Problem w/ noobs, nipping the problem in the bud...Follow

B-but then they ask a million questions right when you have the urge to go do something else. ; ;

/mentor off
/mentor off!
/mentor off!!

ok i hit lv 30 a while back and i gladly joined the mentor program. i helped some good noobs like jabberwocky and others i cant remember, but now i havent turned my mentor status on because these noobs think mentor means free gil or power level. i dont know what ever happend to the good noobs, now noobs want it all free, and worst of all THEY DONT LISTEN.

I know the feeling, man. now get online and play! :P

i'm only complaining bc i've been stuck at lvl 33 for like a week. it sucks. lol

i am getting annoyed that maintenance keeps happening on my days off too.
*sigh* such is life i guess.


Edited, Tue Sep 14 10:19:20 2004 by TaruMistressshadow

When i started playing during the october release, I personally didn't mind newbies since I was one myself. Later on, i learned skilled chains, magic burstings and many other things to make parties more effective, including what jobs to invite for a decently rounded party that could chain even without a whm.

Next, I unlocked all the advance jobs, except for drk,pal and bst, since i'm definate i'll never be playing these. I started lvling my subs, then my advance jobs for fun, then another advance job. That was back then last year. English players were facing heavy discrimination from Japanese players in party invites because we are relatively poorly equiped and ignorant to the mechanics of the game.


Most of the parties that I created or led in Valk,Qufim, Kazam or Crawlers contained lots of newbs that had no idea how skill chains work or how to function effectively through teamwork. I would take my time to explain over and over and over. Sometimes I feel like giving up, well actually I did in a way. Not accepting invites, but forming parties of my own with players I am certain won't play badly. It was selfish in a way for me to do that for I had deprive other players the chance and experience to have fun and learn to play better at the same time. I just wasn't in the mood then to do that as I, admittedly, was on a race to 75.


Initially, i thought to myself "Hey, I'm getting invites from japanese players too, maybe because i'm a red mage, but I'm learning A LOT from partying with them and exp is incredibly fast. Think i'll stick to partying with Japanese players." I got 5 lvls in under 3 hours in Maze with a jp party, 2 lvls in 2 hours outside Norg with a jp party (odd ehh, even now, no one exps there). Jps have lots of other cool exping spots that are fast and yet almost unknown to the general public. In any case, I get a decent flow of invites from them. However, I have to play my best with my past EQ experience and be extremely polite and generous with them. Offering to pass on keys and drops since they are doing me a huge favour inviting me in the first place for massive experience both in char and gameplay.


It still stands as a fact that partying with either has its cons and pros at that time. Sometimes, I simply form my own party with mostly english players. Usually 1 or 2 jps too to fill in the slot. Exp is as fast as possible and everyone is happy. There are occassional newbie players that have trouble accessing to all the knowledge required and it isn't their fault really. I feel that it is our duty to teach them, just like how our knowledge of this game was imparted to us by the older players.
When you start to form parties all the time, you will NOT always find the dependable ones or veterans available. (Rank 4+ for english players was extremely rare back then when things just started)

Thus, newbies will always be invited and it is your job to persuade them to play the way that is most effective. Your persuasive ability comes into test here. If you manage to get the new/poor player to do exactly what he is asked to, most probably he is an experienced mmorpg gamer or you had convinced him well enough. Stubborn players are never absent, but there is always a trick to them. Try to be subtle and let them understand through experience of a few tests for them to verify themselves.
The worst thing you could do, and most likely would if you aren't patient, is to ingrain them with all the knowledge that they need with some explanation at one go. That would cause most newbies to be a little confused and /nod in fear of being embarressed, and proud ones to think you are some smartass/dictator of sorts. Resort to advices, not commands unless it is truely required. Slowly, but surely, he'll learn to adapt to your methods and the party exp will start to roll.


The above may sound troublesome but it is quite neccessary for a party leader to enable almost any combination of a pickup party to function to its very limit, just like how jps party out of the cookie cutter's norm, no whm, no tanks, and still exp is chaining #5 or #6s. All that has been mentioned has been seen, experienced, tried and tested. All the ideas of maximising party effectiveness with or without the normal pty setup of whm/tanks should be credited to the different japanese players back then 11 months ago that had graciously invited me to join them repeatedly.


This is a little story back then in Valk :

I have had parties without vokers, 3 mages, 2 ninjas and a bard. Yes both ninjas didn't have voke, but like playing a game of chess, you make do with what you have at hand. Initially, everyone but the ninjas and me believed that we can get decent exp. I was puller, and raked them chains, followed by occassional 200+ IT chains and such. Exp was at least as good as normal cookie cutter parties, or perhaps, if I may say better. As a party leader, It is wise to always have someone in mind as a replacement, never to worry if someone is going to leave suddenly so that the party doesn't need to wait aimlessly for someone to pop up.


The real flaw with the foregoing is the judgement of the party leader. As you can see, he is taking lots of risky decisions in
-the party setup,
-where to hunt,
-mobs to kill,
-time to kill,
-rest time,
-if party is rdy for a chain or can handle an add
-which job to replace,
-to keep the player or not if he is affecting the pt experience,
-to hopefully persuade the newbie into the right path and style suitable for the party,
-to try new ways of teamplay different from the norm,
-to handle silly disputes and arguements against you or between members of the party which have the potential of destroying the teamwork or the party itself.
-a replacement for oneself to keep the party going.

So if anything goes wrong or is not within your calculations, all blame will fall on you and sometimes you will be called a newb. Well, **** does happen as we all know and minimising the loss is the best we can do. The above is an exhaustive explainations of the responsibilities of a pt leader of which includes educating newbies for benefit of the player and the party itself.


I'll derail from full party setups for a moment to brief on a smaller scale party. A 2 player party in this case with two examples.

First-
I was playing a rdm/blm and partied with a monk in Valkurms with no one else in the region suitable to join us at that moment. I'd tell him to get even and tough crabs/hares so we could get some decent exp. Exp was just alright, not that amazing. A few chain 1-2#, but its still better than nothing. At that moment, I thought to myself. "Monk, a decent melee, coupled with a healer/melee/debuffer and the best we can get is chain 1-2 for 136+ exp. This has to be the limit for our job/gears, there was no better strategy or tactic that I could suggest." This lasted for a while and we got our lvl, he headed to sandoria and I continued to find try to form another party.

Second-
Following that, I created a party with some melee, whm, mages, a full party basicly and party was rolling like normal. However after 2 hours or so, some player lvled and left. There was no replacement and in the end, only a galka warrior and me was left. We were both lvl 18 if memory serves well. I suggested a partner exping party with hares, crabs and goblins. He pulls and I med and stuff. It started off being, NO exp chain, 100 exp for even and a hard time trying to kill tough. Initially, I thought to myself "Well, a monk does more dmg than warriors, perhaps this is the limit, I can't expect this to be as good as the previous monk setup I had." I personally feel that he has the same thoughts as I did, that Rdm+War can't exp well. But guese what? I decided to improve on every aspect of our fight, replicating the manner dual exping is done in EQ,
-letting him use Weapon skills if i'm not ready since i need to med. Like (Galk only, Galk + me, Galk only, Galk + me etc..).
-calculating his pulling time and saying ready in advance with that timer in mind.
-face a direction to check an area of spawns to see if there are evens or toughs available.
-better party communications, telling him Tp often, sightings of even/tough, readiness, pulling even/tough with a report macro if I realise he is slow/having trouble in continuing the chain.
-have him not use Voke until I am at 60-70% hp since I will be in healing mode to heal up.(This helped tons really)
-telling him to save tp if monster is dying or it won't be as beneficial in the current fight.
-debuffs, para+dia land fast before and at the start as he reports incoming and I simply use /assist macro to target and cast on it.
-Skill chains are always done perfectly and magic bursts on my part.

8 Alterations to our previous effort. So what did we get? 4# chains up to 181 exp and lvl 20. Thats right, in a few hours we got 2 lvls. Better than an average valk pickup party with all kinds of issues. The galk replied "Wow, I was truely confused at the beginning, playing the normal way in exp parties. Until later on I started to figure out how things work now. I never expected the exp to go this well." Same on my part. That player was a newbie and so was I, but he seriously has potential to become a really good player in the future. It is these kinds of players that I take note of. For they, in future, will bring you the ultimate elite party setup, not in job choices, but skilled players. Pardon me for forgetting his name. I'm sure if he reads this thread here, but i'm sure he'll remember about this little incident. All I can remember about him was that he idolised a japanese samurai that was really good in pulling and says only one thing "ok pulling". =P


Being a newbie is experienced by everyone at any time. It is not a temporary matter for even at lvl 75 could be a newbie when it comes to certain quests or crafts. We are all learning and playing. I have no idea how well mentoring works, but I assume that newbies are abusing them more than they should =/, not learning things the hard way. Well in any case, I'll just conclude that newbies have the potential to be just like one of us or even surpass us in future. Teach them as you see fit, but don't always expect them to learn as fast as robots. Different people have different learning speeds and sometimes the problem lies in your explaination or persuasive abilities.

(I'm keeping this in Lakshmi, since I perceive that posts here don't get judged and flamed like crazy in the Main topic. Furthermore, not being a pious follower of the cookie-cutter setup would bring unnecessary arguements.)

p.s. My views on party making/leading is just a personal opinion. The main focus lies on the relation between the leader and the newbie. In fact the leader can be called newbie himself for he is never perfect and always contemplating or experimenting new theories and ideas.


Edited, Thu Sep 23 08:31:41 2004 by DerakertheVindicator

I was going to camp the bastok newb spawnpoint in port on euro release and hand out wax sword+1s, but I got the date wrong.
:(