Idea - Player Coaching

I was playing a game in the weekend and a annihilated player started to give tips on economy building and base layout to a few people which got me thinking about a coaching slot in the game lobby.

The coach would join a team and only be able to see his teams economy and units but would be able to offer advice to develop the players skills. This is technically already possible in team games but 1v1 with a coach could help develop players skills alot quicker.

I remember Galactic war having coaching requirements to rank up to higher levels and this could be something similar to help newer players get up to speed with the game.

Thoughts?

+1

Awesome idea.

How is this different to doing team armies and deleting your comm? Only other way would be to have a 1v1 where the opponent (coach) has full vision of the map and can intentionally push and go easy on a player to stretch/test/teach them.

Coaching, whether officially through the forums or during a game that is clearly south for your opponent, should happen in order to improve the general skill level of the community. We all need to make sure to help develop other players that seem to be having trouble.

On that note, a general chat would be awesome to hang out in and chat after games.

Had a player take me under their wing in TA, bosh was his name. Wow.. I still remeber that lol. He taught me about the power of the turtle on metal maps... Dragon teeth + punishers.. wow.

I think what you are suggesting is adding in the function of an Observer position that would be locked to a team.
My first thought was why bother?
But now that I'm giving it some serious consideration, this is a really cool idea!
It could really help newbies out!

Having the coach "in-game" would be a huuuge benefit over just watching it on livestream.
They can pan, zoom and keep an eye on the map.
Especially since this game looks to be fought on many fronts, this will help train up players to manage their armies.


Also depending on the "player communication tools" available in the GUI, this can allow the coach to be like
"attack this" and ping it
"stop your army here" and leave in a persistent map marker
"send army here, then approach this way to avoid being spotted", drawn directly on the map!



Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe most of the coding for this would already be in place if PA has the tools for livecasting?
The only differences
- Communication with the players.
- Limited per team.




In fact,
I think this suggestion could be the start of some serious, serious emergent gameplay.
Imagine if Mavor hits his goal of 1 million units in the game engine.
Maybe we can have a 10v10 in a map with 10 planets.
This would be total chaos right?

Yes and no.
Imagine if we had an assigned role of "Commander".
They are crippled and cannot actually play the game.
They would direct only.
Ping stuff, talk, coordinate.
With 9 other players on their team, this would actually be an optimal use of gameplay.

I think your suggestion just brought about a very large scale use.
Something like this could become the Seton's Clutch of PA.





One more thought about making this game more newb friendly.
It would be really cool to see a [TRAINING] button in the Main Menu.
It takes you to the newbie chat channel.
It would link to community coaches similar to FAF's "trainer team"
http://www.faforever.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1614


Preferably with Mumble support.

If you have a coaching slot for your team you would be able to play against opponents without coaches and not unbalance the teams.

The 1v1 idea could work but I think it would be hard work for the coach having to swap back and forth between bases on a spherical map

Written far better than I ever could have done, thanks!

I think we have to remember that Uber isn't a huge dev.
They cannot implement every single dream feature we have.

But if the community can dream up some simple tools for them to build, them maybe the community can help populate those tools and put them to proper use.
I have really high expectations for this game , but thus far, Uber has not failed to live up to them.

There is currently an unoffical IRC channel that you can go to. A lot of good players hang out there and talk before and after matches. Here is a link to a web client. http://www.esper.net/publicirc.php Channel planetaryannihilation.

I highly recommend this, lots of great players talking about matches and tactics, you also can get matches vs players that wish to get better, and then have a place to talk about the map

It has really improved my game in just the week i have known about it

there is no doubt this is what Jon Mavor had in mind. Do you know about Natural Selection 2?

I don't mind coaching people. It's fun. I remember long ago back in alpha I took a fresh faced neptunio out from the gutter and moulded him into a king. King of the alpha that is.

The best way to teach is by looking at the players stats using pa stats. He can also stream on twitch. My first advice for serious players is always get pa stats and cola Colin's key mapper.

I found that I only got better when I was coached. I would look at every game I played in alpha and found what I did wrong and try to fix it next time. But then I died in a battle where the enemy somehow had 20 vehicle factories. I was a noob turtle, this was inconcievable.

After the battle, we talked about how he did that. Apparantly, in the grand scheme of things, spamming t1 was relatively cheap. Instead of rushing t2, having one factory with a bunch of fabricators assisting, etc. I could expand like a giant amoeba across the continent. This was a turning point, and I proceeded to use this to win the next 5 games: my first 5 wins ever.

Coaching is extremely powerful for new players. If Uber can implement something like that, they might just build a door in the tall, thick wall that is the skill barrier between newbies and competitive players.

This.

Being a pessimist, I think you'd need to have the option to block a "coach" also, as there are some that could abuse this massive power for their own entertainment....

That's not a problem, having an all-seeing observer/coach/caster spot would be clearly labelled as such.

I think Ringworm is referring to people being a "coach" in the newbies section and griefing and such.
I trust that the community will police itself.

Honestly, although the idea is a good one, I believe that most players looking to seriously improve at this game will head straight to the game forums. Which means we'll find them here. I don't think having an in-game system is wholly necessary, for that reason.

Just my pfennig's worth.

Still, even a mediocre hands-on coaching specific to the match can be worth more than the most comprehensive guide/video on the internet. "You should have sent these units into the back, which you already scouted and saw was relatively undefended" is better than "Yeah everyone should send units to less fortified sides of the base".