Rejected Add "Show All Legal Teams" when selecting Team

[Xufactor]

So you can try RU teams in UU and OU and UU teams in OU. There's currently a "Show All Teams" option but it's a lot of clutter to see every team.

I'm pretty sure "Show All Legal Teams" would be better than "Show All Teams".

 

[DaWoblefet]

The only way the teambuilder could generate a list of legal teams like this is to run each team through the validator to check if it's legal there. This would require validating potentially hundreds of teams, which would be really laggy and isn't what the validator is built to do. It's also not necessarily a safe assumption in Smogon singles tiers that a team legal in lower tiers is also legal in higher tiers. For example, in Gen 5 RU, Prankster + Assist or Prankster + Copycat is legal, but in Gen 5 UU it is not. I also don't think your given use case is very common; there's not much reason practically to use lower-tier teams in higher-tier formats. If you really wanted to do that regularly, you could always just set the team to that new format in your teambuilder, or make a copy of that RU team and set its new format to be UU or whatever.

 

[Xufactor]

"The only way the teambuilder could generate a list of legal teams like this is to run each team through the validator to check if it's legal there."

Run the legality checker during off time whenever a team is modified and you exit the modification pages of the team. You only have to check that team.

"It's also not necessarily a safe assumption in Smogon singles tiers that a team legal in lower tiers is also legal in higher tiers."

Sure, just check that team.

"If you really wanted to do that regularly, you could always just set the team to that new format in your teambuilder, or make a copy of that RU team and set its new format to be UU or whatever"

This requires a copy of an NU team for all above tiers. Same for RU.

 

[Irpachuza]

A main PS dev just explained you how the teambuilder works and you answered "just do this other thing" as if it was possible.

Closing.

 

[Xufactor]

I posted this in another thread.

So you can try RU teams in UU and OU and UU teams in OU if legal. There's currently a "Show All Teams" option but it's a lot of clutter to see every team.

I'm pretty sure "Show All Legal Teams" would be better than "Show All Teams".

You can run the legality checker during off time whenever a team is modified and you exit the modification pages of the team. You only have to check that team.

Please explain how this is not possible, without just closing the thread.

 

[HoeenHero]

You can run the legality checker during off time whenever a team is modified and you exit the modification pages of the team. You only have to check that team.

We don't track the validation status of a team on the team itself, that would be a bad idea because tech savvy users could edit that themselves. Every time you need to check if a team is valid, we have to run it through the validator.

In addition, your use case is really niche. Most players don't want to use UU teams in OU or similar. A better option would be to get a sample team for the format to test it out instead.

In addition, if your set on using a valid UU team in OU (or similar situation), why not just change the team's tier to OU or copy the team and make the copy OU? This is probably better as again, your use case is really niche and doesn't apply to the majority of players.

Finally as mentioned, not all UU teams are OU valid (same applies for other situations like UU and RU, RU and NU, etc). One big problem of having invalid teams in the "show valid teams" list is it confuses users and will most likely result in a large number of false bug reports/help room questions.

That is why your suggestion was rejected.

 

[Xufactor]

“We don't track the validation status of a team on the team itself, that would be a bad idea because tech savvy users could edit that themselves. Every time you need to check if a team is valid, we have to run it through the validator.”

What is the difference between validating a team when you finish modifying it and when you currently validate the team? You have to validate it at some point to determine if it’s playable.

 

[HoeenHero]

“We don't track the validation status of a team on the team itself, that would be a bad idea because tech savvy users could edit that themselves. Every time you need to check if a team is valid, we have to run it through the validator.”

What is the difference between validating a team when you finish modifying it and when you currently validate the team? You have to validate it at some point to determine if it’s playable.

We offer the validate button in the team builder so users can check their team's eligibility without starting a battle. Validation is always performed on a team when you try to use it in a battle.

 

[Xufactor]

Why does validating the team when you finish modifying it cause the issue you described but your current method of validation doesn't?

 

[DaWoblefet]

Run the legality checker during off time whenever a team is modified and you exit the modification pages of the team. You only have to check that team.

I think you're underestimating the sheer number of validator requests this is. What you're suggesting is that whenever a player makes a change to their team, it checks to see if it is legal in every format. Right now on Showdown, we have well over 150 challengeable formats. Even if this is done in the background, you're now slamming the server with at minimum 150x requests for team validation, the vast majority of which are completely irrelevant to the player. Multiply this by all users editing any team ever.

I am willing to grant your point that "Show All Teams" is unwieldy for the use-case you are describing. The point that is trying to be explained is that this use-case is extremely uncommon. In fact, players who build teams in lower tiers are going to play those teams in lower tiers the vast majority of the time. Team validation is not built to handle these sorts of validation requests en masse which are necessary to support your suggestion.

Please do not open another thread on this suggestion. It will not be implemented.

 

[HoeenHero]

Why does validating the team when you finish modifying it cause the issue you described but your current method of validation doesn't?

Teams are stored in your browser, client side. A general rule of thumb for client/server web architecture is to never blindly trust what the client says. We can't just assume any team sent to us by the client with a "validated already" flag is still valid. This is how you get games where people "hack". Its also why all battle calculations/etc are done on the server and never on the client, it prevents hacking/hacking claims.

 

[Xufactor]

Someone closed the other thread when there could be more discussion.
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/show-all-legal-teams.3724236/

One change that I would make to solve the overload issue is that instead of checking if a team is legal in all 150+ formats, we only check if it is legal in all higher tier formats of the same "type" of format.

So for SV UU this would be SV UU, SV OU, and SV Ubers. For SS Doubles OU this would be SS Doubles OU, and SS Doubles Ubers.

Would this work?

 

[HoeenHero]

No, its still problematic. The last thing we are interested as developers right now is increasing validator process load significantly.

You were told to stop opening threads on this subject. We are not interested in this suggestion as you continue to fail to address any and all counter points presented other than trying to address technical issues. Suggestions are not just vetted based on technical feasibility but also design (is this a good thing for the sim and its users? is it useful? will people use it or is it feature bloat/confusing?), and interest of users. See also: this post https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/show-all-legal-teams.3724236/#post-9697052 I'll be honest the suggestion seems like something that just you or a very small number of users want, rather than an improvement for the site.

 

[Xufactor]

"No, its still problematic. The last thing we are interested as developers right now is increasing validator process load significantly."

Then we don't do validation at all when selecting team based on format, until we decide to play with it.
When "Show all Lower Tier teams" is selected for SV OU, show all SV UU, SV RU, and SV NU teams.

"You were told to stop opening threads on this subject."

I am suggesting changes based on the problems you described.

 

[HoeenHero]

Then we don't do validation at all when selecting team based on format, until we decide to play with it.
When "Show all Lower Tier teams" is selected for SV OU, show all SV UU, SV RU, and SV NU teams.

I am suggesting changes based on the problems you described.

What about all the other issues described?

In addition, your use case is really niche. Most players don't want to use UU teams in OU or similar. A better option would be to get a sample team for the format to test it out instead.

In addition, if your set on using a valid UU team in OU (or similar situation), why not just change the team's tier to OU or copy the team and make the copy OU? This is probably better as again, your use case is really niche and doesn't apply to the majority of players.

Finally as mentioned, not all UU teams are OU valid (same applies for other situations like UU and RU, RU and NU, etc). One big problem of having invalid teams in the "show valid teams" list is it confuses users and will most likely result in a large number of false bug reports/help room questions.

 

[Xufactor]

"What about all the other issues described?"

I can't address those if the thread keeps getting closed.

"In addition, your use case is really niche. Most players don't want to use UU teams in OU or similar."

This isn't an issue persay. It just limits the usefulness of the idea. So it may not be a priority, not that it doesn't work.

"In addition, if your set on using a valid UU team in OU (or similar situation), why not just change the team's tier to OU or copy the team and make the copy OU?"

This would require a copy of every NU team to RU, UU, OU, and Ubers, and similarly for every RU team to every tier above.

"Finally as mentioned, not all UU teams are OU valid (same applies for other situations like UU and RU, RU and NU, etc). One big problem of having invalid teams in the "show valid teams" list is it confuses users and will most likely result in a large number of false bug reports/help room questions."

We currently have that invalid teams can be selected to play when choosing the format. It would show an error when Battle is selected. This isn't new. Now we would just show all lower tier teams.

 

[Cassiopeia]

This doesn't work in our infrastructure, and we're not going to make it work because it's an incredibly niche use-case, as we've said several times by now. Just do it manually.
Closing this thread.

 

[HoeenHero]

This isn't an issue persay. It just limits the usefulness of the idea. So it may not be a priority, not that it doesn't work.

Suggestions are not just vetted based on technical feasibility but also design (is this a good thing for the sim and its users? is it useful? will people use it or is it feature bloat/confusing?), and interest of users.

This would require a copy of every NU team to RU, UU, OU, and Ubers, and similarly for every RU team to every tier above.

Make a copy of the team you want to use, not all of your teams at once.

We currently have that invalid teams can be selected to play when choosing the format. It would show an error when Battle is selected. This isn't new. Now we would just show all lower tier teams.

I don't want to add a UI element that implies the teams are valid when they aren't even flagged for that tier.

I think this has run its course and I'm locking this. If you open another thread on this subject you are getting infracted.