I can’t play video games next couple of days (or possibly weeks) because of the wrist injury so I thought I’d try my hand at coaching. I’m not really sure where to start so I thought I’d post a topic to ask all the lovely people on this forum if they have any tips on how to give useful tips without being too annoying while other people are playing a game.
For context, I played with a stack in competitive most of the time. Few of my friends seemed down to have me observe some quick play games and shotcall as a spectator. I thought this be a good time to work out general dynamic issues we have in our stack.
Dont try to point out every single mistakes people will do. You basicly have to watch the match and came up with some generals things which are done wrong.
You need to find reasons why player might be stuck in his ELO. You have to ask questions too. Sometimes player for example dont play enough of the game to improve, or he has very bad FPS. Or bad settings.
If you do review, try to explain what player did wrong and why is it wrong. I will give you example:
Player will be playing Soldier and he is shooting as bastiong using left click and finishing bastion with rockets. If you tell him to start with rockets, you need to explain why. Its because left click dmg is reduced by armor so you should use rockets to remove armor first. That way you explained what should play do and why.
Also you need to have very good game knowledge, know a lot about heroes, mechanical stuff, animations cancels, counter picks, know where to defend or flanking routes. Basicly a lot of stuff honestly. I suggest you to watch KarQ and his hero videos.
I’d say give advice and point out what a player does wrong, does right, and could have done. I think it’s very important not to act rude and condescending and also to explain why certain decisions are the right ones to make. Otherwise the player will just repeat them again because they aren’t sure what situation calls for what.
If you’re gonna live coach/live shotcall you probably have to work out different concepts that you want the players to work on beforehand, by reviewing replays. That way you’ll just have to remind them about something you’ve already talked about, rather than explaining too mind consuming stuff while they’re pressured.
Ah! Finally, reading all the wiki pages like a nerd and watching every KarQ video the day it comes out will be useful!
This is a really solid piece of advice. I started by spectating two of my buddies in quick play and figured out pretty quickly that pointing out and explaining misplays while they are actively playing a game is is awful. So the current plan is to give general positioning and strategy pointers while spectating and then review misplays later from the replay.
Man, I’m glad my friends put up with my nonsense. Just got doctor’s orders that I have to be off the wrist for at least a week!
I think I should be good here because I play everything, but yeah probably should mostly focus on helping my friends with heroes that I play and they are picking up. That and just general ways-teammates-play-together critiques. I kind of think everyone in a stack should try to review each other’s gameplay just as an exercise to learn each other’s play styles better… I mean, if you want to go way overboard and be a try hard I guess.
Yeah, I believe that there’s about zeropointzero living people in this world who can do a good job while multitasking, so I figured as much
But yeah, working on things beforehand so you can just boil down concepts into a few code words is probably the way to go. Keeping the list of concepts to practice fairly short probably helps too, cuz deliberate practice is good practice, and I don’t think people are capable of taking in too much stuff at once.
I bet your friends are gonna have a blast with your nonsense tho!
