"Alternate accounts will remain allowed" - why would someone use an alt for any reason other than to prevent scouting?
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Community Rules Discussion: Timers, Alts, and Replay Hiding
- Thread starter Sabelette
- Start date
sometimes ppl like funny names and memes vs specific ppl. Like, someone lacking creativity might make an account named "lasagna" when they play Amaranth
So I feel like this thread still needs to be used further, as the issue clearly is not resolved. There is still a clear disconnect between community members on what should be allowed between one game and the next. See this post - there are still very notable "differences in philosophy". In fact I believe this unresolved gray area is the cause of 95% of the strife mentioned in that post. I think we need to further discuss what kind of interaction is adequate between one game and the next.
If I am to accept the Wartortle "philosophy" as part of the game, it will only be after the community explicitly votes in favor of it. Until then it will continue to drive me nuts - and I'm not the only one, this WILL cause issues in the community until it is further addressed.
The reasons for this are pretty simple: it's borderline ghosting, it's disrespectful to the opponent, it creates perverse incentives to only schedule for when your manager is also online to back you up, etc. We can elaborate on that if needed but it's not the point of this post, because different people will already be feeling different ways about this after all the discussions.
The point of this post is to propose a vote between one of these three roads forward:
1. Very simple and harsh solution - treat time between games as part of the set, and any communications during it as subject to ghosting rules. Kill any and all interaction with your team until the set is over. I think this is a little draconic, but it's a very simple and satisfactory solution to the problem at hand.
2. Keep the rules as they have been established earlier in this thread, or maybe with a couple small tweaks. No further restrictions are needed. Clearly a good chunk of the community believes this to be the way forward, but even so it should be confirmed with an official vote so that if it is the case, everyone else can adapt and accept the new standard.
3. Some inbetween ruleset that allows only a little communication between games - something like: the game MUST start within 2 minutes from the end of the previous game by default. If you have an irl emergency (or you need to piss, or you just played a 300 turner and you want some break to recover your brainpower, or whatever else) you can ask for a delay, with the understanding that the delay is to be used to handle the issue in question, and if you instead use it to talk to your team you are breaking ghosting rules. I think this has potential and it's my preferred road forward.
Even if my exact proposal of some kind of community vote is not agreed on, what is really clear to me is that this CANNOT just be treated as a solved issue. It clearly isn't, people are still frustrated, there's a very simple reason the issue did not die down after the Clark infraction - it's because the community STILL has a big problem aside from Clark or anybody else. We can take our time until RBYWC, but I really wish to solve it by then, because I think it's crucial to have everyone on the same page to avoid future drama. Really nobody enjoyed what just transpired and it's a shame that it happened - let's keep working so that it doesn't happen anymore please.
If I am to accept the Wartortle "philosophy" as part of the game, it will only be after the community explicitly votes in favor of it. Until then it will continue to drive me nuts - and I'm not the only one, this WILL cause issues in the community until it is further addressed.
The reasons for this are pretty simple: it's borderline ghosting, it's disrespectful to the opponent, it creates perverse incentives to only schedule for when your manager is also online to back you up, etc. We can elaborate on that if needed but it's not the point of this post, because different people will already be feeling different ways about this after all the discussions.
The point of this post is to propose a vote between one of these three roads forward:
1. Very simple and harsh solution - treat time between games as part of the set, and any communications during it as subject to ghosting rules. Kill any and all interaction with your team until the set is over. I think this is a little draconic, but it's a very simple and satisfactory solution to the problem at hand.
2. Keep the rules as they have been established earlier in this thread, or maybe with a couple small tweaks. No further restrictions are needed. Clearly a good chunk of the community believes this to be the way forward, but even so it should be confirmed with an official vote so that if it is the case, everyone else can adapt and accept the new standard.
3. Some inbetween ruleset that allows only a little communication between games - something like: the game MUST start within 2 minutes from the end of the previous game by default. If you have an irl emergency (or you need to piss, or you just played a 300 turner and you want some break to recover your brainpower, or whatever else) you can ask for a delay, with the understanding that the delay is to be used to handle the issue in question, and if you instead use it to talk to your team you are breaking ghosting rules. I think this has potential and it's my preferred road forward.
Even if my exact proposal of some kind of community vote is not agreed on, what is really clear to me is that this CANNOT just be treated as a solved issue. It clearly isn't, people are still frustrated, there's a very simple reason the issue did not die down after the Clark infraction - it's because the community STILL has a big problem aside from Clark or anybody else. We can take our time until RBYWC, but I really wish to solve it by then, because I think it's crucial to have everyone on the same page to avoid future drama. Really nobody enjoyed what just transpired and it's a shame that it happened - let's keep working so that it doesn't happen anymore please.
Gonna give a couple thoughts as well, as someone who didn't really care when the first discussion was happening. I think everyone does a little bit of communicating with their teammates between games. Speaking from personal experience, I often asked for quick snippets of advice after a game ended. However, these were really only a couple of sentences, and didn't take more than like 1-2min (the only time I remember taking more than that between games was when I had to take a fat dump in the middle of playing ButtGallon (ironic), but I let him know that I'd be doing that). At the same time, you play to win the game, so if you're allowed to do something, and you have success when you do it, I totally understand doing it.
This is why I'd prefer either options 2 or 3 in Amaranth's post. LNumbers did get an infract for the situation that he was involved it, and it was mostly because of arriving late on top of the time between games, so it's not like the rules are restrictive as they currently are. If the community is fine with the way things are, then I think it's the way to go. If the community thinks that things are too lax, then I think option 3 is way better than option 1. With option 3, you can still give quick advice to the player (as I described above), while making it hard to go overboard and end up upsetting people.
Lastly, I'd like to quickly apologize to LNumbers and the rest of the Wartortles. The situation during the Acetylaldehyde game was unfortunate, but my response was entirely uncalled for (especially since I wasn't even the one playing). LNumbers won fair and square, and it was a dick move on my end to insinuate otherwise and say inflammatory things like "fuck these fuckers". I was heated, but that's no excuse, and I won't make disparaging comments like that again.
This is why I'd prefer either options 2 or 3 in Amaranth's post. LNumbers did get an infract for the situation that he was involved it, and it was mostly because of arriving late on top of the time between games, so it's not like the rules are restrictive as they currently are. If the community is fine with the way things are, then I think it's the way to go. If the community thinks that things are too lax, then I think option 3 is way better than option 1. With option 3, you can still give quick advice to the player (as I described above), while making it hard to go overboard and end up upsetting people.
Lastly, I'd like to quickly apologize to LNumbers and the rest of the Wartortles. The situation during the Acetylaldehyde game was unfortunate, but my response was entirely uncalled for (especially since I wasn't even the one playing). LNumbers won fair and square, and it was a dick move on my end to insinuate otherwise and say inflammatory things like "fuck these fuckers". I was heated, but that's no excuse, and I won't make disparaging comments like that again.
Gonna contribute a few thought's here; I'd advocate for a running clock that accounts for being late. I agree with Amaranth that this is clearly not a solved issue, and no one wants another situation like the semis to happen again.
I think his proposed point 1 is way over the top. While it may end debates, it leaves the playing field worse. We can do better. The issue with not doing anything is the rules were written in good faith to account for extreme circumstances as the norm. What we've since seen is that if you give ppl 15 mins, many are very inclined to take it.
I don't mind 5-10mins of breaks/planning during a set, but it needs to be limited. Planning and reacting midset is an important skill. I usually have a few teams for g3 that I'll decide on based on what I've seen, and few edits shouldn't take more than a min or two. Sometimes I have trouble even finding my teams in my messy ass builder. But taking all the time you could ever need is disrespectful to an opponent who did their prep on their own time. So there should be a limit, and 10 total mins in a set is plenty. Yet, I agree the default should be closer to 2.5mins. We can debate the details.
The big thing I want to draw attention to is that if you're late to your set, you should forfeit some of your in between time. Smogon's policies on being late are already incredibly lenient (idt you should be able to msg someone 10mins before game time saying you'll be 30mins late, that's super rude). If you log on 1-2mins before a legal act call, that should be all of your time; you've delayed the other person enough. This was the heart of the issue between me and clark the other week. Infracts help discourage this behavior and are good, but they don't give me my time back.
As such, I'd like to see a running clock across the set. Every min beyond the original 15 grace period counts against any time you can ask for between the games. Every time you total 15 mins, that's one game loss delivered. So 25 mins late means now you only have 5 mins to gameplan between games before you forfeit a game. That's still super lenient, but it helps keeps things on an expected timeframe. (maybe the specifics need to be worked out to align with manager ping timings and such).
Almost every competitive venture in sport and game has some sort of pace of play rule. This isn't a wild concept. In sports I play, if you're late there's a significant penalty. You should respect other ppl's time, really in all aspects of life (I've fired ppl for being consistently late to work because it fucks with my planning). It's silly to me that someone will openly criticize my time management, when they're 40mins late. Time management is about planning and expectation. Just be on time, or accept that you're starting down 0-1 at best.
"Quit wasting my time because pretty soon you'll find /
It's the only thing of value that we own" - Quitter, by Dawes (though Greensky Bluegrass' version is really great)
I think his proposed point 1 is way over the top. While it may end debates, it leaves the playing field worse. We can do better. The issue with not doing anything is the rules were written in good faith to account for extreme circumstances as the norm. What we've since seen is that if you give ppl 15 mins, many are very inclined to take it.
I don't mind 5-10mins of breaks/planning during a set, but it needs to be limited. Planning and reacting midset is an important skill. I usually have a few teams for g3 that I'll decide on based on what I've seen, and few edits shouldn't take more than a min or two. Sometimes I have trouble even finding my teams in my messy ass builder. But taking all the time you could ever need is disrespectful to an opponent who did their prep on their own time. So there should be a limit, and 10 total mins in a set is plenty. Yet, I agree the default should be closer to 2.5mins. We can debate the details.
The big thing I want to draw attention to is that if you're late to your set, you should forfeit some of your in between time. Smogon's policies on being late are already incredibly lenient (idt you should be able to msg someone 10mins before game time saying you'll be 30mins late, that's super rude). If you log on 1-2mins before a legal act call, that should be all of your time; you've delayed the other person enough. This was the heart of the issue between me and clark the other week. Infracts help discourage this behavior and are good, but they don't give me my time back.
As such, I'd like to see a running clock across the set. Every min beyond the original 15 grace period counts against any time you can ask for between the games. Every time you total 15 mins, that's one game loss delivered. So 25 mins late means now you only have 5 mins to gameplan between games before you forfeit a game. That's still super lenient, but it helps keeps things on an expected timeframe. (maybe the specifics need to be worked out to align with manager ping timings and such).
Almost every competitive venture in sport and game has some sort of pace of play rule. This isn't a wild concept. In sports I play, if you're late there's a significant penalty. You should respect other ppl's time, really in all aspects of life (I've fired ppl for being consistently late to work because it fucks with my planning). It's silly to me that someone will openly criticize my time management, when they're 40mins late. Time management is about planning and expectation. Just be on time, or accept that you're starting down 0-1 at best.
"Quit wasting my time because pretty soon you'll find /
It's the only thing of value that we own" - Quitter, by Dawes (though Greensky Bluegrass' version is really great)
I don't really care about the whole break thing. I'm not one to take them for more than a minute or two if I can help it and hate it when it happens to me because the silent sit while I just want to get on with it stresses me out and puts me on edge (especially if I've just lost the prior game).
What I do want to point out from this that the above responses to Amaranth's post haven't seemed to register is that Amaranth in both proposition 1 and 3 wants to count talking to your teammates between games as ghosting. I'm really just lost for words on how I feel about that but I will make a few points:
- First, let's just completely seperate talking to your teammates between the between game timer usage so I can be clear on what I'm saying. Talking to your teammates can be done in any amount of time, no matter how short the time allowed between the games may be. They are not even in the same universe of relation.
- Talking to your teammates / friends between games is just not ghosting in any sense. This is perverting what ghosting is (asking for or giving advice on what moves to perform or how to alter the game state in one sides favour during the game) to try and inflict possibly one of the harshest punishments available on Smogon to the people you deem to have slighted you time-wise.
- PHB's comment that he/she/they (sorry I don't know and I'm not taking chances after an incident) would be happy with 1-2 minutes to talk to his/her/their team would be Amaranth's definition of ghosting under both proposition 1 and proposition 3. Under that, PHB would get a 2 pointer and a sitewide Smogon tourban for using his/her/their quick break how they want to.
- Normal alt's weren't even banned because they were both unpolicable, and would be too punishing for non RBYers and newer players to get punished for not being used to. Now imagine they make the mistake of trying to talk to anyone for suggestions midset (as is completely allowed everywhere else on Smogon) and they all suddenly get hit with Smogon wide tourbans and 2 pointers like that's not one of the harshest punishments available. Both that and the question of how you would police it make the idea impossible to actually do, even if it wasn't a bad one.
- If a break is taken. I shouldn't have to explain why I am taking the break, this is just simply common decency and a respect to my privacy. I should be able to (and will) do whatever I want in the break I take if I do take one, no matter how short it is. Even if its little more than "Alright you guy's think Zapdos is a good run here for game 2 since he loaded GarCloyMie that game" or "man that sucked, anyone got any suggestions for game 2?". People's complaints are on the length of time taken for these breaks.
- Team communication in a team based tournament is a normal thing across literally every team based sport. Imagine telling football / hockey / tennis / literally anything else players or managers they can't communicate with each other at all or they will get a red card.
What I do want to point out from this that the above responses to Amaranth's post haven't seemed to register is that Amaranth in both proposition 1 and 3 wants to count talking to your teammates between games as ghosting. I'm really just lost for words on how I feel about that but I will make a few points:
- First, let's just completely seperate talking to your teammates between the between game timer usage so I can be clear on what I'm saying. Talking to your teammates can be done in any amount of time, no matter how short the time allowed between the games may be. They are not even in the same universe of relation.
- Talking to your teammates / friends between games is just not ghosting in any sense. This is perverting what ghosting is (asking for or giving advice on what moves to perform or how to alter the game state in one sides favour during the game) to try and inflict possibly one of the harshest punishments available on Smogon to the people you deem to have slighted you time-wise.
- PHB's comment that he/she/they (sorry I don't know and I'm not taking chances after an incident) would be happy with 1-2 minutes to talk to his/her/their team would be Amaranth's definition of ghosting under both proposition 1 and proposition 3. Under that, PHB would get a 2 pointer and a sitewide Smogon tourban for using his/her/their quick break how they want to.
- Normal alt's weren't even banned because they were both unpolicable, and would be too punishing for non RBYers and newer players to get punished for not being used to. Now imagine they make the mistake of trying to talk to anyone for suggestions midset (as is completely allowed everywhere else on Smogon) and they all suddenly get hit with Smogon wide tourbans and 2 pointers like that's not one of the harshest punishments available. Both that and the question of how you would police it make the idea impossible to actually do, even if it wasn't a bad one.
- If a break is taken. I shouldn't have to explain why I am taking the break, this is just simply common decency and a respect to my privacy. I should be able to (and will) do whatever I want in the break I take if I do take one, no matter how short it is. Even if its little more than "Alright you guy's think Zapdos is a good run here for game 2 since he loaded GarCloyMie that game" or "man that sucked, anyone got any suggestions for game 2?". People's complaints are on the length of time taken for these breaks.
- Team communication in a team based tournament is a normal thing across literally every team based sport. Imagine telling football / hockey / tennis / literally anything else players or managers they can't communicate with each other at all or they will get a red card.
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Please reread suggestion 3:
It's basically no communication / free for all / somewhere inbetween. That's the spirit of the proposals. Anything else that you have read, I have not written
Intro - "it's borderline ghosting"
Proposition 1 - "treat time between games as part of the set, and any communications during it as subject to ghosting rules."
Proposition 3 - "you can ask for a delay, with the understanding that the delay is to be used to handle the issue in question, and if you instead use it to talk to your team you are breaking ghosting rules. I think this has potential and it's my preferred road forward."
This is what I have read. If this is not saying it's ghosting, I am very confused then.
How I understood it is that for prop 3, you can take 1-2 minutes to talk to your team, and you can ask for longer, but if you ask for longer you can't use that extra time to talk to your team or it's ghosting (although please correct me if I'm wrong) (also my pronouns are he/him).
Proposition 3 says:
You have 2 minutes between games to quickly discuss small stuff with your team as usual
If you take a longer break because of life - sure
If you claim to take a longer break because of life, and you instead use that longer break to get advice from your team - it's ghosting
I think part of Cake's concern is using the term ghosting in the first place— and it's a valid nitpick to make. Calling that action ghosting and carrying with it the context of how Smogon punishes ghosting seems way excessive for someone who takes slightly too long talking with their team when a game isn't even being played. Surely this rule would be separate from the ghosting rule, and only carry a risk of infractions unless it's being abused repeatedly and maliciously. I also think that #3 is pretty hard to arbitrate. If someone calls a 10 minute break for a life event, gets back in 7 minutes and convenes with their team for the remaining 3, is that punishworthy? The concept of #3 captures the spirit of the rules fine, but unless you say that calling a break forfeits your ability to communicate with your team at all, it seems rife for a lot of disagreement if it's ever being enforced.
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I maintain that somewhere in between(option #3) is the correct answer, and that ButtGallon's comment above mine(I would quote it here if it wasn't going to be directly above my post) is a fair clarification of what Cake meant.
I think option #1 is draconian and completely against the point of what a teamtour is. And although it's absolutely ludicrous to compare Pokemon to boxing -- in between boxing rounds, boxers can and will get a drink of water, speak to their managers/team, etc. I don't support this being taken away from players.
As far as option #2 goes, I don't agree with it at all. as someone who does his best to be EXTREMELY punctual, even showing up 15 minutes before a set to give someone the option to play a little earlier and usually extended an extra 15 after the normal 15 to call act - I am NOT cool with the idea of opening up the Wild West because of the following paragraph:
I'm not going to beat a dead horse over what happened but it's clear that the more leeway allowed, the more people are going to stretch out the fullest extent of what is acceptable. That's where I think Amaranth is right to call for clear and specific guidelines as petty as it sounds. Respect doesn't just come at the end of a game with ggs, it comes with showing up prepared for your set and making on the fly calls/adaptations if needed, which should not take anywhere close to 5 minutes.
The issue I see comes with when you do want that "longer break." ButtGallon sums it up perfectly - "if someone calls a 10 minute break for a life event, gets back in 7 minutes and convenes with their team for the remaining 3, is that punishworthy? The concept of #3 captures the spirit of the rules fine, but unless you say that calling a break forfeits your ability to communicate with your team at all, it seems rife for a lot of disagreement if it's ever being enforced."
Unfortunately the spirit of the rule can be used out of good faith and it's not unreasonable to push for some sort of clarification here. I wish we didn't have to, but them's the brakes. I think providing "logs" of your communication with your team to "prove" you're within the timeframe is excessive and not a good idea(I do not support it), but what other options are there? (not being sarcastic. Everything here is 100% serious and meant for clear understanding so that everyone can get back to playing a good generation of Pokemon and leaving this behind us.)
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treat it like ghosting XD. which is to say punish harshly and strongly and encourage self-reporting if you see someone within your team flagrantly breaking the rule. thats why i suggested it in the first place. only way I see to actually have some hope of enforcement.
but if you guys have million dollar ideas I'm waiting for them
I see a really obvious problem with all of these ideas that people will just say they need a short break and ask their team anyway about brings/lines/whatever regardless (because what kind of loser narc is gonna report their own team for this), but as you said it's also really shitty to incentivize people to schedule their games only for times their SPL player managers/teammates are online to build/adapt teams for them while they're in the middle of game 1 and prepare their lines for them for the next game. It further increases disparity between teams based on how good the managers are at the game and how active they are and it makes timezones even more of a hassle for teamtours.
I'm not saying this is what Tortles were doing or that these are the times they schedule, obviously, or they wouldn't have had repeated situations of being offline when their players fail to show or take forever between games. But that would be the optimal thing to do if we formalized the idea that teamtours are about collaborating before AND during the game, which otherwise I'd have no issue with as long as it's kept brief and not a whole 5-10 minute group discussion on plays/brings/lines per game.
Personally, I think your prep should be done before the game, and if you want to adapt/teambuild midset, you should do it quickly and get into the next match, not sit and take a full break to determine the optimal team to load. When I actually care about this game, I usually build more than 3 or 5 teams in a week, make a few variations of a team with 1-2 guys/sets swapped or a different lead depending on potential adaptations I expect to have to make, and then I might make an edit or two between games quickly if I spot something I think I should exploit. This last bit is a 30-60 second process, not 5-10 minutes of agonizing about slotting in X or Y pokemon. I don't care if you're asking for a couple brief opinions, but I don't think that we should be having full-on midset coaching sessions and team adjustments - you should have to live and die on how much work you put in before the set and very quick changes in the very short downtime between games.
We can argue that more downtime between games raises the skill level by letting more experienced players provide advice and support, but I think people need to learn the skills of having their shit ready by game time and of making quick midset adaptations instead for everyone's sake. We're playing a mildly competitive mod of a children's game with immense RNG and next to nothing on the line, we're not playing the world chess championships or the finals of some sport with 500 support personnel analyzing everything about your play and the opponents' play to maximize your odds of winning with billions of dollars invested into it, so I prioritize making sure peoples' time isn't wasted over making the games 1% more skillful.
I personally would like us to find some kind of solution that minimizes perverse incentives for both act fishing and claiming breaks when you don't actually need one, without expecting the community to have to report their own teammates. I think probably the ideal thing to do here is just go with 2) but with firmer rules on total time between games and on expected game start time ("within 5 minutes" clearly did not get the point across that this is meant to be the absolute maximum, not "take about 5 minutes between games every time, no problem") For violations, we can just escalate warning -> 1pt -> 2pt infract -> more infracts/tourban for repeated violations of this that don't reach the level of giving an act win, and obviously not hand out infractions for shit like "they asked for a 5 minute break and just got back after 5 minutes and 16 seconds." It's pretty hard to intentionally abuse this because at some point you start getting bigger infracts that stack up to a tempban, but it's light enough to not be a big deal if you fuck up time management once or twice by accident. I think anything more is inviting actfishing or requires a level of surveillance culture and tattling on people that I don't think is conducive to having a good community at all.
Despite this overly litigious post I made earlier in the thread, the last few weeks (and days and even hours) have made me realize that I don't want hard and fast rules that people can call you on (like the 5 minutes 16 seconds for a 5 minute break thing). Essentially I just wish we could say "don't be a dick" and leave it at that. But it's clear we need something. I guess here's some general statements that I would support based off what's been said today:
-Most good prep happens prior to the set. Example: Ulti posted pastes for 12 teams in his channel before his Bo5 with Sceptross. Maybe that's a lot, but the point is that you should have a plan for a lot of possibilities going into a set. You obviously can't plan for EVERYTHING, but this minimizes the amount of time you have to make adjustments in the middle of the set. And thus, this is less time that is "wasted" between games. If you have to spend time "prepping" mid-set, I think that's just a skill issue tbh.
-Talking to teammates between games shouldn't be considered ghosting. But make it relatively quick please, as said, most good prep happens prior to the set. I don't think anything needs to happen beyond something like "hey based off x,y,z I think you should go JynxMieDon next game," or "Remember that he likes to switch in Chansey when you get the Zam vs Gar lead matchup." Quick advice or reminders are completely fair game for me. But once you're taking many minutes/going over things in depth... okay I don't think it's ghosting but you're def not respecting your opponent's time. So essentially, "don't be a dick."
-If you're late to a set, you should probably not be taking longer breaks during the set. Yes, things come up, like an urgent need to go the bathroom, or pick up the pizza that was delivered to your door (or just do this mid-game if you're a real one like Troller). But I feel like this is a common courtesy that people should recognize. If you were already late, taking longer breaks mid-set is absolutely breaking the social contract here. Again, "don't be a dick."
-It should be fairly recognizable when a "mental reset" break is needed by both players. Something like "wow we just played a 300+ turn, 45 minute game, let's take an extra minute or two." Or "we're about to head into game 5 of a best of 5, let's take an extra minute or two." In these cases, I'm willing to give someone more leeway. This is something that might be easily abuseable, but let me repeat myself: "don't be a dick."
-As far as what the warnings/punishments should be, I don't really have a strong opinion on this because I am far from a good or experienced host or tournament director, but I hope we can just use the smell test here. I truly don't believe anyone to be maliciously fishing here, so a warning is probably sufficient for a first offense, then escalate from there. If it is found to be actually malicious, adjust as needed I guess.
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Basically, I think this is almost impossible to police with hard and fast rules without people following the letter of the law too closely instead of the spirit. But apparently we've also been too lax with things too. My advice is just prep better in advance of the set, be considerate that your opponent is a real person with real life commitments and responsibilities, and work as a community to hold people (yes, even your own teammates) accountable. Hopefully we can come to a consensus about some kind of guidelines rather than super strict rules, but whatever happens I'm just hoping we can all be a little kinder to each other in the future.
The first version of these new rules was already an overregulation of normal human situations. The issue between Clark and Acetylaldehyde would not have been a problem if both players had been clear about their boundaries and more mindful of their opponent's. It was not a problem of the rules but of communication that could have been solved privately. As has been pointed out in the other thread, it is sad that the "community" has a lot to say when there is an issue like this but little to say about the actual games. It is sadder that the RBY community needs stronger rules than the rest of Smogon because apparently there cannot be adult understanding and some users propagate baseless anxiety about opponents being time wasting devils. Luckily this seems to happen only in forum team tournaments, playing RBY in SPL is enjoyable because the players are reasonable about scheduling and activity, and always up to find mutually beneficial solutions.
Anyway, if you're going to promote excessive regulation, don't complain when people move in the legal space to develop their plans and achieve their goals. You may disagree with it but that is for you to deal with. Moderating team, community leaders and team managers should promote dialogue instead of policing.
Amaranth's proposals 1 and 3 imply changing the definition of ghosting (as Cake pointed out, a major punishable offense in the whole website). Midset prep is not an unfair advantage - some players use it (and yes it happens in SPL too), some prefer to not be bothered and risk having second thoughts, some like to chall immediately to not lose momentum. It is just a different way of doing things that is aligned with the rules. Playing within the rules to try to give your best in every game and set is what competition is about. The "borderline ghosting" accusations are just a made up concept that doesn't take into account how serious an offense actual ghosting it.
Anyway, if you're going to promote excessive regulation, don't complain when people move in the legal space to develop their plans and achieve their goals. You may disagree with it but that is for you to deal with. Moderating team, community leaders and team managers should promote dialogue instead of policing.
Amaranth's proposals 1 and 3 imply changing the definition of ghosting (as Cake pointed out, a major punishable offense in the whole website). Midset prep is not an unfair advantage - some players use it (and yes it happens in SPL too), some prefer to not be bothered and risk having second thoughts, some like to chall immediately to not lose momentum. It is just a different way of doing things that is aligned with the rules. Playing within the rules to try to give your best in every game and set is what competition is about. The "borderline ghosting" accusations are just a made up concept that doesn't take into account how serious an offense actual ghosting it.
Each Smog account should come with a linked Showdown user of the same name that needs to be used for all tournaments
A rather sensible rule given that there already is an option to add your showdown user to your profile, and it wouldn't affect users changing their smogon name (or showdown as long as both happen simultaneously)
Ghosting during Tournaments is ridiculously easy, and my personal mandates for preventing it are maybe not unfeasible for players but definitely for moderators. (Record and stream your entire playing set up from the back, not allowed to leave your playing area during games only between them, record and stream your screens. Minimum two hosts must be present to watch simultaneously and to be able to agree on decisions.)
Anything less and we won't be able to eliminate ghosting completely, the talking in-between games is the furthest from ghosting and we don't need to worry about it when you can always call your best pal on phone who's watching the game live with no possible method of detection.
But for team tours the very least should be moderators having access to all team servers and no messages being sent after game start.
Notes and feedback in-between games are alright with me
Last post, sorry I was actually unaware of this thread. Thought these discussions had happened in some of the locked rby/smog cords or smth (as in I can't enter)
Smogtours has also caused issues for me in Europe, and I barely use it.
On the other hand server restarts have cost me a total of one ladder game on showdown
From a hosts perspective I understand the want to see games played on smogtours, from a spectator perspective I don't.
There's no event or anything, it's only relevant for team tours where I like to watch my teammates. It would be much more sensible if the public scheduling was utilized to announce and promote big games like those from pls and other team tours publicly. But then rescheduling becomes an issue
Replays are honestly as good as watching a game live, and having more spectators is no gain. If anything it means more people who could write a careless message that constitutes ghosting (I have been that person once in 2023 and it is not fun for any of the parties.)
This issue is also not solved by smogtours because apparently it's super easy to get voiced. I have been told before that I would get voiced on smogtours if I just asked, but I don't want it. (I also don't understand why anyone would need/want to be voice on smogtours. The only reason I see is wanting to be able to ghost or to spam during games you know will be watched by many people so you can get noticed)
I understand that my complaint about smogtours is reaching further than the power of the people here, as it is an issue that needs to be discussed by the smogon community not the rby community.
But my point is there's barely any benefit to playing on smogtours, and at least for me showdown is the more reliable website so I prefer to play there
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Hi just for transparency I removed Amaranth's post and I'm going to be clamping down harder on anything that stirs drama or dogpiling because this shit has been utterly exhausting for all involved. Not to say he doesn't have a point, there is much more than "baseless anxiety" about time wasting as it's actually been happening repeatedly, but let's all just bring the tone down a notch or two and respect that there's legitimate opinions and concerns across the spectrum here, thanks, rather than dismissing anyone who disagrees with you. This goes for a number of posts I did not delete, too, be respectful with your future posts for everyone's sake.
I'd love nothing more than to have dialogue instead of policing. I think, however, this problem has reached the level of a culture issue where we need to communally decide what Playing a Pokemon Set is and hold people to that standard till it sticks, and to me that line should be "do whatever level of prep you want before the game, and at game time, show the fuck up and play the game with as little delay as possible since both people have lives they need to get back to outside of the game." If the community as a whole decides the line should be somewhere else and we should have extensive 10 minute breaks between every game and every tournament should be BO5 or more minimum, I'll abide it, and probably decide this game isn't for me anymore because I do not have time for multiple 3+ hour sets of Pokemon every weekend. If people want to gentleman to playing BO69 with 10-15 minute breaks between every game, more power to them, and I personally will not be accepting a single one of these gentlemans ever, but I don't care if people wanna do this for fun, go for it.
You say this like these are equal, but if one person wants to do midset prep and the other did all their prep before the game as they should have and wants to get on with the next game, this isn't an equal thing. The person refusing to accept the challenge can do whatever they want and the person who wants to play immediately has zero recourse and no compromise happens, they just sit there waiting for the other person to adjust all their teams and ask all their teammates what they think and waffle about if this is a zapdos game or a rhydon game before they accept. The whole purpose of this discussion is to decide whether that should be allowed in the rules in the first place, nobody is debating that the current rules allow this, they're saying that it should be clamped down on and people should be expected to be ready before game time so as not to cause more delays.
I'd love nothing more than to have dialogue instead of policing. I think, however, this problem has reached the level of a culture issue where we need to communally decide what Playing a Pokemon Set is and hold people to that standard till it sticks, and to me that line should be "do whatever level of prep you want before the game, and at game time, show the fuck up and play the game with as little delay as possible since both people have lives they need to get back to outside of the game." If the community as a whole decides the line should be somewhere else and we should have extensive 10 minute breaks between every game and every tournament should be BO5 or more minimum, I'll abide it, and probably decide this game isn't for me anymore because I do not have time for multiple 3+ hour sets of Pokemon every weekend. If people want to gentleman to playing BO69 with 10-15 minute breaks between every game, more power to them, and I personally will not be accepting a single one of these gentlemans ever, but I don't care if people wanna do this for fun, go for it.
Moderators having access to all servers and monitoring them is completely impractical as is everything else here, not least because every single moderator also plays in the tournament itself. Less surveillance, less entry barriers for competitors, and less moderator duties please. Also please just keep all your thoughts in one post instead of making 3 consecutive posts in the future please thank you
not to take away from the thread at large, but I think this comes across as very out of touch.
"Replays are just as good as watching a game live" is not a widely held opinion, most people believe the contrary - in every sport ever people care way more about live sport than rewatching, and it's the same here.
You would want to be voiced on smogtours so you can type(which is useful beyond just posting nonsense in chat -> during livetours for instance you sometimes have to contact hosts and tag people in chat asking what account your opponent is playing on)
People also want to watch games not just because it's their teammates in a team tour- at least personally I watched a lot of the rbypl games regardless of if my teams in it, and I watch games from some tournaments I'm not even in.
There's definite value in having tournament play on smogtours. Oh, and also you can recreate the game if there's a server crash or an account error like in SPL XIV Tiebreak, etc. If people HAVE to not play on smogtours, like for ex if they need a VPN to connect and there's an issue there.
I wanted to but I'm having issue with the formatting on mobile
I do think hosts shouldn't be able to play in their own tournament, since then they need to make decisions about themselves. It's a very obvious conflict of interest, even when tours have multiple hosts
You also don't need to monitor servers, but you could check the messages we as players send whenever there are controversial games. Ie the tortles ten thing you could've checked our server to see that there were reminders about time and reprimanding going on. Would've saved Sceptross and Nicole a lot of grief and still earned Clark his deserved infraction. (I didn't want to bring up names or this topic specifically again, but I think hosts having server access would've been good. It how it's done for non smogon tournaments I have played and it improves player conduct and interactions between teams in my experience)
This will be my last post on this topic as well, kind regards
Moderators are not tournament hosts and asking 2 hosts to police 8 teamcords is absurd, as is asking for a tournament to have a dozen hosts just to watch teamcords. It's just not a viable solution, sorry
Sorry, I genuinely don't understand.
What's the big problem with accessing relevant information from a team server? I'm very deliberately using the scenario of a punishable offense happened and there are accusations of collusion -> it should be checked if said collusion happened, if it was deliberate or incidental so that appropriate measures can be taken.
That mods aren't hosts issue is also easily solved, mods can't make decisions about players in any setting where it could gain them an advantage. Ie if they're playing the same tournament actively, there's enough other mods on smogon to make decisions for such cases. This also applies to the team tour server case, hosts themselves don't need to check an unbiased mod can do it for them (that still requires server access for users that aren't on the team or their helpers)