way we can do it in a silly catgirl erp game.
The only reason I got 7 commendations, is because I ran into a random 7-man party in DF.
I also didn't use the novice network, but so far I haven't had any bad encounters with people who have the mentor icon.
After this hearing this, the word “dancer” doesn’t sound like a word anymore lmao
THANK YOU! I use all of your rotation guides, and I finally feel like I've gotten experienced enough to participate because I WANT TO HELP players and make a better community. I looked for comments on joining, and I am really HAPPY you put this out!~
Comms are tricky sometimes anyway because your teammates will often peace out ASAP, so it's easier to just pick someone at random and throw a comm their way. I've been picking dps specifically for a while purely because they don't often get comms unless they were a troll or something, at least that way they get a few here and there.
I'm a (trade) mentor that don't usually use the NN to chat, and I only answer the occasional question when I'm sure of the answer and/or when no one answers it first. I do feel like trade mentors are not taken as seriously as "real" mentors, since it's so easy to get, so I honestly don't feel confident enough to answer complex questions or help people with a lot of content...you didn't talk about it in the video, but I do wish the requirements for trade mentors were higher, not only because it's so easy and there's a lot of sprouts that are able to get it before even losing the sprout, but also because being a little more time consuming would make trade mentors be taken more seriously. Even though I love crafting, it's one of the main things I do in game, I feel like it doesn't mean anything. People don't look at it and think "oh, she's a crafter, maybe she could help me!", they probably think "easiest way to get to NN huh". So it feels embarassing to leave the icon on. Like I'm bragging over nothing.
Other than that, I love the system. Mentors helped me a lot when I was just starting out, and it's fun to read the NN, get to know how people are in that server and feel like a part of the community.
I started on Siren about a year ago and kinda ignored the Novice Network while I was leveling but I would look at it from time to time and have only seen people being helpful or using it for casual conversation.
I would say that it's a good system but it definitely needs more structure.
On the note of commendations, if I'm a healer or tank, I give it to the other healer or tank. When i play dps, i give my commendation to another dps. I only started doing this when i started playing all the roles and began to figure out that most people were doing this too. The only exception is when one person saves the whole run.
that would really need SE to pay for moderators, at least 2 per server. Ain't happening.
You hit it right on the nail when talking about hiding the crown for me. my feels! Thank you for this video, it has given me hope and inspiration to continue what i believe being a mentor is all about in this game.
Regarding your point in the One Player is not All Players paragraph: there is plenty of people who say that novices who run around like headless chicken are the bane of this game. This doesn't make flaming mentors right, of course, but it's a behaviour I've seen a lot, at least on Chaos, especially when it comes down to alliance raids. My view on the matter is clearly biased, since I only lost my sprout status in December. However, I doubt that having to download ACT just to make sure I'm not sandbagging an entire instance like I've been told time and time again was part of the intended learning curve for this game.
I guess my point is: people will attack other players based on their icon no matter what it is. At least the sprout icon can tell other players: "I'm new to the game, please be patient"; is there really a need for an icon that says, mid instance: "I'm an experienced player, you can ask me anything"? Especially if, as you said, some people's experience far surpasses their execution.
[And before anyone assumes I'm flaming and/or boasting: I fall into this category as well: I know by heart the MSQ dungeons up to HW thanks to the time spent as a free trialer, but still clip my rotations big time when tackling content I don't know well. I doubt I'd be a good mentor.]
I think I said this in the poll's comment section, but in my opinion the Crown icon shouldn't be shown at all times, like dungeons, trials, raids etc., but just when in the Novice Network or, idk, overworld.
That's my point though. One person is not all people. Plenty of novices learn just fine. The ones that refuse to learn are their own section of people.
People insulting or bickering novices in normal content are truly stupid, especially if they don't even try to explain the mechanics in a comprehensive manner. Just saying "A adds B belly C chains" for someone who started playing last week and reached WoD is not gonna be very helpful is it
i dont even wanna use the crown because then i get harassed whenever i do anything people dont think is optimal or whatever lol
Hey Wesk, I really like this video! I think it's what got me to get into mentoring. You know, be the change you want to see in the world. Exodus NN is very nice and it feels good to give back to the community that helped me along the way when I was new. I really don't get it when people say NN or mentors are bad because I've never really experienced any of that. Not even sprouts, really. It's usually returners with an ego who treat everyone like dirt that end up being the issue.
I *do* hold Mentors to a higher standard than other players. All too often have I out dps'ed a mentor as healer, I feel that the mere notion that a player that can't aoe or use damaging spells (on HLR) is somehow allowed to teach new players with any sense of authority is beyond ridiculous. This is because mentors reach sprouts early and might instill their bad habits on them.
I do however agree strongly with your point about reporting unfit mentors and - to some extent - I am also guilty of not doing my part by not reporting.
If reporting wouldnt be so annoiying to actually do. I would love a system like in WoW. Rightclick, choose a category and maybe enter a few words if you feel the need to. Log and everything important to that is saved and send to the GM´s to look at.
The balance in this game is amazing in comparison to any other game I've played in remembrance
The bit where you mentioned healers who wouldn't do dps being mostly negative hit a little hard. When I was trying to go for my first Shiva EX clear, I was healing as WHM and my co healer was doing nothing but spamming Medica and Medica 2. We failed that instance and voted to abandon with about 5 minutes left of the hour. The second attempt I actually had a competent co healer, except they didn't have LB on their bar. Found that out as Shiva was at 10 percent, and the only standing members were them and one tank, I'm calling for Healer LB3 and after we wiped they said "I didn't put it on my bar, it's there now though." We cleared it the next attempt.
Moral of the story, everyone makes mistakes, but healers making mistakes is the most noticeable.
After watching this, you've convinced me to join the novice network (and I'm on midgardsormr!). I've only heard the stereotypes so thank you for the counterpoints.
Same here, thought it was a meme chat where no actual advice was being shared. Let's see how it goes.
I was once making jokes about ffxiv or job stereotypes durring MSQ roulette. Got 5 or 6 coms just for that ;)
OMG...Thank you! Thank you so much for this video. I am so glad that I am not the only person with these thoughts. I appreciate this video
Mentors are just players too. And like anyone else, nobody knows everything.
The trick is just recognizing that and sticking to your strengths. Help people on stuff you know and don't spew BS on stuff you don't know.
In a sensible world, you'd think that ought to be pretty easy.
For example, you mention macros early on in the video.
Macros are generally not good for combat because of their non-queueing nature, but there's so much more nuance that people will benefit from knowing. A mentor (or anyone) being immediately dismissive doesn't provide any value.
- Macros make non-queueing skills (sprint, LB) *more* responsive. You should be macroing these.
- Macros are used extensively in high level feast for accurate targeting (silence the healer for 2s because you're trying to burst someone within the next gcd), and to avoid telegraphing target selection
- Macros can often complement ground target skills, or skills that benefit from callouts (res, invuln, etc.)
- Macros let you do a LOT of things you can't otherwise do; e.g., "/mk attack " gives you an auto incrementing target marker that automatically puts 1, 2, 3, etc. depending on what's available; "/c " lets you pull up peoples' profiles without clicking on them; and the list goes on... (I can honestly list like 20+ things)
Dismissiveness wasn't even mentioned. Being wary, was. And being wary is a good thing, because most newbies are asking about macros to macro skills together, which should never happen.
- Macros would be value neutral for Sprint/LB in that case. Macros have no queueing either so I'm not seeing the point for that one.
- I don't quite know how high level PVP is played but I feel like that's doable with the same effect as non-macro? How does that work.
- Ground target skills become less responsive but it is a macro I do use. Raise macros 9/10 times are trash because they aren't "Raising " Any raise macro besides this, is bad. Further, half the time, both healers already used raised before the macro went off. Invulns you should tell the healer pre-pull if it's a dungeon but it could help inattentive healers if you need to in a Trial.
- Marking stuff is useful in all of like, 1 trial. Kill orders aren't a thing outside Mog and you can type those commands without a macro. Macros aren't doing anything special. They're typing text.
@@WeskAlber I agree being wary is good. But in your example at 5:20, "why would you even want to know how to do that?" doesn't set things up for a nuanced discussion. I mostly see this kind of phrasing from people who just remember "macros=bad" at a very shallow level. The point is, macros are a great QoL tool. And like any other tool, you want to make the most of it when it makes sense (and avoid it when it doesn't). But the pre requisite to that is knowing how it works.
- Macros are evaluated one line per frame. So when you repeat the thing you want to run 14-15 times, it gives you a mini queueing window of maybe 100~150ms depending on your fps, vs. nothing for pressing the button directly.
- It's doable without macros too, in this case it's more of a preference that most people prefer. There are special placeholders for feast enemy targets
- Marking is more about not overwriting existing markers. You can type them, but you can't compare pressing a button vs. stopping to type mid-combat. It's the difference between something viable and something not. Maybe I see things differently since I come from a software engineering background, but it reads like the less extreme version of saying code is nothing special because you can reproduce all the calculations by hand.
Maybe I'm just personally wary of generalizations. For example when people ask about "what's the best stat for xxx" I make sure to briefly mention a lot of these recommendations are rough rules of thumb because of things like stat tiering, which they can search up if they're interested. I wouldn't want another mentor to say "why do you care about formulas? just meld in this order"
@@lr6891 I think you're looking too deep into my example, since I didn't want to spend forever talking about macros in a Mentor based video. but I also think that you have to give examples... proves my point.
@@WeskAlber So basically: Macros have their use, but not in a Rotation. Use them to do things like Prep the Arena, Trigger Pull-Timers, Post the most important Mechanics into Chat or run a Crafting-Session.
There has only ever been one guy who took time at a random roulette dungeon to give me pointers, and my initial reaction was genuine anger. If he didn't like how I was tanking then he could go tank, was what I thought. But then I mulled it over for a while and knew he was right. The message was to learn when to use damage mitigation, and I didn't know when, then to always have mitigation on whenever possible. I usually consider myself a patient man, so me flaring up with that much anger for something I was wrong about startled me. He literally popped the advice in chat and left. Didn't even wait for a reply. Now I understand why. I may have been angry with him for a moment, but I'm truly grateful to that mysterious person the most now. I hope people get past that anger and take in the advice that weskalber and the rest of the mentors give, even if it's after the initial encounter.
Thanks for making this. I enjoyed learning your pov and feedback on the system.
One thing I think could help would be to try to enable ways to give specific advice. Maybe have mentors for specific jobs for people who want to learn something more than what usually gets asked in NN, the system does sometimes provide good advice (for me the biggest help was an explanation of endgame gear lockouts on midgard) but with so much happening at once in NN asking some questions sometimes I felt nervous like I was interrupting something else. While job guides are a way to help players who are actively looking for help, so is a google search for how to unlock mounts, but novice network presents a way to get that information in game, so many people complain about bad players and if we cant have job guides to properly teach ideas like burst windows and general rotation logic, then mentors for a specific job could help a lot. I dont know what the requirements should be, but that’s an issue for mentorship as a whole. (Edit: yes I know this is ironically all very general, but to use a job I know well as an example, having someone explain how to prioritise using dancer procs and cooldowns, or avoid rotation drift with flourish.
Super high end advice would be nice to have but also, a topic I didn't bother with in the video, is the Balance. There seems to be this attitude in the corners of the playerbase that "NN is trying to be the Balance" which isn't even close. Some of us in NN think elitism and being a dick on purpose isn't good and I've seen no small amount of Balance mentors act like they are too good for NN. Those who aren't in that group, I am glad for.
So best you're gonna get are people like me, who are pretty good but aren't gonna be able to give you every little optimization possible. Plus, that level of optimization is too much for novices typically. You're not even in ShB when you get kicked out. Any level cap novice, used a level skip. Often novices get confused at even basic talks about savage content, let alone high end optimization.
And that's ok I'd say. Most the playerbase doesn't raid at all, even if I encourage trying it out.
@@WeskAlber yeah that’s understandable, it may be that the jobs I’m most used to are jobs that start at high levels s I’m kinda naturally focusing on that but I feel like some way to help at least learn generally what a player should be doing, even something simpler like song order for bard (which matters from 52) could definitely be a way for early players who aren’t sure where to look for advice on how to improve may go. But I do see your poi my about keeping NN focused on new players rather than those looking to fully grasp a rotation or hyper-optimise
As much as I would like to be a mentor I know it's not for me because I know I'm really bad at explaining things and tend to be quiet. I'm also still learning things myself and I've been playing on and off since 1.0.
A sort of, alternate yet really minor band-aid fix I thought of in regards to the mentor icon was rather than limiting when the icon is displayed, why not add more for say, pure cosmetic or another way to flex certain achievements. The way I see it, many newer players at first glance who don't know anything about the novice network, much less about player search will see the crown and assume it's some sort of cosmetic to add on top of your title that's displayed around your name. The icon itself doesn't even need to be associated with player search. Like titles, they can just equip these icons to show off something they did, or something they wanna show off to people. This of course will not completely deter everyone from getting the crown as there will still be people who want it just for the looks, nor fix the inherent problems and bias associated with it, but at least adding more options would probably thin the herd, even a little bit? Icons associated with certain achievements, milestones, or other activities that display what that person did or accomplished, even if that icon itself has no intrinsic value, could be a start in trying to give the mentor icon less of a negative connotation, and mentors can still display that icon if they wish to truly use it as a means to reach out and help others in need. There might be some caveats I overlooked so feel free to discuss with me this band-aid fix I proposed.
No time to go into detail but I like the concept
Omg, that interjection dude, all serious until that point inteh video, now its' just hilarious, i can't stop laughing, tyvm for at least trying to make it light hearted LMAO
Wesker sent me back here to watch this after a little back and forth in the comments of a mentor roulette video.
I gotta say that I now understand why comms aren't a great requirement for mentors.
And honestly, as a player who joined just before Endwalker, I had no idea the Novice Network was a manual invite. I'll have to start taking time to invite sprouts.
Great video. I couldn't agree with the part about novice network being friendly more. I'm on Diabolos in the Crystal DC (US) and the environment in Novice Network is great. People are friendly, questions are answered, and when questions aren't being asked, there is often funny conversations but these will stop to answer ff related questions. I'm an ex WoW player and I can say this is such a breath of fresh air. Not dealing with the shit of WoW's trade chat while getting real help and friendly chat is wonderful. If people are getting their questions answered, how is friendly chat a problem in any way? At all?? It's not. When I finally finish Shadowbrings, I'm going to really miss the Novice Network and frankly, going through the paces to become a mentor myself one day is an appealing goal. I want to be able to give back.
Anyhow, thanks for this video. I love the amount of thought and work you put into them.
This is my first ever comment on youtube. I never really cared about youtube comments because they're often just spammy stuff, or just random people trying to push their own agenda. I'm pleasantly surprised that your channel has quality comments; must be because your videos are so helpful- so severely underrated and underwatched ;)
Hope your channel grows, and the community grows positively around it.
I think one of the issue about commendation is we're given the ability to commend anyone too early. As a beginner, it's incredibly hard to tell who is good and who is not (because you're just busy trying to learn...). So I naturally just gravitate towards cool looking people, friendly people, or just funny people. Even when I get better, that habit doesn't change :/
It's not any easier to tell who's good or not at higher levels unless you're a very experienced player who knows how to play all jobs. Which, expecting everyone to be good with every job is a bit rough an ask.
I'm surprised but really happy to hear that Siren's NN experiences were mostly positive now. Siren is my home server and when I was using the NN mentors were incredibly rude and unhelpful. This was back in 2015-2016 however so I'm glad to hear things have changed for the better!
All those Dancer's had me feeling like I was stuck in the twilight zone.
I personally didn't know about the NN, and when I was going through that part of the story I wasn't paying that close of attention to what was being said and never got invited so I agree that there should be a function that a paying member auto joins or once you get to level 10 or so you get a notification that pings you asking if you want to be a part of it.
this is a fantastic video discussing a very important topic but I NEED TO KNOW how to you made other players flashy abilities not come up on the screen i keep dying in my dungeons because i cant see mechanics
Char config > character > effects secton
just make it limited pls ahaha so you can see your healer's bubbles of love and friendship (in which you should definitely stand in)
Me lvl73 novice doing lvl63 Stormblood MSQ: "Wait... There is a novice network?"
I mean, I knew there were mentors and they have own roulette, but I never knew about novice network. Maybe I didn't actively looked for it, since I play on a Japanese data center and my knowledge of Japanese is just enough to casually talk with members of my FC, but I'm not sure about actually taking advices ^_^.
There is one issue that I did notice with the reddit post you used: did the OP notice any gameplay changes after he gave advice? Some of those 'no response' results could have actually taken the advice, like the DRK player starting to use unmend to pull after the OP gave out the advice for example.
I discussed that. That's what the last section was. Almost all unresponsive were unresolved
Some missing context for the top parses in FFLogs: DNC and BRD have some damn high variance because of Feathers/Repertoire. Parse/Speedkill runs like those likely used those jobs because of high how their RNG can roll - imagine getting Flourishes & Feathers on nearly every action, or Repertoire on every DoT tick!
That said, that scrub had the wrong approach to begin with; even if he was right in that Dancer *wasn't* speedkill/parsing meta, it doesn't change the fact that you're supposed to bring what you're good at, not what puts out the most DPS on its own, and every job can clear everything just fine - the challenge of high-end content is from playing the encounters while also keeping up with your own rotation (and procs). Look at the first clears of new raids once the encounter's been out for a while, and you'll find that it's mostly grays and maybe a green or two, with wildly disparate jobs for different groups. Wasn't one of the Stormblood Ultimates first cleared with DRK, which was percieved as the worst tank of the three back then?
35:12 I never knew this was where you could report this kind of stuff! I thought you could only ever report RMT activity since that's the only option given under Report when you select someone. While I hope I never need to use this functionality, thank you for showing me where it is!
Well, now I know there’s a novice network! As a novice, I really wish the game would have put me in there automatically.
Also people saying NN makes the chat go too fast: just make a different chat log for NN, that's what i did
The problem is as a complete beginner people might not know how to do that (or that it's even possible). I personally didn't want to seem rude by asking, "hey guys is there a way I can not see your chat all the time?" so I just left. I think if it was its own separate tab by default it would be a lot less invasive, and people might stick around longer to give it a fair chance.
I have a good experience with the novice network and mentors. I don't use it often, but when I did ask for help, I got it. I was carried through coils, guided through deep dungeons, and my UI questions were answered. Though there is drama in the NN, that is attributed to a troublesome few. When so many people gather in one place, of course there will be trolls and annoying people. That's how it is everywhere.
I'm still fairly new to the game, but I never joined the novice network because I tend to just google/youtube my questions and hope there's good answers out on the internet. So far i found the solution to most of my problems this way, but hearing you passionately talk about the mentor system really makes me want to try joining the NN. Thanks for the great video
An in-game source of info is very convenient for many, especially PS4/5 players. But glad to have another person aboard. Hope your local NN isn't too hard to make a good place
Wow, you had some genius suggestions and incredible insight, this is an amazing video. I wasn't gonna watch it all but your thoughts are all engaging and, I guess epiphany-giving lol. Stay amazing.
You literally taught me everything I know about jobs in this game from when I started in level 1 last year septmember, to me being level 80, now to me having dps , tank and healer at level 80. So I guess I'll listen to you talk for over an hour ,lmao
You can get to 80 by beast quests without doing any group content
hey man love your videos, no one even needs a mentor if they just watch your content :P I admire people like you who are passionate about helping others learn! keep up the good work.
While, I do think there are a handful of issues, the biggest issue I have is the separation of mentor ships, or rather the lack there of. Some people probably think splitting the Crafting/Gathering mentorships from Battle mentorships is enough, but I personally feel like PvP should be split off into it’s own separate mentorship, because PvP is VERY different PvE in XIV. And there are a lot of knowledgeable and helpful people in PvP who don’t meet the requirements for mentorship as is. As for current mentors, there are certainly bad apples, that much is true in every group of people over a certain size, what that size is, I couldn’t tell you, unless mentors are curated to a very specific degree. I think there is no perfect mentor system, and I think XIV has one of the better ones, people who wear the crown put themselves out there for all kinds of shit, but that’s hopefully because they want people to come to them for betterment. I personally don’t make the cut for mentorship but I still do my best to help, because once I can make the cut, I can set myself as an example
Mentor is just a badge of dishonour at this point
Honestly the whole perspective on Mentors and the NN is now made worse after Asmongold started playing XIV.
For some reason his entire community irrationally hates mentors simply because they are mentors, and it doesn’t help that his community make up the majority of the new influx of sprouts coming into the game to begin with. They’re probably going to disregard any proper advice given to them and respond with toxic hate just because their favorite streamer does so all the time in his streams.
The hatred towards mentors is only going to get worse from now on because of him IMO.
I've not experienced it yet, but I'm used to idiots without a single brain cell to spare so that could be why
Ah man there is so much I want to say with regards to this video but honestly a TH-cam comment doesn't do it justice. As someone who actually has tutored and taught a class I agree with basically all of your points. And I feel like I could make my own 1 hour video providing my own experience to back up your claims.
Also I feel like Wesk saw my point about the racism in NN and actually made a point to talk about it in the video and I appreciate that.
Great video all around.
Like I said, we had a flat-earther Nazi. We have our own experiences with racism lol...
I'm a trade mentor, not because I'm that good at the game,but because I want to help people or even craft some stuff for some sprouts that are willing to accept help. I only turn the crown in closed parties tho, ppl tend to talk down on me when I have it on and even being resurrected/commended gets harder. In duty finder or random teams is like asking to play in hard mode.
I recognise I'm not that good at fighting, that's why I prefer the trade icon, but to avoid a harder time I help without making use of the crown.
..
I'm happy that a couple of sprout groups wanted to be my friends and invited me to the discord server, I believe that anyone can appreciate a helping hand, just if you're willing to give it or take it
It's a real shame cause I like helping new people but novice chat is just a ghost town. I'll say that I am here to help if anyone needs it and I'll get no responses of any kind.
Time to start inviting novices!
A fellow tradecraft mentor working on their battle mentor here. In my personal experience, if you wear the crown regardless of what type they are you're considered as a full mentor by most people regardless so I have to be both knowledgeable and experienced incase anyone asked.
I admit I wanted the Mentor status because of the crown icon as a way to motivate myself, but deep down I always wanted to be mentor to help new players because it's fun to help others. So I always try to learn and practice new stuff, heck I even watch several guide videos so I could practice in my spare time.
There are times where I have been harrased and flamed by others in dungeon/roulette runs because they say I'm being an elitist or that I shouldn't nagged them about how they play because is their playstyle when in reality I was trying to explain mechanics or trying to recommend/explain them certain skills to improve their playstyle. Heck, I've been flamed just because I'm a mentor. While people come to the game to have fun, but I also realised that time is also an essance so I try to clear trials/dungeons/raids daily as efficient and timely as possible while still having fun. At some point you gotta have to be good at your job you're maining, because let's be honest here; unless you like to spend 40+ mins in a dungeon with your Trust NPC or have some ungodly amount of free time, you don't want to be in a dungeon for 40+ min long with 3 other random people who probably have other commitments after this.
Trust me, I have had that experience of people being bad at their jobs/role and have to spend more time than necessary in a dungeon that makes me want to cry because I felt like I'm being a shitty mentor as I cannot help them despite offering help, I don't want to get harrased or being come off as rude to newer players. I even have to put off some of my other commitments just to help these players and sometimes they told me to fuck off or don't criticise how they play. I had to turn off my mentor status just so I could have at least peace to myself and not get attacked.
Being mentor has both the good and the bad, but generally it differs from mentor to mentor. I genuinely have helped people and they were kind to me, most of them are good experience but I will occasionally run towards some bad apple.
"Doing a mechanic that is required to kill a boss? Wow, elitist."
I wholeheartedly 100% agree with you on the aspect of engagement. Everyone believes there gonna be great at something without realizing the responsibility and process at which to actually be great. And they become the very thing that they railed against. I'm not a mentor but I try to do my part in helping new people because I love ffxiv and I want the community to continue to grow and be successful.
I think an important point too is that the crown doesn't and shouldn't mean "I'm a perfect player who will make no mistakes this duty". People see a mentor make a dumb mistake and will just troll them for it, when we all make mistakes, the fun of the game is just learning from them.
I think we also need to be sure to give positive feedback as well as negative. If I see someone saves us from a wipe, I'll give them some kind of happy or cheer emote at least. Its important for mentors to try and model good behavior both gameplay-wise and socially. Admitting you messed up a mechanic is a good way to talk about the mechanic, I think a lot of people don't know mechs and are just saved by chance or good healers that they don't have to do them. But rather than ask or talk about what to do for the mechanic they just say nothing.
I literally got the two sides of the coin back to back. I was emptying my journal and just needed to do Shiva and Ramuh extremes. Both times it was party full of sprouts and one mentor. With shiva the mentor didn't say a word and dropped after the second wipe so we needed to look for a new tank character (I was the other tank and had no idea what to look out for) and the new tank was able to guide us to beat it. With the Ramuh even before we started the mentor opened with Q&A about the boss mechanics for all roles and the whole fight they kept shouting out mechanics and their explanation was easy to follow so we were able to beat it on the second try.
The fact your group was willing to listen is a major part of the picture too. This predates the asmon rush so I think that nowadays more people are willing to listen to directions on average.
People see it is hard, want to win and will listen to win
I had a run of ifrit extreme through the DF as a sprout. Thought I'd try these "extreme" things, lol. We got two mentors and the rest first timers. One was fine and told us about mechanics, even though you could tell they didn't really want to be there, they sucked it up and and helped us out to clear it the third or fourth run. The second mentor was awful. They just degraded everyone for getting hit by mechanics, called us trash, and told us to watch videos and never que for extremes in DF again. The bad mentor was so bad, that I DID indeed never que for a duty finder extreme again because my experience was so soured. It's hard not to let that one bad mentor dictate how I feel about queing for content and the system. But the bad apple really did overshadow the better mentor. And I say "better" rather than good, because they were still a bit rude even though they were giving sound advice about mechanics. I should have reported them for being so toxic but didn't even know I could do that. Having played for a while, I started giving advice to other players, even while not a mentor, on content I was confident on and have seen first hand how awful some folks can be when you say anything. I've seen tanks deliberately not put on their stance because you reminded them they forgot, lol. I want to do the mentor thing, but both of these types of experiences have kind of soured me to the idea if I'm being honest. I haven't met the requirements yet to join it. Many good points in ths video.
I will add one thing I think is important for mentors. Patience. And it's certainly not mentor specific, but mentors shoild have it. Too often I see it where new players are learning content, wipe, and half the party dips out instead of taking the time to go through and allow the learning. We were all new players once.
I wasn't expecting a musical but I really liked the Dancer song 😀👍
started playing for the first time 2 weeks ago and been enjoying leveling slowly in literally all classes lol. I wish I knew how to join the novice network, I was given the option to join it at one point but failed to officially do so. I have been thoroughly enjoying all your 1 to 80 ability guides and has helped me figure out what dps I would off spec as when not wanting to tank. I appreciate the effort you put into the videos and will learn as I go
im not a mentor, but there was this one astro in World of Darkness, where they absolutely ignored me. i asked them to switch of noct sect since i was playing SCH. they were only using aspected benefic and and always out of mana, refused to listen to any advice i gave. im pretty sure they didnt even look at the chat. What hurts though is when i had looked at their search info. they had over 13 jobs at level 70 (me and my friends assumed they bought the level skips + story skip). and this was their first time in WoD. they got lost in the first boss arena for at least 3 minutes too. i wanted to help but they completely ignored me. just. aughh. it was by far the worst WoD ever.
Sounds like a experience I had a few weeks ago. Just replace World of Darkness with Puppets Bunker. And I wasn't the healer. We had two astros as healer, one astro asked the other about which sect they want to use so that the first one could change acordingly. But the bad astro never replied and didn't even use a sect apparently. I never played astro so I don't exactly know what refusing to choose a sect does for your toolkit, but according to the good astro in this group you just gimp yourself without any reason. And the dumbest thing about this raid was: at the very beginning the bad astro even admitted that he hasn't played as astro for a long time and he still refused to take the advice from another player.
In my experience, negative assholes are usually teens with any self-reflection
Man the whole having to be invited to the network is really frustrating, heck I didn't even know about it before I got returner status. When you talk to the smith in hall of the novice the 3 subtopics about mentors and new adventurers should really be swapped. I remember talking to him seeing the options and going I can think about being a mentor after I do a dungeon bye.
We don’t need the mentor system with creators such as you around, thanks for all the guides you make. Been playing off and on for a couple years now and I’m still not a great player but that’s due to my own faults, and physical ability (have really bad arthritis in my hands) but you have definitely helped me and others get that extra leg up in our gameplay.
The issue is that while content creators like Wesker make amazing guides, they aren't in game and therefore new players have to seek this information out of their own motivation.
@@TheFreeshooter you just described every MMO in existence.
Having new players being invite only also means actual new players NEVER get to join, I personally never knew the chat existed until today
Commenting mostly for the algorithm, but I fully agree that the mentor is currently a your mileage my very kind of system. I’ve had mentors in duty roulette who were healers who refused to DPS and yelled at me in party chat for making them do all the work as their cohealer. Even though the issue was I was using near entirely OGCD healing as Astro or Scholar, and so all they could see was me “Spamming Malefic/Broil.” Apparently if it’s not on my cast bar, I’m not actually healing. But I’ve also had extremely helpful, really skilled players as a mentor too. Who take the time to explain mechanics when asked and also just doing really well in their role. It’s unfortunate that the many bad experiences with mentors I’ve had stand out in my mind more. But… that’s the price of the unique icon I suppose
I know the venting at 44:00 was meant to prove a point against the obviously incorrect guy, but every time you said DNC or BRD, my MCH heart died a little inside. That 2% representation is rough.
A lot of the problems you mentioned, like crown-hate and daily abuse in the NN... doesn't seem to happen on Moogle, or on the rest of Chaos from what little I see when server-hopping. That might be down to a culture difference between the NA and EU servers, though. Not that we have no drama, but it's more of a monthly thing than daily.
I'm one of those mentors that doesn't wear the crown. Due to not wanting to being trolled by other "mentors" you know the kind that wears the crown but says your good advice isn't only crap but wrong to the one sprout that's in the party. Or being insulted which results in the run becoming just full of salt. Or being just ignored. Heck even on the rare time I do try to mentor and i give a person multiple chances to improve because they're doing something that they shouldn't be taught or think is a good thing due to no one ever wanting to try and correct bad behavior before they're in a late game dungeon or raid before I initiate a kick I still get called an elitist.
I also don't join the NN due to it making my chat go at ludicrous speed. Also I don't want to deal with some people I know that would be in Midgardsormr's NN.
I'm not sure how it should be fixed or what the requirements should be. I just know that people need to realize mentors are people and that they might not know every single bloody thing in the game nor the whys for things like why you should use X during a rotation either as a battle class or non. I do think something should be in place to try and weed out those who only got the crown as a status symbol.
Part of why I enjoy your videos is you don't expect people to be always having the optimal experience in a run.
That's the problem, the crown drawing hate for no reason. Let's start just hating on sprouts because of their icon. Makes just as little sense and is just as pointless. And I don't know who you're trying to avoid, but blacklist is there.
@@WeskAlber OH, I get it. It's dumb and gets so full of hyperbole on the forums that people will go "ok where on the doll did the mentor touch you?" Or wite threads with "I got kicked by a mentor and then they ran over my granny, shot my dog and stole my lunch money". Then spend time deflecting about how it could have been for a good reason or not even a mentor that initiated the kick. Just oh it HAD to of been a mentor that did it.
Most of the old timers who most likely wouldn't know my current main, but knew my old one of Tazer Smurf which for some is associated with a fairly disliked individual. Also part of why I stopped raiding as said individual has been seen as a Toxic dumpster fire when they get mad.
Someone on Reddit posted this video and I responded before watching it. Talking about how horrible mentors that I've come across were. They were either bad players or mean to people that they were trying to help.
After watching the video, I was reminded of the people that I have attempted to give advice to and how it was either ignored or devolved into them threatening to report me for "harassment."
I _still_ think that the requirement for the mentor program is ridiculous. It's basically just "play long enough as healer/tank." But the suggestion for savage is ridiculous. I just had my daughter in December and don't have any time to do a lot of the harder content, but I have leveled all jobs (except BLU, in progress) to level cap and feel like I could absolutely help out new players.
This was a good video though, I agree with all of the points made here and would love to see a better system.
I saw that post I think. One guy accused me of making "hot take videos for views." Ah yes. The like, 4k views total I get on my "hot take for view" videos. That's way more than my... millions of views across my 1-80 series...
Venting aside, their attitude isn't dissimilar to the community wide problem of people not being willing to take advice. Everything is immediately to be expected as an on purpose ATTACK rather than liking something or having strong opinions otherwise. It can't be just helping for help's sake. Help in itself is calling you a shitty loser who can't play games and should go die. Meanwhile the people who ACTUALLY say those things are hopefully being reported, banned, and generally unwanted in this community.
People acting like they're above the issues, when they're part of it and blatantly saying they want to be part of the problem... It's ironic, honestly.
Hello Wesk,
I've wanted to watch this video for a while and had to chastise myself not to do it earlier actually. What reminded me of it ultimately was the (relatively) bad and perfunctory video zepla made on the subject, which was then of course commented by big streamers like Asmon... just to make memes out of it. The past month with the big player influx has been relatively annoying in that regard. Inviting sprouts to the NN was constantly met with "NO WAY, I HAVE ONLY HEARD BAD THINGS ABOUT THE NN" and the likes, just because of how blown out of proportions this has turned out. And as you might guess, the only effect people have with that kind of dumb echo chamber is... well, pushing people away from the actual system designed for new players, including good mentors and new players alike. It just drives wedges between everybody, between sprouts and mentors, mentors and mentors... And is a general nuisance to the experience of new players, even if only indirectly at times.
Anyway for starters, this is my experience, not to toot my horn, but just to explain where I come from: I am not stranger to helping and tutoring people in the game. I have added a few of my stones to the mch theorycrafting on the balance, done video guides and a lot of visual guides and resources for mch raiders, helped for years answering questions, etc. I have been on the NN since almost its inception, have gone through a few servers and networks, and finally settled for Twintania for ShB where I decided that I wanted the clean slate of that brand new server's NN to be the best experience possible for new players. For which other mentors and me worked my ass off for years, and I'm quite happy with the result. My own experience usually is that you NEED to actively, constantly foster new blood (spamm invite mass sprouts all the time) to recycle the bad apples under new enthusiastic new players, you need to constantly go all your way to answer in details every question there is while also proving to be the most welcoming and chill player there is. You also need to be able to cleanse or purge trouble makers, whether sprouts or mentors, in order to not let fester bad atmospheres. Once you manage to slowly but surely build a community culture around it, it usually proves to be the strongest barrier to any kind of toxicity or stupidity, and new players will love it. It's a lot of work, but the result is worth it. One little thing that proved to be a success beyond measure on our server actually, was to create a (not public!) separate NN related linkshell, where we would invite some of the good mentors in but most importantly all the cute/nice sprouts active on NN, and sad to graduate. Guess what? A lot of them grew up and are now full fledged active mentors and some of the finest I've seen. I'm still incredibly surprised by how this developped, but actually picking up the people with potential, that seem to go well with the system and love it...? Well they're your mentors of tomorrow, and they'll stay engaged.
Anyway, that's my take after long years on what worked for me, and the server I believe. On the savage requirement question then, as someone that actively raided for multiple savage tiers, took part actively in the balance materials and whatnot, I can safely say that those people that ask savage or mentor roulette reqs have no idea what they're talking about. You don't need to be able to tell new players how to get past fucking Hello World phase or Advanced Relativity, but to tell them when and where they get their first chocobo, or to remind them about the hall of the novice. You don't need to be a math wizard personally trained by TJ/ Allagan Studies to explain how their class relies on strength as a main stat. All you need as a requirement is something that can't be measured ingame: the willingness to help others and guide new people. If there is sometimes some mentors handing out blatantly false info? Yes, it happens, and that's where having a community of many mentors all with their different strengths and specialties will help seal the deal. But savage raiders? Let me laugh, they're not immune to misinformation and bullshit either, oh no... damn no. They're actually the ones with the strongest cases of Dunning Kruger i've ever met, especially the ones on NN. The amount of meta bullshit they manage to spread around is ungodly... not to mention, totally inappropriate on a channel for new players, that certainly don't need to get told that "bArD iS In A bAd SpOt BeCaUsE i SaId So". So yeah... raiding requirements? Idiotic beyond measure. You also raise a very good point on endgame guides or balance guides. The game and community truly lacks approachable guides for newbies and leveling, and it's definitely not raiders that usually provide those. Knowledge vs Execution is also a big, no, gigantic fallacy that you commonly find everywhere in the raiding community and the balance overall. More and more they recruit their own mentors out of good players, so based on execution, and less and less we get actual savant mentors. Trying to apply execution on NN is even more pointless, since it's probably one of the places where it matters the less.
On Hammer mentors now. It's true that the requirements are way too short. They should have at least ensured the players actually finished ShB, which was kinda the case before Firmament, but not anymore due to it. You end up with hammer mentors literally being there asking sprout questions. Not that I mind them doing so, always happy to see people ask questions and whatnot, but seeing a hammer mentor icon doing that raises... questions. Otherwise though, ironically, I've seen a lot of those show up with stars in the eyes, willing to help as actual mentors, only to be rebuked by gatekeeping burger kings that keep dunking on hammers and dismissing them just because they're hammers. When in fact, hammers are usually the most helpful for sprouts looking to be helped to clear instances or get better queues on my server...
My main problem right now is frankly speaking, the gatekeeping. The "you don't pay my sub" memes. The "git gud" crowd. The ones that constantly will try to inprint their most optimal (in their mind) way of playing upon others, that will inevitably say one day or another "you shouldn't waste the time of your party by being a bad". Those are the worst, especially when they try to get into mentoring. Some are constantly bitching about how bad their party of the day was, or will be negative about everything all the time, and it tends to be extremely toxic for the general atmosphere of the channel. They, in short, suck all the fun new players can get. They'll participate into making insecure players even more insecure. They'll try to impose a raiding mindset onto every casual instance in existence, where people are just learning their jobs, chilling in casual content, or just having a happy time with their life because said content specifically doesn't ask them to make big DPS checks, heal checks, or complex tank maneuvers. Content that specifically forgives almost anything. And they'll even be happy with dying. And then you get that mentor gatekeeper that shows up, and turn them into "you don't pay my sub" strawmen (i'm not speaking about ice mages or forbidden chakra monks or whatever unicorn horror story you might have heard blown out of proportion everywhere). It's.. really one of the worst thing besides the mentor memes, because those are insiders, and they're in to gatekeep and push for elitism where it doesn't belong.
(continued down)
I don't wear the crown. I consider that this icon should be removed from the game. I've always been tempted by that watering can idea because it's cute and doesn't quite carry the same message as an arrogant king crown, so I believe it would be a little better, but I'll admit that I'd be rather happy without any icon. The drawback would be however... new players are told about the NN and have to be able to find mentors. So the icon above the head is quite convenient... but this would also assume that new players actually go look for them. I'd bet that almost no new player really does that. At best, for the few I've seen that want to be invited in the NN (yes they exist here and there, those sweet summer children), they usually write in /shout chat or just in /say, asking for help or to join. I've extremely rarely been actually contacted personally through /tell by a player to get an invite, and the handful of times it has happened was by a more advanced player, or an alt. Also used to be more a thing on NA? Not sure, being on EU now. Honestly, they could get rid of the icon no matter what it is (and just keep one in the NN chat proper), and also get rid of the achievement mentor mount rewards and anything like that, that the game would overall benefit from it. Less mentor roulettes filled? Yes. More quality in mentor roulettes? Also yes. Maybe the game also needs more obvious incentives and introductions to the actual Party Finder so that new players actually go through there for extreme content. And the game also needs a fucking storymode Coils SE please...
There is indeed a problem with the amount of silent mentors ghosting the NNs. But in my experience I don't think there is that actual many that are on it without even having the chat. Some probably, but a lot of them are also there because they didn't want to leave the network when graduating... And came back as mentors. A lot of sprouts, a majority in fact, never really speak. It's even more blatant than for mentors, yet they stay on the network. And while some of them probably have it turned off and forgot about it, there is a surprising amount of them they are just content to be.... silent. And read. And learn or listen. As an example, when some specific arguments arise, especially of the heavy kind on subjects that probably have no place on NN... you suddenly see a lot of totally unknown sprouts showing up out of the blue to ask people to shut up or move on. It's heartening in a way, but sure is surprising when it happens. Same on the mentor side, how many times have we had ghost mentors nobody heard about, that suddenly kick someone because of an unfortunate macro spamm. Just to power trip. Dunno. But they're here and actually pay attention at times, for lot of different reasons. However, yes, the channel cap and all the inactives are a problem. The recent influx of players made the NN constantly totally full, even in the mornings. The cap needs to be raised, or maybe the channel to have several instances, but I hate that idea. It would allow a lot of shit to happen and destroy hard built communities, if the problematic people take advantage of being on an instance without much policing at a time. But yes the autojoin is a major factor.
Your idea on offering any novice past a point to join is all well and good but it's the same at any level really. It opens the gate for bots (they take a LOT of space, and some of them are actual advertisers) and that's the reason why everybody has to be invited manually except returners... And it sucks yes (but I dont want to imagine the capacity problems with sprouts, we're already constantly full past mid day here). But until the problem of bots remains a problem, I dont see how to automatically invite sprouts.
Overall I'm glad to hear that your little community on Midgardsormr sounds very similar to ours here on Twintania. Glad not to be the only one.
Anyway... I'll have to apologize for the rant about my own experiences, that anyway tend to echo yours pretty well. You'll probably not see that late of a comment among all the other ones, but thank you again for making that video.
You have been my mentor, I have watched you job guide videos since my return to ff14 (of which I left b4 HW dropped) my toon was still on wold of darkness. Basically I forgot how to play the game, so I went to a new server and made a new tool and started from scratch. That would not have been possible without your videos (especially the tank class vids) your drk vid, gave me the confidence to take on tanking again.
Logged on today to see the network was currently full and was genuinely sad. On Marlboro I get nothing but a positive experience from the novice network playing as a returning player with a year off trying to relearn the game and onwards.
Man that interjection has me pissing myself laughing thank you Wesk
This reminds me when I tried to tell someone that peloton was an out of combat movement skill in the nicest way possible bc they kept using it *exclusively* in combat and never out, thus nullifying it's effect. When I pointed it out, they just said "I don't care"
they were definitely not someone I would consider positive after that
I like the icon idea, I would make a good mentor but only for Black Mage as that's been my main from the get go, I know it inside and out and would happily help others become a good black mage. Stick me on any other job and I have to look up guides to make sure I'm doing the job properly >.
>died multiple times and had the best DPS
I'm sorry! I'll try to do better as a healer to keep you up and fighting!
Dang, this one feels like it's coming from deep within your soul.
Really happy your channel is still picking up steam. We need more quality FFXIV creators like yourself.
As for this video, thanks for
-pointing out the issues with some 'beginners guides' being very beginner unfriendly. when you started posting yours, I knew you were gonna get a following soon because you were supplying a very high demand that other creators thought was already supplied.
-going against the idea of 'emoticons makes it nicer', it feels extremely patronizing, especially when sometimes you get those very clearly passive aggressive ones
-that interjected rant
- That was less pointing out about the guides but yeah, it's a side effect of my point. It's a common I get a LOT so how newbie friendly are these guides when I think even mine have newbie unfriendly bits?
- Nice to one person is not nice to another. This is a fact.
- Thank the asshole who doesn't even know what meta is despite humping it, I guess lol
Funnily enough, i once had a discussion (partly about me) about "A mentor should be running dungeons with new sprouts X times a day/week/whatever". I think it started because one or two sprouts were using the NN as kind of a party finder the entire week, asking every second hour or so for a carry. I will gladly answer any question if i know the answer and have time, but im not in the NN to carry sprouts through dungeons all the time. That seemingly was very bad. I am a bad mentor for some of the others just because i dont carry sprouts through dungeons all day?
Im also one of these mentors who basically gave up trying to teach people in DF. Its just wasted effort 90% of the time and though im sorry for some sprouts who could and would have taken advise...im done.
For the "Its a world chat"....I think the biggest counter argument is, that there are FAR to many "Mentor" player who got crafting mentor just to stay in NN to casually chat while not knowing anything nor trying to answer anything. (And the other 80% completly silent players in the chat)
Personally, I wouldn't say you're a bad mentor for it. I do not try to carry sprouts through content either. I simply have my Mentor status visible when I am willing to answer questions that anyone may have, and toggle it off when I am not. A Mentor's job is not to help you complete the task, but to help impart the tools and information you need to complete the task yourself.