Valorant patch 2.08 to introduce coaching slots

In November last year Riot Games revealed its ambitious plans for the Valorant Champions Tour 2021, a new competitive structure for Valorant that was built upon the grassroots community of the game.

The competition is currently in Stage 2, and the competitive scene continues to grow and develop further, along with the game itself.

As competitive Valorant continues to develop players have been asking for more features that will help the game to be even more competitive, like Agent bans and similar additions.

And one of those features has just been confirmed today, as Riot officially announced that the game is getting coaching slots in patch 2.08.

(Picture: Riot Games)

Riley Yurk, who is working as a part of Valorant's esports strategy team, explained that a relationship between the coach and players is an integral part of the competitive play, describing it as "an important dynamic".

"As an esport, we continue to be excited at the prospect of coaches playing a larger role in matches and plan to provide more analytical tools in the future," Yurk stated.

Yurk says that coaching slots that will be added in 2.08 are "the basic foundation" and they will continue to improve and evolve this feature.

Their plan is to actively include in-game leaders and coaches in the development process of this function. They will be asking them for opinion and feedback in order to understand better how to improve this feature. 

The introduction of coaching slots in Valorant comes just 3 months after Valve effectively banned CS:GO coaches from participating in online matches, following the spectator bug scandal from last year, when the ESIC banned 37 CS:GO coaches for abusing the glitch and thus obtaining an unfair advantage for their teams.

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Adding coaching slots is a feature that can significantly help the competitive scene to further develop, but Riot Games will need to be careful and learn from Valve's mistakes in order to avoid getting in the same situation where it can easily be abused, especially in an era where most of the competitive matches are still being played online due to COVID-19 restrictions.