BuzzerBeater Forums

For my personal feel, having Assistant coach does improve the game experience.

A concept that I will propose (is an idea thou)

Elected Assistant Coach
- Happen right after head coach being elected. This give player a chance who failed to be head coach to try to bid for assistant.
- Period will be 1-2 weeks depend on the design. As he need to be on board the duty as soon as possible.
- Elected head coach has 2 votes compare to the rest with 1 vote. Assistant coach supposed to be someone whom the head coach can work with.
- Head coach can use the speech forum to let others to understand why that person is suitable to be your assistant.
However, to prevent unfair hiring, ultimately decision still lies on everyone to agree on it and everyone can try to be assistant.

Assistant Coach can do.
- can works as scout whom can bookmark "potential" player to assistant in shrink the list of players for the nation. This also help to relieve some of head coach task. With a smaller pool, head coach can plan up his backup plan B, C or D
- Can propose line up and game tactics for every game. This give assistant a chance to experience if you are a head coach.
Head coach line up setting will have a link to show pop up view what has the assistant propose. Head coach can use that as a reference or go ignore him.
- Can help to search for scrimmages game. As head coach might have real life duty caught up to him.

Game design
- If head coach decides to become inactive, assistant coach will automatically prompted to be head coach and manage the team till end of the season.
- If head coach did not submit a line up for the game, assistant coach line up will be used instead.
- Have a section at the team overview page with the list of players who become assistant over the seasons.

Idea for this concept.
- Head coach can scout for potential successor as some head coach wish to step down unable to do so due to lack of successor.
- Other players can use the assistant coach history section to see if that guy is worth to lead the NT/U21 in future. This help the assistant coach to have better chance to be head coach as he has proven record.
- Gives player to wish to try/ experience what it takes to be a head coach for the NT/U21. Some players really have no idea how NT/U21 works and go in blind. (e.g. Me.)
- Assistant coach can be used as a supervisor to see if head coach is really doing the job.

Finally
- If the head coach wishes to go solo. He can ignore voting, ignore propose line up, do his stuff as the current game design.
- At the end of day, head coach is still the main guy to lead the team, assistant coach only can propose and hands on if head coach decide to let him be.
- For communication wise, can reply on existing feature like the mail system

Yep, it is strange even for myself that I react in more personal way :) But I really don't see any problem with the opportunity for assistant coach :) Maybe I will not convince you, so we will just stay at different positions obviously :)

The one and only negative I see is - it can be hard to implement it in the game. All the other things in my head are just positive and you can't convince me the opposite. I will not repeat all the arguments I gave already previously.

Not sure if my English is that bad that you totally did not understand me, or did you just ignore my whole reply because you think I'm trying to force you to change your mind *facepalm*

Did you see what LDS did? He gave out more detailed suggestions on how to make things work? If you read my reply properly instead of ignoring it because you took things personally, you would have saved yourself from that redundant wall of text and actually didn't have to wait for him to get the ball rolling. I tried prompting you to throw out ideas to improve on your suggestion.

That said, I'll continue the discussion from his post.

Last edited by BuzzRBeater at 5/2/2023 11:22:42 AM

I think there are some very good quality of life changes there. Sounds like rather than having two people with head coach powers, we can have a different set of powers for the assistant. Scrimmage finding is definitely a good idea. Scouting will definitely be a help, but the question is how - maybe assistant coaches have a special feature where they can scout without calling players up to the roster? This ability would not be available to NT coaches, they're powers will still be unchanged. This kinda makes the role of assistant coach a bit more special. Plus, since we are going to have an official NT scouter... Special access to that for the assistants?

I don't know how the "proposing lineup" thing would work from a programming point of view, but maybe we can "lock" the lineups once the NT coach sets it, like what slamdunk9 mentioned? This means assistant coach can set as many lineups as they want, but once the NT coach sets it, the assistant won't be able to overwrite it. It should ensure that we won't have to worry about NT coaches forgetting to set lineups (unless both of them forgets), and that we don't have to live on "trust" that the assistant coach won't undercut the NT coach and set a last minute lineup.

I think this would be workable. Tho how we select them *might* require more thought.

I am new user here and I am not sure how many things are working :) I had no idea you expect me to make a game engine plan or something ...I thought it is enough just to say the main idea and it is the job of the developers to think exactly how to be best implemented. I am not very ordered person to make a list like LDS :) I am a little bit more random and unordered... but anyway I am not so much experienced to say how everything should happen!

And definetely I have no idea how programing will happen. I just say what I feel is right or wrong as an idea...

Thanks for the effort to develop my idea. Also ...maybe I don't understant well 100% everything correctly because at least I am not using English interface but Bulgarian and I don't know how some things in the game are working right now. And maybe also my English is not the best. So, mistakes in my understanding of your comment are possible :)

But anyway - I totally disagree assistant to be selected by the users! The idea for assistant in my head is someone to helps and supports the national coach the way national coach feels he want it.

Only the national coach should choose his assistant. Only if he wants it!
The national coach should have the option to fire his assistant and to put a new one when he feels he wants it. He can have 10 assistants during the mandate if he wants.
Also, the assistant is not obligatory - the coach decides to have assistant or to not have.
National coach should have options to choose the rights he gives to his assistant:
- possibility to change lineup or not change
- possibility to put players in team and take them out ..or not have this possibility
The coach should have possibility to change these options all the time - like right now I play the game in Bulgarian but if I want I can change it to English :)

The assistant will see players of the national team all the time - this will not be optional since he is assistant.
And I think the best way for communication is a wall-chat with there chatting only the coach and his assistant to develop tactics for the match or something.

In my head things should be very flexible so every national coach to profit the best way of his assistant as each coach to decide which right to give to his assistant. Elected assistant could be a big problem potentially and I really don't believe in this suggestion.

Ok ...but this should be a discussion in the forums I think :) You can ask the candidates about their intentions to use assistant or not ...and which one. But I don't think the assistant will be so big problem for you since the main decisions will be taken by the coach I believe.

I think you vote for the coach and assistant just helps the coach. But if the assistant will be also a scout and will be the person to communicate with people - maybe this should be a reason the assistant to be more important for your vote. Otherwise, the assistant possibly will make lineups for some friendly for example and it is not such a big problem maybe for your vote.

But anyway, you can ask the candidates and then decide if the assistant is really important in your opinion. Or aks them in pvt messages if you don't want in the forums.

For example, I don't have a problem who the assistant will be and I will vote for the coach mainly :)

Especially if the staff would have the opportunity to scout players, would like to know who they are and have a say (with my vote) before they can scout whoever they want.

I think this is the most common concern here. That said, it isn't really too different from the current informal scouting team isn't it? Aren't those teams usually self appointed by the NT coach as well?

It would be tough if we actually needed to register a team of 2 for the election - but I guess this would root out those people who join elections on a whim with no preparations. An easier way out would be to get them to state who their assistant is during the election debates and pick your favorite choice, but I'm not sure how much would that solve, considering (I heard) that in some bigger countries, a lot of people don't bother with the debate thread and just votes for the candidate with the highest WR.

maybe assistant coaches have a special feature where they can scout without calling players up to the roster?

That also seems a very good idea, I also understand Perpete's concerns regarding the head coach directly appointing an assistant without elections, assistant coach should have the approval of the community. Overall I think the suggestion should be voted in a global poll