Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/naxxril
Hello Party people,
In todays video i want to talk about the hate that mentors are receiving in FFXIV and if they deserve it or not. Also i talk a bit about the qualifications a mentor needs!
#ffxiv #finalfantasyxiv #ff14 #ffxiv
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I haven't personally witnessed bad mentor behavior, so I guess I'm pretty lucky! And I've been on the Novice network a couple of times and saw a few times people asking questions, but mostly it was like any other chat channel and I eventually left the network. So I can't say it was bad or useless, I just didn't really need it for very long. The mentors I know are pretty nice and helpful people, so I hope the bad ones are just an unfortunate minority of mentors.
I think you've been very lucky because oh boy have I met some real dickhead mentors. From my experience they're generally very quick to rage at the party and call people out if wipes happen. If someone is doing something sub-optimally they will tell them in a very passive aggressive and sarcastic way like they're a moron. I used to be a mentor myself and I never bothered to renew the crown when Endwalker dropped because all it seemed to ever get me was people targeting me for hatred in dungeons, purposely standing in one shots and every aoe known to man just so they could call me shit and say typical mentor, etc. I've had some decent experiences with mentors too of course, they're not all bad and you shouldn't completely write them off just because they have the crown but I don't think you're wrong for being weary of them. I'm glad you've had good experiences with them though.
A full video of a character doing emotes and a person talking over it. This format is overdone and super dull. If you are passionate about video making please put more effort into it.
I have a friend who is very passionate about FFXIV and ever since she began playing, she wanted to become a Mentor and help other players. She's basically a walking encyclopedia of the game's lore, too, it's really impressive for someone who's only been playing for a year and a half. When she finally got her Mentor crown, she turned it on and did an Alliance Raid (she got Labyrinth of the Ancients). There were several new players in it so she asked people to wait for Cutscenes and she tried explaining some mechanics, but some people in the run, including her own party's tank, told her to shut up and stop trying so hard to get comms. The Tank even used shirk and made a boss kill her character, then made fun of her "Wow, a mentor and you died in Labyrinth of the Ancients? You suck". She was in voice chat with us (her FC at the time), crying because all she wanted to do was help and these people were harassing her because of the Mentor Crown. She leaves it off now, but still tries to help anyone who asks.
I run mentor roulettes from time to time trying to grind out that mount, and in my experience people should just treat other mentors just like a normal player. Like i dont start preaching about what people did wrong when a party wipes, i will only help if someone asks. Im gonna be honest the only reason I like mentor roulette is because of the achievement rewards and its like random roulette which you can get any kind of duty below savage level content and current high end content. People really need to get that in their head like me most mentors are only there for the grind not to necessarily want to help people. i think a good solution would be to just get rid of the mentor system, keep mentor roulette and change it to like "random roulette" or something and just keep all the rewards tied to that new playlist.
Fun fact for those who dont know: I hate the crown. It really is just showboating to many people, but if you run a mentor roulette they slap a pve mentor icon to you to notify other players you are the mentor. So if you find anybody running around with that in duties, chances are they just grinding out mentor roulettes.
Also i dont know why only mentors get targeted with hate, if anything its the stubborn bad players that "think" they know how to play and rejects any advice given to them. It literally just becomes a pointless argument and im certain its just the mentor stigma that players already have going in their heads that makes them reject any kind of helpful advice, and even lash out passive-aggressively at the mentor. I seen this happen to other mentors and i seen this happen to me.
I've basically been mentoring since before it was even implemented as a system. I loved the idea from the start, though it's certainly shown its flaws in more recent years. I'm not necessarily blaming WoW refugees (I played WoW before FF14 after all) but I never personally saw this drama and conflict until we had that surge of interest and content creators focusing on the two games. I had a very low point after that one video came out putting mentors at the very bottom of the social hierarchy, not because I hated the video itself but because many players seemed to be taking the joke a little too seriously. I've had to take breaks from experiencing hostility and I know many mentors hide the crown just so they can be taken seriously.
To be clear, it's beyond a doubt that there are many players who get the crown and do not ever intend to fulfill the expectations, and that they are usually responsible for the horror stories people tell. I just don't think people consider the impact it has to participate in the crusade to dehumanize and undermine all mentors as a response. I've seen people complain about actual mentors too because they all have different ideas of what a mentor SHOULD be. Some hate it when information is offered unsolicited. Others get mad if you only offer advice when asked. One issue that will probably be ongoing for the foreseeable future are the conflicts with people who start their Extreme clears using Duty Finder without any understanding of Party Finder or the concept of 'progression'.
No issue has given me more reason to quit mentoring than people who refuse to listen to progression advice or on how to improve Extreme trial queues using Party Finder so people can be sure they have a full party of 'farm' or 'blind prog' folks. That matchmaking via DF is generally going to result in one of the worst ways to experience the content due to the volatility in party composition. I understand that the JP datacenters prog in PF and farm in DF, but in NA the only people who use DF are people who either don't know or don't care. I've been accused of being lazy and worse, that I can only mentor for content that doesn't 'need' it. If only those folks could take my place in all of those wasted one hour queues where no matter how much effort I put in I couldn't get a party to clear because people didn't even TRY to learn the mechanic. I don't hate mentoring, I hate how it feels having to be judged by people who don't respect the process.
I wouldn't blame the bad rep for the mentors, yes this is only a personal experience but ALL mentors ive experienced with were bad, except when things were just smooth rolling. They're the first to leave when things go bad, and just the other day experienced one that left castrum in the beginning because its castrum. They're leaving when its not even hard content, they just cant be bothered. I'm not saying all mentors are like these ofc, but they certainly exist, and to some a lot of their experience with them are like that. I still dont condone harassments ofc but until a system that can fix these kinds of attitude, the rep for mentors will stay like it.
As someone who has the mentor mount I don't run mentor roulette anymore because it's a headache. Are there some toxic mentors yep but I ran in too more toxic sprouts than mentors. I seen sprouts kick a mentor for Mch LB the nails in ifrit EX I was told by a sprout to hide behind the pillars in Garuda EX several times and a sprout is telling me to stop using the shield "early" in Levi EX never got killed just to name a few. I was on PS4 and I can't type that fast so I didn't say anything for the most part but the #1 complaint I see with mentors is when mentors say "Do this in party finder" the reason why mentors say that is most sprouts q up wanting to learn how to do the fights. You learn nothing in duty finder by wiping for 45 mins until it become so easy to clear and you still wipe because they don't any of the mechanics. I failed Hero on the half shell guildhest way too many times because the sprout tank or Dps aren't looking at chat. Yes most PvE mentors q only for the mount but some sprouts only q for a carry there's a reason why we get gear at the end dungeons now and AF gear is given to you in MSQ it's not because mentors are jerk. As for NN unfortunately it was used as a personal chatroom almost since the beginning there's nothing you can do about it's not reportable that's why I stopped it going in it.
The mentor situation is more or less the usual cycle of society creating it's own villain's.
Speaking from personal experience and knowledge of other's, we REALLY do go into it with the intent to help people. However, we learned VERY quickly that not only did most people not want help; they also wanted someone to serve as a default punching bag so to speak. Moreover, most people just want to be carried vs. actually learn anything in general.
Personally, after dealing with it for a decent number of duties, I just said screw it to be quite honest. At that point, I was in it purely for the mount. Therefore, I did whatever I deemed was efficient, such as leaving at the start of certain duties & all extremes. If it was mostly mentors or people I've seen before and know they can hold their own, I'd give it a go. Otherwise, I'm taking that penalty.
On top of all that, I opted to take the vow of silence route. Unsurprisingly enough, this led to running into the next problem – entitled Karens that flat out demand you to "do your job" (as a mentor). When coming across this type of degenerate and the other previously mentioned geniuses, I either ignore it, accept the penalty & leave, or just skipped the grind for the day altogether. Depending on how far people go, I'd throw that same A-hole energy back at them in return and report them.
I've long since gotten my mount and have never looked back. Unless I'm starving for tomes for whatever reason, I don't even look at mentor roulette. It is a Hell I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. People are terrible. Whenever you hear things/terms like "humanity was a mistake" & "toxic casual", this is likely what they are referring to.
I got one time a moment, when on my second week playing FF our mentor say about adds, and me and my tank don't get, what that mean, and instead of explaining, he just start "You play MMO and don't know what adds mean?!" Maaaan i like two weeks in a MMO, and never played any before..
I got one time a moment, when on my second week playing FF our mentor say about adds, and me and my tank don't get, what that mean, and instead of explaining, he just start "You play MMO and don't know what adds mean?!" Maaaan i like two weeks in a MMO, and never played any before..
My experience with mentors has been very… meh.
See, I take breaks from the game now and then and so I find myself in Novice Network on regular basis (I've also been taking an alt through MSQ to relive a lot of fond memories, currently in mid-HW now). And one thing that I see that I very much dislike, is elitist behavior from mentors. Mentors seem to forget what game they are playing, and they seem to forget where they are. The mentors who sit in NN and anytime sprouts come on there to talk about stuff, the Mentors talk like the sprouts should be going for MAX PERFORMANCE all the time. They talk about complex openers, they talk about how tanks should always be pulling wall to wall, doesn't matter if it's Sastasha, Dusk Vigil, or anything in-between even if the tank or healer is unsynch'd or wearing outdated gear even though that can be very stressful to do. They advocate DPS and Healers running ahead of tanks who aren't pulling W2W and forcing them to do so and then defend it saying "ThAt'S sTaNdArD nOw, DeAl WiTh It" … God I hate that mentality so much. It's fricken NOVICE NETWORK and there are, you know, NEWBIES trying to learn the game in it? You don't dump someone who's learning into stuff like that right off the bat, especially if they happen to be the tank or healer.
And then you have mentors bashing sprouts, one phrase I see that I absolutely hate is "skill issue". It's very condescending. A sprout is, you know, NEW TO THE GAME and maybe going "pfft, skill issue" whenever a sprout doesn't understand why something happened isn't exactly what a mentor should be doing?
I remember once I had an argument with one of the prominent mentors on my server, I had complaints about a certain 8 man fight with mechanics that are nearly impossible to understand by just seeing it happen in the fight that is basically an insta-death and I said that they should maybe make it easier to see/understand what's going on and this mentor (who shouldn't be a mentor at all) goes "pfft skill issue" and I told him to shove his "skill issue" and then he kicked me from NN.
It's that kind of behavior that makes me hate mentors.
ive never met a mentor that isnt bad at the game or just wears the crown as fashion
From my perspective the hatred for mentors comes from 3 facts.
1) People believe they are better players than they really are.
2) People don't want to acknowledge so, thus receiving advice is seen as a threat.
3) The ToS is so vague in other to keep people as clean as possible that attempts to help may be used against you.
For example I went into p12 normal for my weekly token for my alt. This wasn't first week or second week it was like 5th week since release. We wiped 3 times in a row. I ask what is killing everyone so I can help. Some guy goes all sarcastic and says: "Lol we loosing all our hp". I asked if the healers were the problem so I could help 'em with their off gcd uses or better use my mit as a tank. The healers exploded into an ego blast about how they are legends "clearly wallet legends" and how I was toxic and getting reported. We wipe again. Every time is only me left alive yet everyone is trash talking how bad I am. Course you cannot point out all of their mistakes or how pathetic their dps is or the fact that the healers are spamming 1 button and rarely healing cause ACT is illegal. So at the end they got the boss to 20% and I solo'ed it to the end thus gaining me a lot of trash talks over how I wasted their time.
So yeah, I can see why mentors go toxic and so on.
I'm a trade mentor and i can say i play savage better than 99.5% of whole OCE raiding scene. I hate all OCE mentors cause my sprout friend ask for help the whole afternoon when i was at work but none help, all they do is keep masturbating in the NN flooding my friend chat whenever it come up. And sometimes i just wanna do extreme to chill out some mentor f just gotta barge in explaining how people are doing wrong while the dude just keep dying and point boss akwardly.
Its sad, since some of us are trying to help and teach and actually guide/Mentor players that can use the help, and we all just get shat on because some Mentors are shit and dont care at all. I enjoy teaching, guiding, and pointing people in the right directions, but it becomes harder when people just, "Wah you dont know anything! You dont pay my sub, I can play how I want!!" when they are dying to the same mech again and again and again…and this is the core of the problem. Yes I am one, but I still think that SE should hold us all to a better standard, so that we can all do better and possibly push out the ones that have less to none respect for what Mentor is supposed to be.
I love when i scared by mistake sprouts with raid macros 😅
I just had a poor mentor experience for the very first time yesterday, but the entire alliance raid was very quick to shut down that behavior
Ive had some bad mentor experiences and i do think half of them are shit lords that just want the mount from mentor roulette. but i still try to be nice to everyone especially those who are actually trying to explain mechanics. i Wish some days that there was no mount reward for being a mentor. might weed out a bunch of the bad mentors.
The worst kind of mentors isn't those who are assholes, but those who play like fucking pepegas.
I have my burger crown off just because how people think about you when you have it. From tons of videos making fun of players who honestly want to be useful. Even if you want the crown only, the hate is not warranted.
Most mentors are just normal people, not gods at game, not the worse players. They fail sometimes, but hey happens.
Back when i was a new player i was helped out by quite a few of the mentors on novice network and so i always wanted to be a mentor. I still do but i am kind of scared because of how toxic some people are towards mentors 🙁 I guess the friendliness of the ffxiv community is only surface level.