It's weird... (A newb's tale)

[Ziero]

About the OP: I think he did try to help that lvl 1 newb the best he could. He wasn't sure how to help the guy so he tried pointing him to people who supposedly could. Mentors volunteer for the task of helping others, so trying to get the newb to find one was the besty thing that he could have done.

About the OT: That's the thing about this game, no matter how long you been playinmg there are always times you can feel like a newb. Way back when, while trying to finially get rank 3 on my 25 thf, I was able to join up with 5 other people willing to help. Some needed it, others were just helping. I felt like a total newb as it was only my second or third time in windy and I never did a Burning Circle fight before. We go in, half of us die, but we beat the dragon so all was good. Then one of the guys sees I don't have a LS and offers me a pearl to his. Well over the next few days of being in my new shell, i notice a lot of people asking questions and find myself being the one to answer 90% of the time. It's not long until they start calling me the 'answer man' cause when ever someone asks something I'm usually the one to help.

That was about two years ago and over that time I eventually inherited the LS and now I do rank 3 runs with anyone who needs it. I've even duo'd it on many occasions with LS members who needed the help. Despite that though, there are still many times where a massive feeling of 'newbishness' will wash over me. My first pt in kuftal for instance. Though I quickly learned that fighting Robber Crabs at 51 with no Dispel, Refresh or real tank was a bad bad idea. >_>

There's nothing wrong with feeling newbish about things you don't know about, everyone will feel that way.

[Ryouken]

dont be afraid to help other noobs. your not helping him, and trying to get him to find a mentor, tells me your still a noob. i try and help everyone who asks me for help, as long as they dont ask for gil. if they ask for gil i tell them about getting signet and killing things for drops and selling items on ah. since you have just recently hit level 20, in a couple of levels you yourself will be asking for help. someone is going to say after next person levels, we should go to kazham. does everyone have kazham airship pass? and your going to say; kazham pass? where,s kazham how do you get there? what if no one helped you? what makes this game so enjoyable for me is the social interaction. i enjoy being able to help others. especially those annoying red ? noobs that really want help and not a hand out. i am a mentor and have my mentor status always up. btw if i get my pet noob to do a few quests and never ask for gil, i usually give them gil 10k to 100k, depends on my mood and how they act.

I can't help the guy when I dont even know what he needs help with

When he said everything, I told him to go see a mentor...

When he said he wanted to learn the basics I told him to either read the manual, see the compendium, or even go to the game website...

I'm not saying I was being EXTREMELY helpful (I admit that I could have been much more helpful ), but I am saying that I did point him in the direction to ppl who could give more specific info...

BTW, it's newb... not noob (a noob is a player who is a complete jerk, refuses to take helpful advice, and is overall very selfish)

Again, I admit that I could've have been much more helpful... but don't call me a noob for it

[Hamlet]

You weren't very nice to that person.

[Ellipses]

Does the manual tell you how to find a Mentor? I'm not sure, but if it happens again and you want to tell them to ask a Mentor, I'd at least tell him how to find one. (Does /sea all mentor work, or do you have to go through the helpdesk menu thing?) I mean, other than running around until you happen across one, which is iffy at best.

[Murphie]

Just yesterday I partied with a Mentor who didn't know why I kept drinking juice, and what I meant by "gear swapping macros". It was good times.

[durecellrabbit]

My manual for the 360 version is very poor. Most of it is explaining in great detail how to pay them, the expansion areas and the ToS. There are about 8 pages on how to play the game, which covers: How to create your character, the hud (I does not atualy show the icons, just where they will appear), The action command menu, what different coloured names mean, healing, equiping yourself, how to attack, joining a party, how to use a bazar and ah, mog house, macros and how to log out.

This might seem like a lot but each decription is only a few sentences long. For example the macro description just tells you how to get to the macro menu and how to use them, nothing about writing them. No mention of mentors.

[Murphie]

I rebought the game via the Vana'diel collection recently and I have to agree - the information is spotty at best. And of course the TOAU manual isn't any help in the information department.

Generally if someone ends up having a ton of questions or if I don't fully have time to answer everything, I give them the URL to a few handy sites that can more comprehensively answer their questions.

[Ryouken]

You weren't very nice to that person.

Huh!?

How was I mean to him? I can understand if I said "FU newb!" and then ran away... but I tried giving him advice (I don't know how to contact a mentor either, I just assumed it would be under the search function)...

I've already admitted that I could have been MORE helpful... but I really don't think I was mean to him

So could we please stop talking about how I handled the situation and stick with the original question, "When was the first time you didn't feel like a newb anymore?"... please?

[Jei]

The mentor thing is basicly useless. I mean, if you bring it up then I know what mentor is. But honestly for my entire FFXI carrier I have never once think about mentor when I have questions. Mentor has never been there in my head as a viable resource. Never was, never will. And im sure most players don't even recognize the existance of this feature. It's an utterly failure and a waste IMO.

Let alone new players, I doubt they'll be able to find any mentor at all.

[Dux]

I'm all for the Mentors scheme but I am sad to say I agree with Jei. The Mentor scheme has essentially been un-sucessfully for the NA community. I cant speak for the JP community but it would be nice to hear a JP opinion on this.

Maybe S.E. should have set the minimum level requirement for the Mentor program to 75 to ensure at least some level of experience (shouting bad advice to new players in the starting cities is not experience) from the Mentors?

Back to the OP. I think you could have been a bit more helpfull. Most new players dont need to know everthing about FFXI in one go. Most new players needs are pretty straight forward and are pretty obvious to more experienced players.

[Ellipses]

I think they should require players to pass a 100- or 200-question multiple-choice test to be a Mentor. Have the questions drawn from a pool of a few thousand, and randomize both the order of the questions and the order of the correct answer to each question.

While someone could eventually write a guide for this (if the questions stayed the same), it would have to be a pretty long guide, since they couldn't just list the order of the answers. And even with that guide, it would take a little while to complete. They could even break it up into a series of tests, which can only be taken once per Conquest tally.

The idea is to not only test actual player knowledge, but make Mentor status itself a bit of a challenge to obtain. Everyone gets level 30 and the right amount of playtime eventually. If people had to actually work a bit to become a Mentor, it might narrow the field down to those who actually want to, y'know, mentor, instead of just showing off in the Dunes.

[Ziero]

I agree with the testing for mentor status. Far too many mentors are complete noobs. This is bad because when a newb actually does look towards a mentor for help it often ends up being bad information.

[Murphie]

Which is why I said earlier that suggesting he find a mentor was more of an excercise in futility than anything else, sadly. I remember when they instituted the mentor program and nearly everyone was running around with the new shiny M. Not because they wanted to mentor anyone, but because they wanted something different, and they wanted to boss newbs in the dunes around.

Even more amusing, is the fact that SE clearly states that they do not claim any responsiblity for anything that a mentor may say or do. So it's like "Hey, ask these guys! They can tell you that you need to go to Gustav tunnel and kill Guivre to get your subjob and there isn't anything we'll do about it! Except maybe get some popcorn."

[Minimee]

i apologize about my post coming across as flaming. that wasnt my intent. i was trying to say that maybe you could have been more helpful in some way. someone quoted me and said he didnt know what the guy wanted, but in his post he stated the newb wanted to know the basics. i know sometimes talking to new people is like pulling teeth. i always forget that some dont have keyboards. i was a newb myself back in na beta. that is my main reason for taking the time to try and help others. yes it feels good to finally have someone asking you for help or advice. next time maybe youll be more prepared and less surprised. check and see if they have their weapon equipped. see if they have a sword. ask if they have spells and no where to get them. i usually take a new person that asks for help to port sandoria and do the shield quest. if they hang thru that then i know they are serious about wanting help. from here i explain about getting signet and kiling things teach them to talk to all npc's and get quests.

[Jkid]

My manual for the 360 version is very poor. Most of it is explaining in great detail how to pay them, the expansion areas and the ToS. There are about 8 pages on how to play the game, which covers: How to create your character, the hud (I does not atualy show the icons, just where they will appear), The action command menu, what different coloured names mean, healing, equiping yourself, how to attack, joining a party, how to use a bazar and ah, mog house, macros and how to log out.

This might seem like a lot but each decription is only a few sentences long. For example the macro description just tells you how to get to the macro menu and how to use them, nothing about writing them. No mention of mentors.

That's what the FFXI online manual for, it's gives a great detail of infomation about the game. The last time I checked, they haven't updated it for ToAG.