Coaching

“

In other games, admitting that you’d like some help playing the game is tantamount to announcing that you’d like to hear all the new horrible insults the kids are using today. Not here. — Coaching publicity blurb

”

Coaching is a game feature added in the March 18, 2011 Patch for the Team Fortress 2 Beta and in the April 14, 2011 Patch for everyone to use. It allows players to be able to call on others for help with certain objectives, or to provide advice and feedback on a person's abilities and gameplay.

A player can volunteer to become a "coach" through use of the headset icon in the main menu. "Students" may place requests for a coach through the whistle icon. After a matching process and authorisation by both players, the coach is automatically connected to the student's server.

Commands

What the coach sees once issued the attack command.

The coach is given access to various commands to be used in educating the student. Note that all of the resulting markers and sounds are only visible to both the coach and the student.

• Pressing primary fire while aiming at an area, object or enemy will select it for attack. A trumpet will sound, an arrow will point over the designated targed, and a HUD display will appear, guiding the student to attack.
• Pressing secondary fire will mark a target for defense. This is accompanied by a drum sound, the arrow will appear, and the HUD will direct the student to defend.
• Pressing the primary weapon button will issue the order Go Here. A whistle sound will play.
• Pressing the secondary weapon button will issue the order Look Here. The sound of a human whistling will play.

Should the attack or defend order be assigned to a moving target, the arrow and HUD will track them in 3D space, ensuring both coach and student are aware of the target at all times.

The outline the coach sees around a healthy "student".

View

The viewpoint of the coach functions similarly to the spectator. They have the choice of a first person, third person or free camera perspective. During free camera, the student is outlined to the coach with a glow similar to the Payload carts and the Intelligence. The color of the glow serves as a visual indicator of the student's health; green indicates the student is healthy, whereas red indicates they are near death.

Update history

March 9, 2011 Patch (Beta)

• Added in-game Coaching system

March 10, 2011 Patch (Beta)

• Fix issue where player loses student status, which prevented them from kicking a coach
• Rate limit coach commands to once per second
• Do not show coaching annotations if they are attached to an object that is NOT the same team as the student, unless the object is in view.
• Fix glow around former students
• Notify coach when their student has died

March 11, 2011 Patch (Beta)

• The coach is now tethered to the student, so that they cannot get too far
• Added the distance to student in coach GUI
• Coach now has the same PVS as the student
• When the student respawns, the coach warps back to student
• Added an option to "like" coach by pressing F9.

March 18, 2011 Patch (Beta)

• The coach can no longer see stealthed Spies or see through the disguise of Spies on the opposite team of their student
• The coach can no longer see the classes of enemy players in the scoreboard
• Fixed various exploits and bugs

April 14, 2011 Patch (Hatless Update)

• Coaching was added to the game.

April 15, 2011 Patch

• Fixed the kicking of coaches for being idle as soon as they stop coaching
• Fixed a coaching exploit

Bugs

• Although coaches cannot see certain buildings unseen by the student or members of their team, they can still see the teleporter particle effects, indicating its location.
• Coach commands will still be given when the coach is using the main menu or loadout screens.
• When the student alters their loadout or class, the coach will be warped back to them.
• Joining a team after coaching a player will sometimes result in the player still seeing the former student's outline.

Gallery

• 

  Button pressed to call for a coach.

• CoachingGlitch 01.jpg

  A Glitch where the former trainer can still see the outline when playing normally

• Attack this (player).jpg

  "Attack This" note from players viewpoint

• Defend This (player).jpg

  "Defend This" note from players viewpoint

• Go to (player).jpg

  "Go to" note from Players viewpoint