Mentorship, and advice to mentors

Hailsa and well met!I don't know exactly how this post is going to be received, but here goes nothing:Ever since the Mentor tag was implemented through the mastery system, I have been using it as it was originally intended... as an identifier to new or returning players of the game of how to seek out assistance from someone already in game. In most cases, if a new player sees a mentor tag (or apple tag, Tybalt forever!) on their minimap or in their general field of view, they have the ability to approach the mentor and ask questions about the game, the mechanics, crafting, etc. In the past week, I have noticed, as the mass influx of new players has continued since this past Monday, there have been an increasingly large number of mentors appearing in the starter zones in Tyria, and even some in the Expansion maps of the Crystal Oasis and Verdant Brink. to all of those that have been mentoring over the past week, I want to personally say...THANK YOU.You are a shining example of the fantastic community Guild Wars 2 has to offer everyone who steps into the world of Tyria. If you remember back in the day, we never had such an option... we had to "figure it out", and now, with all the changes and new additions to the game, having Mentors out there that are willing to help other players do the very thing we had to "figure out" for ourselves is amazing... and I encourage everyone to keep up the good work.That said, and mind you, this is not a flame post, I do have a bit of a request.while it is very easy to obtain the mentor tag and use it, I feel that sometimes people use it as what a lot of players are calling a "poor man's commander tag", identifying events and the such. while that's fine and i see no problem with this... calling the mentor tag a "poor man's commander tag" kind of diminishes the concept of what the Mentor tag was originally intended for, from what i remember.When you pop that mentor tag, what you are showing to people in the game is that you are willing to help, willing to give advice, willing to answer questions, and willing to work with other players, which, we seem to do an awesome job. it is kind of detrimental to just "apple up" for the sake of having it and being unwilling to help anyone. Players this week have been very thankful and seemed to absolutely love having mentors around to teach them the basics of the game and there have been moments where people have asked questions and no one was either able to answer or willing to answer and yet there were multiple mentor tags on a map. IMHO this needs to change up a bit.That said, for those of you actually mentoring with the mentor tag....if there is a question you are unable to answer, and you see another mentor, ask them. chances are good the intel can be found quickly.If you are mentoring and you are unable to assist because of a language barrier, don't hesitate to ask if someone in the zone has the ability to translate, because chances are there will be.If there is a disagreement in the starter zones regarding something and you are part of that conversation, as these tend to get heated, could you please tag down, as it doesn't prove the friendliness of this community (quite the contrary). my reason for this is that if a new player sees a bunch of mentors arguing, they will be less likely to ask for help and feel a bit alienated.and finally... i think mentors should be able to have a way of communicating to each other aside from map/party/squad/say/pm chat. like a seperate channel. something that new players could access, even f2p players. this will give new players an easier way of asking questions when they do not have access to map chat, and are unable to initiate conversations via pm. to reduce chat spam, it could be a toggle-able chat channel(call it "newbie" or "mentor" or something).in conclusion, from the bottom of My heart, I wanna once again say THANK YOU to everyone that has mentored this week and will be mentoring in the future.Blessed Be.

I always enable the mentor tag wherever I go. Every once in a while I'll get questions from a new player and I always help them out. Sometimes you get those players that confuse mentors for commanders and yeah, it can be annoying when you have players gathering up at your location when you're only there to mentor new players. Thank you for your compliment on mentors.

I am glad you found some helpful player actually mentoring. Rare bread.In my experience, 99,9999% of players with a mentor tag are using the tag to ask for help (not offer help) or, "help" others find events.At least rename the tag to something other then Mentor, because for the vast majority of use cases it has absolutely nothing to do with mentoring.Or allow the tag only for veteran players, with X number of hours played or X amount of achievement points. You know, someone who might actually know a thing or two about the game.I, for one, am really tired of seeing so called mentors all over the map.I really wish there was an option to turn off mentor tag visibility.

Actually besides the squad-management the Mentor tag is superior to the two cdr tags regarding usability. I frequently activate the Mentor to announce an event and to mark a gathering point (mostly for bounties) or to make an ongoing event visible for players who are too far away. When announcing something in chat all players can easily locate me by hovering over the symbol(s) on the (mini)map thanks to the automatically written "Mentor" before my character name. Commanders do not have this luxury, in chat they appear like any other player, they always have to add that they are cdrs and the color of their tag (if there are more cdrs on the map) - what they surprisingly often do not do but seem to expect it to be crystal clear to every other player on the map who they are. But regarding events they do the same thing mentors do. "Guiding" mostly spares gathering people and making visible where something takes place, at least in Open World PvE with few exceptions like triple trouble or Tequatl.

Few weeks ago I suggested to implement a second color for the Mentor Symbol (green apple?) to also make the mentoring Mentor visually distinct from the Event-Mentor, which should lead to less confusion and to make the player's intentions more obvious. It's not in the game yet and ANet never responded to this suggestion, so I don't know what they think about it. Although I have no problem with questions too, if someone asked me, I always gave answers, but this only happened once in a while in the past and much less likely on higher level or max level maps.

Imo, mentor tag, or even the commander tag, some players just want to indicate their location, in hoping other players come to them to join in for events/battles, which is good and bad in certain ways. Good in the sense that you are helping other players to make them aware there's some events to perform at the spot or maybe there's a rich mining node there or something like that.Bad - I've seen that some times, some maps are just full of mentor tags in 1 location and it is rather pointless because they are just hanging out there doing nothing.But ultimately, imo the tag is just to show there's a player on this location on the map (and moving around), there's all. Think of it as you are using Waze app and you see other Waze users (icon) on the road.

Mentoring is one of my fav things to do in end game lol!

I suggest not only using your tag but starting a LFG in the Mentoring section. I often have something going saying "New or returning? Will try to answer any questions! :)" I've gotten a lot of people coming through that and it's great to help connect people, either a more long term with you as a mentor or new players with one another. I know a lot of people also answer questions in map chat or broadcast that they're willing to help with any questions, but the LFG is definitely a great avenue for anyone not on the same map per se