Raid Coach

[Golden Yak]

Saw this on the main news page.

The team doesn't have plans to add a spectator mode for raids right now. There is a concern that guilds would recruit a coach and their role is to watch and direct the raid rather than play the game.

Raid coach actually sounds awesome, why is that a bad idea?

[Deleted]

Saw this on the main news page.



Raid coach actually sounds awesome, why is that a bad idea?

Encounters would increase in complexity because someone outside the raid would do the raid leading and would no longer need to be mindful of mechanics+ have a full raid overview. Some guilds would easily find a raid coach, others not so much causing balance issues.

[Tapzer]

Even if spectator raids became a thing, they couldnt have the raid coach have a live view of the fight. In any other sport/game as a coach you cant really instruct your team until the play/game is over. So it would have to be the same for wow.

[Restors]

Even if spectator raids became a thing, they couldnt have the raid coach have a live view of the fight. In any other sport/game as a coach you cant really instruct your team until the play/game is over. So it would have to be the same for wow.

Who says spectator mode would cause delay in WOW? Like the spectator mode in PVP that WOW tournaments uses for commentary, i don't see why such thing couldn't exist in PVE with no delay.

[Tapzer]

Who says spectator mode would cause delay in WOW? Like the spectator mode in PVP that WOW tournaments uses for commentary, i don't see why such thing couldn't exist in PVE with no delay.

As Aladya above me stated, then it would almost be required to have a raid coach at that point. Which then would also change how encounters are balanced in terms of mechanics. I never said it couldnt exist, but a live feed just isnt smart on blizzards end.

[Qualia]

Who says spectator mode would cause delay in WOW? Like the spectator mode in PVP that WOW tournaments uses for commentary, i don't see why such thing couldn't exist in PVE with no delay.

From how I interpret it, he didn't mean spectator mode for coach would cause a delay in WoW, but that it should be implemented as such. In other games / e-sport and even sport to some lesser extent, coaches can't instruct the team every single moves during a play until the specific play or sometimes, the game is over. He wanted it to be the same for WoW. To be fair, that makes sense, otherwise Blizzard would have a headache in adjusting the difficulty taking coaches into account - a group with a coach would have significant advantage over a group without. Either the encounter will be really easy mechanic-wise for a group with a good coach, or damn hard for a group without one.

[TehTemplar]

Because having an overview of an entire fight without having to worry about yourself isn't the point of the game. Would lead to someone just sitting there floating about raid leading instead of being involved with the fight. Having a delay would mean spectator mode would be possible without it being abused for guild benefit.

In order to introduce delay, you'll have to record the footage, so no, can't happen. There are streams, for people that want to spectate.

[Etselion]

Sounds boring.

[Deleted]

You could basically have a "raid coach" like that now, I would've thought? They just wouldn't be able to watch the fight live (since there's always a delay on streams etc) but they could still provide feedback and instructions for raiders after a wipe. What you're asking for is a raid leader who isn't actually participating in the fight... but yeah, I don't think that would be so fun.

[Dilemma90]

I'm not against it, just have mythic open to 21 slots, and turn into a "ghost" sorta character that can float around.

i dont see it happening as wow is a casual game, and this is a very hardcore mechanic that is being used in top tier competitive e-sports games.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I have my doubts. Sure at really high ends this might be an interesting thing for them to play with but for 99% of the player base most people wouldn't want to be a coach that just logs in to read DMB out to people and direct a herd of cats. Sure you have raid leaders now but they still get to play the game, they still get to do the encounters, and they still get rewarded from beating the content. An observer would be doing it just to direct traffic and that seems very under rewarding. Very not interesting. In other words boaring to a TON of people. Not to say a few people wouldnt get a raging hard on for it but most? Yeah. Not that great.

[Deleted]

A coach in an online teamwork game?

Blasphemy!

But seriously though, this is not a problem. It is the norm for serious online co-op games to have coaches, mostly in pvp games tho.
You dont see companies worried about LoL, Overwatch or Dota coaches do you? They are not part of the fight, and they are not allowed to instruct midgame, they are there to give advice and help players become better between games.

And lets just say guilds hire a coach to spectate fights? Only the very top guilds are gonna do that, it wont harm 99,9% of all guilds.
Lets even say coaches become the norm in mythic raiding, then what is the problem? They are interacting with the game in the form of connecting players and the environment with each other, they become an actual raid leader.

In all great military strategy, you dont send all your officers and generals into the front line. You have a tactical command that constantly re-assess the situation.
And i am sure there are plenty of people willing to do this. Right now its just officers and the RL usually doing it instead of one top down, but the only difference is you could have a extra ghost player.

But if they introduce a spectate function i do however think they should do it delayed, just so everyone are happy and coaches are there for the post-raid analysis.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

A coach in an online teamwork game?

Blasphemy!

But seriously though, this is not a problem. It is the norm for serious online co-op games to have coaches, mostly in pvp games tho.
You dont see companies worried about LoL, Overwatch or Dota coaches do you? They are not part of the fight, and they are not allowed to instruct midgame, they are there to give advice and help players become better between games.

And lets just say guilds hire a coach to spectate fights? Only the very top guilds are gonna do that, it wont harm 99,9% of all guilds.
Lets even say coaches become the norm in mythic raiding, then what is the problem? They are interacting with the game in the form of connecting players and the environment with each other, they become an actual raid leader.

In all great military strategy, you dont send all your officers and generals into the front line. You have a tactical command that constantly re-assess the situation.
And i am sure there are plenty of people willing to do this. Right now its just officers and the RL usually doing it instead of one top down, but the only difference is you could have a extra ghost player.

But if they introduce a spectate function i do however think they should do it delayed, just so everyone are happy and coaches are there for the post-raid analysis.

I think coachs exsist in games like LoL, Overwatch, or Dota because money is involved. I know some SC2 coachs that were paid 50-60 bucks an hour. Key word is money. People wanted to be coached because they could earn money by winning tournments and events. In WoW that money train is next to non-existant. Like I wouldn't doubt if coaches exsist in arena teams because you do have a legit chance to win money.

Also these pretty much already exisits. You can just stream the raid and record it. So the coach can watch as the raid unfolds and make notes where things have gone wrong. Who was making mistakes. Listening to communications. Same with post video production to show people where things went wrong. Even several streams at once where you have one focused on melee, one on ranged, etc etc etc. If you could staff these positions sure, awsome, a 1%er thing that I wouldn't doubt is happening on some levels already.

But a feature you take time and money to invest into? Seems like a stretch.

[Aoyi]

This is actually something that got brought up every time someone mentioned spectator raiding. In the past, Blizzard said they might get around that by having a delay on spectator mode so those spectating couldn't do call outs in real time. If they did get the delay figured out, I'm sure its possible, but with Twitch today (or similar services), I don't see as much of a need. Those who want to be spectated have broadcasting software already. Those world first guilds though aren't going to let you watch them until they are on farm.

[Golden Yak]

It would be soooo hard to put in a 2 second delay for spectator mode...

XD

*Everyone wipes*
2 seconds later - "Everyone look out! Fire!"

[Deleted]

don't care about (pseudo) live spectating but an actual replay mode that's not bound to your own perspective would be pretty cool

[hulkgor]

Saw this on the main news page.



Raid coach actually sounds awesome, why is that a bad idea?

Raid Leaders are already a thing?

[Bonkura]

Would've been a great opportunity for Kungen to make a comeback in the role he always wanted instead of occupying a raid spot.

[Golden Yak]

Raid Leaders are already a thing?

Not what we're talking about.

[Alaexaender]

I think the concern is people getting put "on a raid team" as a pure raid coach, in exchange for being carried through the instance once it's more on farm. This would allow them to make calls, meaning fights would need to be complex, and high end raiders would not need to be as aware. This would make things even worse for lower guilds, who didn't have a coach.

The key part is why a short delay wouldn't work. There are a lot of issues which pop up during a raid which you have plenty of time to correct. These include if a healer needs to use a key cooldown before the assigned mechanic, or if a designated soaker dies early. Not needing to worry about this would greatly help the RL.