ive watched a few of the newbie mix's from various streamers and the topic of configs doesnt get mentioned a whole lot.

http://fakkelbrigade.eu/chris/configs/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQfvyjGjhMg

I'm trying to organize mixes but I can't seem to keep priority speaker. Walka told me he has the same problem.

Not sure if it's someone who's trolling or a glitch with the server.

I DUNNO ASK TRAGIC (and by that I mean I'll bring it up next time I see him)

Also we need coaches so bad. Here's what I ask of coaches:

1) Come PUG.
2) Play a class that's not your main (unless you are med) so you don't blatantly carry.
3) Main call.
4) Answer any questions a new person asks you.

It's actually really goddamn easy and most ESEA players with 2+ seasons can do it. Please help keep this game going guys.

i played a few tonight, im not going to anymore not to be arrogant or w/e you kids think i am but i wish there was something identical for open players/multiple ugc seasons

#tf2mix

#tf2.pug.na, tf2lobby, I'm in 3 private PUG groups for players of this level, and I have my own pug group that is 200 people just from word of mouth.

It's not hard to play pugs if you are open level. It's pretty hard on the other hand if you've been a douche to the tf2 community and estranged almost every player you've been on a team with.

No not pug na

Message i got from a newbie

To be honest, this wasn't a great experience for me. I would consider myself a noob, but I know how to play, so I wanted to see how competitive would be. When I joined, I chose medic, and the coaches taught me the medic heal order, and that's it. So when I joined, I healed the demo, then a scout if I saw one, and I stuck with my roamer. When my roamer was building uber, our demo called out for me, and I rushed over there, for only my roamer to yell at me to stay to build uber. After incidents like that happened a couple times, my coach and roamer told me to spectate. After the game, another coach joined, (His name was just a bunch of 1's and 0's) He yelled at the other coaches for making me spectate, argued it was a NoobieMix, and you don't have to know how to play comp 6's if you joined one. After everyone else left, he taught me thuroghly how to play medic, and nicely too. After that, I had to go. He was a great coach, but the others weren't so helpful. TL;DR: My coaches yelled at me for unknown reasons, told me to spectate, and then later, one coach helped me out in a private match.

why did this happen and who were the coaches involved?? This is why we need better coaches.

101010 or whatever was ufy and I got a couple of similar messages from people and I sent it over to Vick. This is one the things that kinda upsets me. If you're going to be a douchebag and not be helpful why even bother coming to coach. I don't understand why some players feel they have be like that towards people from newbie mix. I've played and met some of the nicest people in newbie mix who just want to have some fun and are around for the experience of having better players help them not yell at them. If anybody knows who the coaches were are acting like this let me know because it's unacceptable. And G1 do you have that guy on steam?

i understand that both of those things exist and i play in a pug group already what i want is a pug group where some im+ players will sit down with us and coach a bit i don't see how people get that mixed up.

im like mid open would i be able to coach?

that shit makes me rage. euphy is such a downer. i might not be the best coach but i sincerely try to teach everyone the basics of midfights and pushing before starting mixes. I've been hearing a lot of "Hey Preston, this is really cool.. none of the other coaches are teaching us stuff like this. We kind of just play while they call"

This is wrong.

These mixes aren't for open players to pug stomp in. They should be aimed at helping the newer players learn the game.

There's been a downward trend in quality coaches. No offense to a lot of the coaches that are coming out, but there are a number I'm seeing that don't understand the uber meta, pressing advantages, or breaking stalemates. We should hold the coaching standard a little higher because randoms like euphy are slipping into the coaches channel. How awful is that?

I thought he said that euphy was the one who actually helped him though?

either way what you said is probably correct regarding making sure coaches are suited for this

if euphy was genuinely helping someone, then I retract what I said about him. I've just gotten a realllllly bad vibe from him because he talks a lot of shit and ruins pugs. sorry, euf.

Still think there needs to be more IM+ coaches

I don't think Eupphy was being complained about, and i don't think he got to play a lot i personally loaded up every other coach i possibly could before putting him in there.(he eventually just went and played Dota because he never got to play.)

As for the complaints it's kind of hard to be sure it may have been about me; because, i let some of the teams do their own calling(because they need to learn it eventually, and they sure as hell won't get the chance in #mix) and it some times leads to a mess up in comms, and a demo getting swallowed at choke when he would of been just fine.

I played my first match in 6s format during the Newbie Mix. First off, I want to thank all of the coaches and Vick especially for putting this on. It's a great opportunity, and just what the community needs.
Here's my feedback.
I was only able to play one match, so I don't know how valuable this will be. Computer issues and all that. Anyways, we were rolled 5-0. We lost every mid within a couple of seconds, and every single match they just rolled on to our last. Some matches we didn't even get a single kill. Now, I understand that there's not a whole lot you can do about that. By its very nature, the Newbie Mixes are filled with players of unknown calibre, making forming balanced teams almost impossible. I wasn't particularly offput by it, I know I'm terrible and my computer wasn't helping anyways, but people who don't have very much knowledge of 6s, people who don't have as much of an investment in the community as I do, might be discouraged by something like that. It's not the fault of the coaches, obviously. We didn't get much feedback on our play, although with the way our game went, the only criticisms that could be made were "Learn your rollouts, have better DM." As a scout, I would show up to mid and find myself the only one there. The entire other team would be on the point shortly after I arrived, and then for whatever reason no one from my team would come out to contest. This wasn't a planned strat, either. But like I said, not a whole lot you can do about the wildly varying skill differentials.

Overall, it was a fun and positive learning experience and I really hope to see more of these in the future when I get my computer fixed and will be able to participate more. Thanks again!

In order to understand what went on with that medic we need to know the side of the coach who was there. Medic is the one class that can completely ruin the newbie mix for the other players and if the medic is completely lost and NOT listening to the coach then I think it's not a problem to tell the guy he should spectate for a little while before he plays anymore medic. He owes that to the people he plays with. The other classes can be compensated for. My view of the Newbie Mixes have always been that they are here to help and teach people how to play 6s properly not just let people play in random PUGs. Its not fair to the other players if everyone is playing the mix trying to learn while listening to the coach and you have someone just wanting to play and do their own thing.

I am curious at how euphy got involved in that situation? How did he randomly detect that there was an issue in a random mix and join to yell at the other coaches? The other coaches didn't try to help the guy at all after the mix and euphy was the only one to swoop in to the rescue?

The only way we can help better the quality of the coaching is if we encourage the Newbie Mix players to give some feedback on the coaches they are playing with so we can start to weed out the bad coaches or elevate the better coaches. It's great that euphy helped in this one instance but personally I think euphy is the type of player who should not be coaching. The guy has little to no real league experience and really doesnt know what he is talking about.

I'm really glad these issues are finally being brought up. For the first 2-3 weeks I didn't hear anything from newbies or coaches, and it's really hard to figure out how these are going without feedback. I strongly encourage people to keep posting here, or on the discussion forums on the group page, and please tell the people you mentor to do the same.

A couple of issues here:

1) I message mostly IM+ mentors and the reason we don't have all IM+ is because these guys simply don't show up. This is not to say that we don't have IM+ coaches, it's just to say that we pretty much only have half the number we need. The ratio of IM+ coaches to new players right now is usually around 1:15 or 1:30. This is impossible to manage with only IM+ coaches which is the reason that we are getting people under IM playing.

2) I want to start getting a coaches mentoring session going where we help teach people how to coach. Some people like Shwan, BD, preston have been doing this for a while and I've gotten really good feedback about and if you need help learning how to coach better, please feel free to approach them or me about any questions you might have. A lot of times these are run in such a way that coaches are put into situations that they can't coach well under (ie from last night, putting blinky on pocket soldier and he just went like 45:10 and wasn't able to teach people anything). We need coaches to step back and try to delegate work, not do it themselves, which is far different than the way most actually play.

3) I regrettably have not been able to manage these much since I have personal obligations on friday and saturday nights sometimes, so I can't even speak at all to how these are getting managed. I am grateful of course to all those who help, but at the same time, I've gotten numerous complaints and I'm not sure what I can do about these short of managing them myself. The problem is that I can't devote 30 hours a week to this and we need more coaches, more mentors, and more people willing to take admin and organize pugs to come into these channels. My ideal vision for this is that we have a group of coaches that are all taught to coach and have spent 1-2 nights working with experienced coaches on how to make these pugs better. Ideally, every coach would have admin and just pull 12 people into a pug on their own and start these things. This way if a coach wants to play, they can manage it themselves. Tragic has provided us all we need to do this, and I think its easily attainable.

4) Duder, eXtine and I have all been talking and we're going to try to cast next friday. This means that we need 4 coaches per 10 newbies. I think that this number is probably not possible, but we should try as hard as we can to get it as close as possible :)

5) Please message me and bug me if you have issues about the newbie mix, I will deal with anything that is brought to me.

Sorry for posting a novel, but there are a lot of things being said here and I'm trying to manage them all.

The only reason I can think of to bench a player in these is if they're trolling the game... but in my experience in all of these I've played, this has never happened, people just don't know what they're doing (of course). I played one of these where my team just wouldn't listen and got caught by uber disadvantages probably 10 times, even when I spent the 20s prior to us getting caught telling them that they have to stand behind me and watching them walk forward to die. It's a little frustrating, sure, but after 27 minutes of constantly getting caught, they finally took the right position once, so I viewed it as a success.

With respect to coaching, it's really easy and usually quite fun. Just call what you normally do in game and add in more reasoning -- "back up here" -> "because they have numbers", "push into them" -> "their medic just spawned, they don't have buffs and we do", etc.

Let's make this night much better than last night. I won't give into peer pressure tonight, so we're already part of the way there.

Is there a way I can sign up as a coach? I remember a lobby where the opposing demoman asked me after the game to teach him how to rollout on badlands. We spent around 20 minutes just ironing out sticky placement and timing. He hit his first window jump and it was basically the best feeling ever. I'd like to do more things like that.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/newbiemixcoaches

or hit up vick from 19

Newb Medic here, my coaches from last night

pie/eldritch/hooli/sean: These guys yelled at me consistently for every mistake I made (Wonko, you need to flash! Medic I need a buff NOW!, MEDIC DON'T HEAL ME DURING ROLLOUT!, DAMNIT MEDIC I SAID FLASH ME! MEDIC!!!) I don't make many mistakes, but when I do I need to fix them immediately, and if I hear stuff like "Medic what the hell are you doing?" I recognize instantly that I am doing something wrong. These 4 were scouts/roamers so the biggest coaching handicap they had was not being able to watch the play of the medic/pocket/demo for most of the game.
In post op I made sure to ask if there was anything I could do better, and if the coach was a scout my demo or pocket would always give feedback. These coaches weren't able to give everyone a case by case review, but all of them managed to describe the overall flow of the game, sort of like a spectator, which was very helpful.

The best coaches were the ones who would discuss everything they saw, every tiny detail is important to players like me, so post op talk helps a lot. There was one game when Black Dynamite rolled us, and my coach left the chat the second the round ended. Don't do that. Then there was the last game where I played Black Dynamite again, and afterwards he(or pie) joined both chat channels for discussion: do that. The best way to learn is to ask the person who just rolled you 'what the hell can I do better?'. All the coaches are different, but they seemed to do two things the same. First, most of them were taking a hands off approach to calling, opting to help in dire situations only. Second, they answered every question asked. I have yet to play a game where a coach flat out refused to answer a question.

Anyways, I died 15 times my first game last night and without the helpful yelling of the coaches I would never have been able to cut that number down to 5.

Edit When I say yelling, I mean yelling in the sense of a football coach "WONKO FALL BACK!", yelling like that helps keep me focused on exactly what I need to be doing. I don't think I've heard anyone actually scream during a game.

Thanks for the response WONKO, I'll try to inform them to give more reasoning to their calls(if time is permitting, since if they're trying to abuse a 10 second window spending 7 seconds half playing half explaining, isn't very productive.)

As for them not being pleasant I'm not sure... Eldritch is a very nice guy(IMO). You have to give them a bit of a break when testosterone is pumping and you're in the game people may get quite a bit vocal, and they might of had to yell to be heard over other teammates or to keep everyone in line as to what the team is doing.

But i wasn't there, so i really can't say what may of caused such actions or comments from them.

EDIT it originally looked like i was saying Eldritch might not be nice.

Games starting now. we need coaches. if youre not sure if youre experienced enough to coach join the mumble and ask the other coaches.

chi2.tragicservers.com: 64738

Ye I just mute people when I get annoyed with them now so I'm less of a douchebag to idiots and I'm nice to the newbie mix players because they don't know any better might as well teach them instead of yell at them and make them sit out.

And my mumble name is litterally "@^T QGW)S(RGH#Q$TR_)(Zvhfdogjv-39q40otgh rF@#$)YT(ERUJGFniog30948egodhfb #$)Y* (Efghdnb9058ytp3hw4e9 s8bfyhu- 9348thwgf) Q#@$)^ @#_$^I)#@$" so everytime I join I pick a new name, I like to keep the variation but I was the 101011 person

From what I've seen some of the coaches shouldn't be allowed not only due to their knowledge of the game but their attitude (IRONIC ISNT IT HUEHUEEH)

I'm sorry to hear that that you got yelled at by some of the coaches.

But try to understand it from the coaches view too. They are volunteers who are there to help newbies and some coaches have commented that players who ignore the coaches and troll around doing their own thing are often the most frustrating to deal with. One coach, for example, commented that just because she's a girl newbies will often completely ignore what she says and just argue nonstop about stuff.

While this still does not justify the yelling (especially if the newbie the yelling was directed at was completely innocent), hopefully you understand where some of the frustration comes from.

Over the past few weeks when I often ran the mixes, there have been several incidents that I can think of where there were trolls who were

a) too good in DM to play in newbie mixes
b) trying to stack teams with their friends/teammates/etc
c) being dicks to everyone else
d) completely ignoring everything coaches were saying in game and just doing their own thing
e) moving around in channels trying to stack teams and hoping that the organizer (me) wouldn't notice
f) moving around in class channels trying to play in front of everyone else
and/or doing other similar things.

Honestly, if you're there to show off your so called amazing DM or whatever, you need to go to #tf2mix. If you're not going to listen to the coaches (and by this I mean you're ignoring the coaches, not trying to do what they say and failing to do so), newbie mixes aren't for you. Newbie mixes exist to HELP THE NEW PLAYERS, not for DM superstars, not for teams. If you have a team, go scrim. Stop trying to stack teams by playing with your teammmates and ruin things for everyone.

Now you see some of the stuff that coaches/organizers have to deal with. It's not exactly all sweet and fun. In fact, I got so ticked off by people moving around for stacking teams/trying to cut in front of other people to play that I started moving people back to their original channels without bothering to talk to them, and I've also muted players who spam channels and annoy the coaches. The problem is that sometimes innocent people DO get moved/muted/whatever with only the good intentions and people complain.

The coaches and organizers aren't perfect, and we have to deal with some things that really frustrate the hell out of us. So try to understand where we're coming from too instead of just complaining nonstop about so and so or whatnot. While we do appreciate constructive criticism, try to understand that dealing with all the trolls means that sometimes the innocent will get affected too, unfortunately.

hopefully my coaching wasn't too awful tonight!
was pretty fun i'll do it again sometime.

yo lemme coach