ok here's whats wrong with that: pockets can completely dm carry a game as much or even more so as a a demo or another class. have the coaches go medic or spec, though i prefer spec to be able to watch everyone at least some of the time. i'm currently coaching/mentoring a team and going spec is 100x more useful than actually playing any other class. the whole idea of actually coaching is not playing the game, rather staying on the sidelines and giving the players tips while they play. defy outlined this perfectly too, don't be too overbearing by telling them EVERYTHING they need to do, rather, let them make most decisions, point out the mistakes, and provide further pointers of alternative options and things they may have not considered doing. what i feel is most wrong about the mixes is that the coaches aren't coaching, but just playing. spec or medic i say, though spec is a lot more helpful for the flank.

If you care to actually read the post you'd know I'm not saying let's tell every newbie to play Sniper.

I'm suggesting that maybe we don't lie to new players and tell them that Sniper is a worthless class, when evidence to the contrary exists at every level of play.

This is the ideal situation for us, and what we want; We do not have enough coaches that are willing to do so. In my response to jaguarfiend, I say that any coaches that wish to spec are not only welcome to, but they are encouraged to do so. The problem with putting a coach on only medic, if he/she doesn't want to spec, and it happens that medic is the coach's main, we have a problem. Drafting the mixes, we prioritize putting less experienced newbies playing a class that the coach mains. That being said it is ok for a medic main to play medic in a newbie mix; It is not like they are going to carry their team of newbies.

If we were to restrict the coaches to only medic, what becomes of the of the newbies added as medic? Of course there will be coaches that will go spec, but the majority of coaches won't. This is a significant loss in play time for the medic newbies. I understand how a coach on pocket can carry as much as a demo, but we can regulate the coaches role as a pocket.

I truely do appreciate your input snacks, but unfortunately there is never a perfect solution; I am doing the best I can. Perhaps you can drop into one of the Newbie mixes and we can here some more feedback :)

You should honestly just have coaches spec, even if you were to have them only play medic they really don't have eyes on everyone the entire game. For example...if the other team decides to do a really aggressive push on the flank of a certain map, if you're on medic and just holding a choke with your solly/demo you really don't know whats going on. If someone dies and you didn't see how you cant really pick the situation apart. Maybe give them an idea of better spots to hold, knowing when to back out and sync up with your team etc etc things like that.

When you're in spec you have eyes on everything that's going on, you can see what your team decides to do in certain situations and how they react to the other teams play. When you toss 1 experienced player in with a bunch of newbs their essentially just in a pug comming, you can only explain so much during the game its self before you clog the comms and just keep blabbing away about what to do. I feel like in spec you're able to give way more insight since you have an overview of the entire game. Essentially it's like a demo review, when someone specs a match/scrim even if its not an stv and a pov they can really say whats going on, what happened in certain situations and how other players reacted things like that.

In what sense are they not willing to do so? do they join up and say no i'm not into that i'd rather play, or are they just not willing to show up and spec at all? You should have stricter guide lines when picking certain coaches if that's the case.

Defy, you're all talk, no action. If you yourself can't coach, please find us 10-20 players who are qualified to coach and are willing to spec games for a couple hours on a weekly basis.

If you want to help, do this. 4 more posts about how speccing>playing isn't really gonna help.

You should look back at my first post referring to the time they choose to do these mixes.

I said I would try to coach again, I'm not always around on the weekend but i think sunday is definitely a better option then friday and saturday.

Also why do you jump the gun and say i'm not helping? I'm giving noona feedback which he clearly needs at the moment. Even if i were to coach next weekend that doesn't mean a bunch of new coaches will magically appear after my suggestions.

There aren't enough coaches as it is, so you can't really pick and choose to the extent you suggest, defy. Stop by the mumble next time it's happening, even if you don't intend to coach, and look at the numbers in each channel.

At any given time there will be 4 or 5 mixes happening, each with 10 players and 2 coaches. In the coaching channel there will be probably 4 coaches added up - two who are organizing and 2 who are in transition/getting ready to play. Below that, there are 4 channels for the newbies to add in, each with 3 sub-channels for skill differences. In each of these sub channels there are between 2 and 6 newbies waiting to play. Call it 8-10 players per class and that's 32-40 newbies sitting around in mumble waiting to play.

Now, I totally agree that there should be standards for coaching, but all these newbies waiting create and overwhelming demand for coaches and it is always better to play the game, even if you're getting bad advice. Organizers would also be foolish to turn those coaches away who are partially there for an ego boost, as they are still showing up to play with inexperienced players on a Friday night.

More importantly, there are different levels of qualification. If you get a team of players who are still working on hitting rollouts and learning names for different areas of the map, a low open player will do just fine. On the other hand, some IM players are not ready to coach a higher-level mix because they don't know how to main call and don't do a good job interacting with the newbies.

Basically, newbie mixes can use all the coaches they can get and a lot of these issues fall more to personal preference than anything. At the end of the day it's better to have newbies playing TF2 than waiting in Mumble, so I appreciate even the trashiest clown I've had the honor of calling "coach" on a Saturday night (shoutout to Thomas the Train).

If you're a relatively inexperienced coach and you're reading this thread and thinking, "Wait, are they calling me bad?" I suggest you watch some of the VODs from the streams of high-level players and make a note of what they do well (or don't do well) when they coach. This could improve not only your coaching but your comms in general.

For example, Brad streamed a couple mixes where he would intentionally miss his rockets, or make his crosshair cover half his screen. He also told his newbies to call the pushes into last rather than just TELLING 5-10 people how to WIN at HIGH LEVELS of TF2. On pocket, Chriz keeps track of his team's heals, specifically asking the flank to buff before a push. Marxist lays very clear rules for each of his players (e.g. scouts should never be the first to die if the team has 6 players up). These are the types of things newbies can take away from a mix and feel like they learned something.

fuck it i'll coach whens the next time these are being played?

Next Saturday night 9-12 EST

The point is as i've noticed over months, people are generally not willing to coach newbie mixes on other days. We've had suggestions for other days before but generally Friday/saturday nights are when most coaches have shown to be available. If you think people are available sunday night or whatever other day you want, find those people and we'll start mixes on those days. But as of now, theres not enough people that want to do them on other days.

The point was that we are already short on coaches. Most coaches don't want to sit in spec and watch. You're saying this is what coaches should do. If you can find people who are willing to do this that would be great. Since October or so, we haven't found many who want to do this.

You're friends with a lot of high level TF2 players. If you can't make it on certain days Maybe you can ask some people you know if they can. That would honestly be the best thing you could do if you're interested in helping out.

The problem is that most of the experienced players are always away over the weekends, and too many of the remaining players have no interest in coaching (Invite Pugs seem to run during Newbie Mixes often). The same problem happens with New Map Pugs. I would host pugs during the week, but everyone is scrimming so no one will come. The same would happen with Newbie Mixes. So we're basically stuck with the lower-level players as far as helping new maps/people go.

I actually try to schedule pugs on days that Newbie Mixes are not happening to get as many high-level players as possible. Sadly, when we have everyone doing their own thing, few high-level players even show up to these things. This will be how it is until the community gets big enough, and we get too many invite players to count that want to coach/test new maps.

While it seems like most people are agreeing with defy, I think he's overlooking a pretty obvious solution. The only real issue with having a coach play on a team, is that they will be a DM carry. If that's the case, why can't the coach just stop trying as hard.

It's easy to take an uber in and do massive damage and gets frags against a bunch of newbies, but it's equally easy to fake a botched uber. When I'm coaching, if my team starts going up too many rounds, or my points/dominations are getting significantly ahead, I simply let myself die more/intentionally miss shots.

If you are bad at a game, you don't have a choice but to be bad. If you are good at a game, you can choose to play badly, it's not complicated. The point of a coaches presence is to be main-calling and explaining the calls that they make.

If a coach can't handle not try-harding in a newbie mix, they simply don't deserve to be coaching; it's not a place to roflstomp on kids. The same applies for returning newbies/experienced "newbies" who really shouldn't be showing up to these any more.

We run these in Australia but not as frequently (called "Icebreaker"). I've participated in quite a few of them and I typically sit in spec, hint at the teams advantages/disadvantages, and ask them how they're going to approach the current situation.

I also try and call what their players are doing for them (since a lot of inexperienced players tend to not say what they are doing), and at the same time remind them that they need to communicate their intentions/what they are doing (without cluttering mumble)

Assuming I'm not doing anything next time this rolls around, I'd like to help out.

I run them every saturday from 9 EST - 12 EST. They are also posted regularly in the tf.tv events section. We would love you to hear your input on how we run them.