Implemented Delete game discussion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Talk

[Luigi]

It's been 1 year since this thread and it somehow has gotten worse. In 2025 the game discussion room was a ghost town unless it was literally OST finals or a major 1v1 tournament. In 2026 even the 1v1 players have abandoned it and the finals only get talked about if Conflict happens to be online.

Previously I suggested we go back to how the lobby worked in 2016 where anything was allowed, and I while I still think that would be completely fine, ok it's not wanted. Now I'm suggesting we revert to how things were in 2017-2024 where people could talk in the chat as long as they didn't ghost/speculate on sets. This worked completely fine for 7 years with 0 complaints and produced an active chat for countless battles.

Basically if you weren't around for it, you weren't allowed to speculate on sets or offer any advice, and if someone did that (which was extremely rare) they got muted. And in theory if this kept happening that person would be devoiced but I'm not sure that ever even happened. What's left to talk about if you can't speculate or say what you would do in this position?

Watch this video that includes the lobby chat from WCoP 2023 to answer that. You cannot conceive of a game getting even half these many lines in 2026, even if it's the finals of an individual tournament, and to preempt the asinine argument people make that the reason that people don't talk in SmogTours anymore is because of Discord, everyone was already on Discord talking to their teammates in 2023 (and earlier). The death of SmogTours discussion has perfect correlation with the invention of game discussion but somehow discord gets the blame?_?

The community needs any revitalization it can possibly get its hands on right now, and the lobby chat was an effective marketing tool for the tournament community. People would see names like McMeghan and ABR talking in the chat and want to join in and get involved, now for one, those guys aren't talking because no one talks in game discussion, but even in the once in a blue moon game that gets talked about in game discussion, the prospective new player needs to jump the additional hoop of having a voiced account and clicking one tab over to see it.

And I'm sure all TDs know this so I shouldn't have to say this but I'll say it again, game discussion sees 0 use for 99% of official tournament games. What is being preserved here?

Finally, the thread from last year got closed with a TD at the time saying "We will not be removing game discussion, but we do have additional plans to encourage users to be present there." Correct me if I'm wrong, but has anything been done about this? What exactly were the plans? Were they so complex one year isn't enough time to implement them? Since we know for a fact that having just the lobby with restrictions worked, isn't it sensible to give that a try again instead?

 

[Eeveeto]

I agree, lets get back to how thing were, BUT: if anyone talking on lobby reveals information that might influence the outcome of a game, 1 year Tour Ban. This rule should only scare you if you talk too much, the majority of players wouldn,t be affected by it and therefore have nothing to fear.

 

[ABR]

Fully agreed with Luigi's post but honestly I'd take it a step further. The positives of engagement far, far outweigh the negatives of perceived ghosting. Very few people are realistically getting tangible play benefit from reading lobby and so many people are getting tangible benefit from having a public place to freely discuss games. Not only would I allow full speculation/ghosting in lobby, I would also enable the same for the smogtours discord. Just let people talk and exist together without fear of a tournament ban. It's one of the few meaningful ways for the community to interact as humans.

 

[Bouff]

don't want to parrot / repeat gb's points too hard here but this is long overdue, imo things have been extremely sterile and drab for a while now because no one feels like talking to each other or are afraid that they're going to end up infracted for speculating on accident and i think having the lobby chat being the primary avenue of discussion would be a good first step in improving community engagement.

hopefully this won't derail the thread but i think that should this hopefully go through, the onus is also on us as players (especially the more experienced ones) to actually try to talk and make the chat active. not to put on the rose tinted glasses but it was enjoyable to yap during hype moments, talk shit mid game, shitpost with people you did and didnt know, whine that your teammate was getting lucked within seconds of a bad turn happening, etc etc. having a slightly more relaxed culture would go a long way to making things feel alive again.

i understand that this can be annoying for the players playing the game sometimes, and more than anything i can Definitely relate to not wanting to interact with people because you think they're stupid assholes, but if we want this place to be active again then we have to put in the effort to do so rather than just doomposting about how dead tours are and being anti social.

 

[DAWNBUSTER]

I’ve little else to add, the above users put it exquisitely. Our previous model of visible discussion in the public channel encouraged our users to think before they speak in a volatile environment, and felt far more enjoyable and fun than the sterilized game discussion channel. It is also more of a pain in the chode to access for the average Gerald or Joe starting out. The numbers and activity do not lie, let’s move past this putrid form of mass live commentary and get back to the good old days!

 

[spell]

the above users pitched it quite perfectly but i also wanted to throw my hat into the ring because more eyes on this proposal = more incentives for the td team to take it seriously, so yeah. i think mostly free lobby posting would be more preferable because i think from a spectator pov the chaos would be really entertaining to comb through and the reason for doing this is, evidently, quite favourable towards it being an overall positive with video evidence to push it. this site has felt incredibly dry for the past couple of years interactions wise and it will only become more isolated and segmented if things continue to go the way they are right now so i would appreciate it if this goes through. it’s only a minor change, anyway. the way it worked before was completely fine and the original thread was posted under the assumption that game discussion was something we could experiment with to maybe improve things, not that there was a huge issue of lobby ghosting plaguing the integrity of the website. well, the experiment has run its course and i think we can come to the conclusion that it was a waste of time.

 

[ima]

We will not be removing game discussion, but we do have additional plans to encourage users to be present there." Correct me if I'm wrong, but has anything been done about this? What exactly were the plans?

Click to collapse...

this was the plan that was proposed which ultimately didnt really do anything tbh (tldr: modifying game links in the game discussion channel to showcase relevant games)

every time i look back at these threads i can see very clear majority support for reverting in some form but it always gets denied because the TDs (or whoever is in charge of this) prioritize trying to fix the channel activity issues instead (which sure, I’m not knocking you guys for trying it out). well, here we are after three threads of the same subject and yeah the game discussion chat room somehow got worse and there’s going to be thread after thread of this probably annually — maybe it’s time to let the channel go and see what happens. the facts are just going to lay there: stours was much more active pre-game discussion and the community (from what I’ve seen) is not really pleased with how chatting functions rn. now I personally didn’t really care about this for a while but I realized I’m always on my blonded alt so I am literally never looking at game discussion. If there was discussion to be had in lobby I’d probably join in because that’s what I did back then and it’s just way easier to get into given that it’s the lobby chat and people that aren’t voiced or have an account at all can still tune in on the conversations being had. So I guess another flaw was keeping the channel too tight-knit where it was simply just harder without a smogon account to see what the buzz for the current game was all about.

ok and I think a lot of the time just having common sense will usually prevent you from being demoted, it’s not like we should be making super strict rulings on these kind of things but I guess you could do that anyway if you really wanted to be careful. it’s just how I see it tho, this wasn’t a problem before and it shouldn’t be now and I see the community benefitting socially more than the downsides, if any

 

[Posho]

I'm the one who made the initial proposal so I'll take part of the blame for how it affected game commentary for tournament games. I said this on discord, but the way I envisioned the game discussion channel initially was for it to be a venue where people could actually speculate about these games. I am sadly not a programmer, so I can't ascertain if my vision for it could have been implemented.

I think making it hard to access and having it kick you out for any random game was terrible implementation. I always believed GD should've been tied to those SCL, SPL, WCoP modes and what have you. However, at this juncture I think it's just too late and the general view for it is just too damn negative for anybody to try and fix it.

So, as the person who made the initial proposal, I mirror the feelings on this thread and say we should revert lobby to the way it was before. I think competitive pokemon on Smogon has become way more isolating as a experience, and as meaningless as the commentary was on lobby, it still brought us all together. In these dark times, it is good that we get to stick together as a community more and get something we didn't know was so valuable back.

 

[Hiro']

No shame to admit we were wrong on this one, time to let it go for good

 

[Finchinator]

Yes, please revert this. The OP is correct. We tried something and it never caught on. Time to cut the losses and go back.

 

[Carrotman]

don't want to parrot / repeat gb's points too hard here but this is long overdue, imo things have been extremely sterile and drab for a while now because no one feels like talking to each other or are afraid that they're going to end up infracted for speculating on accident and i think having the lobby chat being the primary avenue of discussion would be a good first step in improving community engagement.

hopefully this won't derail the thread but i think that should this hopefully go through, the onus is also on us as players (especially the more experienced ones) to actually try to talk and make the chat active. not to put on the rose tinted glasses but it was enjoyable to yap during hype moments, talk shit mid game, shitpost with people you did and didnt know, whine that your teammate was getting lucked within seconds of a bad turn happening, etc etc. having a slightly more relaxed culture would go a long way to making things feel alive again.

i understand that this can be annoying for the players playing the game sometimes, and more than anything i can Definitely relate to not wanting to interact with people because you think they're stupid assholes, but if we want this place to be active again then we have to put in the effort to do so rather than just doomposting about how dead tours are and being anti social.

Click to collapse...

Correct me if i'm wrong, but since smogtours is a separate server, what's the harm of just having a function that kicks you from chatrooms while you're a player in an active battle? AFAIK the players that are playing aren't supposed to talk there regardless, and this would remove any doubts about ghosting/advantage gained from chat

 

[Posho]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but since smogtours is a separate server, what's the harm of just having a function that kicks you from chatrooms while you're a player in an active battle? AFAIK the players that are playing aren't supposed to talk there regardless, and this would remove any doubts about ghosting/advantage gained from chat

Click to collapse...

The function in a vacuum is completely fine. This which you are describing is the very reason why GD was created initially. The problem is that it sees almost to no use and that has become a detriment to the tournament scene, where we are seeing peak lack of engagement.

I can assure you that there will likely not be any problem with lobby being used for commenting games. The issue name came from lobby ghosting, which was ultimately well regulated before GD became a thing. The discussion chat was meant to be used as a means of speculating in the games without the risk of ghosting, not as a prevention from doing it, because nobody was. Players were already respectful with that, but a lot of them wanted fo analyze the games.

So in lieu of the fact that game discussion does not fulfill its purpose and the public reaction to it is generally negative, I think it is fine we take the L and revert back to how it was.

 

[Carrotman]

The function in a vacuum is completely fine. This which you are describing is the very reason why GD was created initially. The problem is that it sees almost to no use and that has become a detriment to the tournament scene, where we are seeing peak lack of engagement.

I can assure you that there will likely not be any problem with lobby being used for commenting games. The issue name came from lobby ghosting, which was ultimately well regulated before GD became a thing. The discussion chat was meant to be used as a means of speculating in the games without the risk of ghosting, not as a prevention from doing it, because nobody was. Players were already respectful with that, but a lot of them wanted fo analyze the games.

So in lieu of the fact that game discussion does not fulfill its purpose and the public reaction to it is generally negative, I think it is fine we take the L and revert back to how it was.

Click to collapse...

As far as i'm aware, the issue with game discussion is that it's difficult to access, & the issue admins may take with the suggested approach is the possibility for ghosting. Using lobby as the main chatroom and keeping a function that kicks active players should keep both parties satisfied, no?

 

[Posho]

As far as i'm aware, the issue with game discussion is that it's difficult to access, & the issue admins may take with the suggested approach is the possibility for ghosting. Using lobby as the main chatroom and keeping a function that kicks active players should keep both parties satisfied, no?

Click to collapse...

As I said, the implementation of GD wasn't a measure response, it was my very own proposal because of the constant vague commenting given that lobby ghosting was already well regulated and I thought it would be positive to actually analyze the games.

Sadly, the chat was poorly implemented, with complaints every year. This has led to bad perception and basically people not using it, thus reducing the engagement with recent tournaments.

So, to sum it up, game discussion was not a response against lobby ghosting but against a lack of pertinent game analysis during the game. Even after its implementation, it has not fulfilled its intended role, so it's only natural to revert it back to how it was.

I would gladly take LOOOOOOOOOL and (REDACTED) spam over literally nothing at all.

 

[BigFatMantis]

I think what they’re saying is, why not just kick player from lobby when they play, like how they are kicked from game discussion, and then you can chat/speculate all you want in lobby since the player was kicked. Not saying that’s a good thing or bad thing but I believe that’s what is being asked here.

 

[Posho]

Yes, I understood and I am opposed to it. That implementation is bad because you'd be constantly kicked out for any game on Smogtours, which is one of the main criticisms for game discussion. This is specially jarring for live tours.

 

[cotta]

That implementation is bad because you'd be constantly kicked out for any game on Smogtours, which is one of the main criticisms for game discussion. This is specially jarring for live tours.

Click to collapse...

i agree that this is very jarring for live tours, it is also terribly jarring for someone who loves to play hackmons cup on stour with my friends. I wonder if itd be possible to intertwine scl/spl/wcop mode into the kicking aspect? like when a mode is set in a battle room both players would get kicked, letting lobby be freely discussed in for everyone else. Obviously this wouldnt work for indivs and forum/circuit tours but still keep the open discussion that GD was created to enable

*maybe a token "individual" mode could be created to set for stuff like stour playoffs or deep os(d)t rounds?

 

[blank]

Just revert it back to what we had before.

 

[Oglemi]

Agree with ABR here, some of the most fun I had on this site was talking about the games that were actively happening and speculating on sets and why certain plays were happening. I personally have never understood the ghosting in chat issue, if everyone and both players are seeing it, then it's still an even playing field. Like, ok so maybe a certain tech move didn't really occur to player X, but it still has no bearing on if player Y actually has it. Player X still has to make the right prediction and Player Y could also be bluffing.

Then again, I've never had a strong opinion on ghosting outside of Limitless-like situations where someone is literally playing for someone else or "groupthinking" a game, idk.

 

[Vileman]

For the past a-long-time I would get into game discussion room and would ironically post who wants to discuss (tournament). I usually have to actively tag people for anyone to talk at all.

That said, we can't just ignore the fact that the past way of doing this has in fact influenced games (I think in one game someone went "this gyara runs fire natural gift no?" And then it was and it got scouted). Everyone's been just saying let's go back into that but I'd like to also focus on how to make it work as well.

Is there a good mid-point? Not really. We surely just need strict moderation with enough leeway for people to be able to actively discuss.

Regarding this "strict moderation", we probably should just have A Ton of mods so that there's always someone around. This surely isn't a bad thing regardless. There's plenty of well known figures who could just mute the obvious cases of speculation and outright devoice someone if there's repeat offenses. (Probably less strict with new people).

Also a redesign of the welcome message into smogtours would surely help. This is the current welcome board:

Too much wasted space, links to active tournaments are already found in the news section, and p much all the links at the bottom could just be one button that says "resources". Making this less cluttered would lead to people actually reading it (maybe), so re-design it to state in there "Don't speculate!!! Rules can be found (link)".


Tldr,
* Yes let's go back to lobby discussion
* Have more mods for more active moderation
* re-design how the current welcome display works to be able to state in there the speculation rules (or where to find them)

 

[BigFatMantis]

Is it feasible to just force mute the lobby for players (not necessarily be kicked) so you don’t see user messages but still see new games? Or in the alternative, I don’t see a huge downside to restricting access to lobby for players playing in SCL/SPL mode specifically - those are typically the games where most of the discussion happens (you aren’t seeing any lobby discussion for ABCDEFG-PL finals - not that it’s unimportant, but moreso those discussions happen elsewhere in discords)

 

[Posho]

That said, we can't just ignore the fact that the past way of doing this has in fact influenced games (I think in one game someone went "this gyara runs fire natural gift no?" And then it was and it got scouted)

Click to collapse...

God bless Dokkerich

That was blunder vs Alexander in Smogon Tour 23 in 2017 at a time where moderation for lobby ghosting was much tamer in comparison with how it got later. So, I would argue that the issue was solved later anyway, as I don't remember a case as heartwrenching as this one. All we need is just people who can moderate these things in case it's needed.

 

[Luigi]

That said, we can't just ignore the fact that the past way of doing this has in fact influenced games (I think in one game someone went "this gyara runs fire natural gift no?" And then it was and it got scouted). Everyone's been just saying let's go back into that but I'd like to also focus on how to make it work as well.
speculation rules (or where to find them)

Click to collapse...

This is what caused the change from everything being allowed to the standard we had from 2017-2024 that I'm proposing we go back to. Literally nobody ever got any information from lobby in that 7 year period. This is mentioned in the thread I linked.

@people suggesting anything that involves kicking players from lobby, consult the gif:

"Oh but what if we require people be logged on to their voiced accounts" You are recreating game discussion from first principles. We've been through this already.

 

[Carrotman]

This is what caused the change from everything being allowed to the standard we had from 2017-2024 that I'm proposing we go back to. Literally nobody ever got any information from lobby in that 7 year period. This is mentioned in the thread I linked.

@people suggesting anything that involves kicking players from lobby, consult the gif:

View attachment 870145
"Oh but what if we require people be logged on to their voiced accounts" You are recreating game discussion from first principles. We've been through this already.

Click to collapse...

I think you'd be surprised how often a very small step dissuades people from doing whatever you're trying to prevent

 

[BigFatMantis]

"Oh but what if we require people be logged on to their voiced accounts" You are recreating game discussion from first principles. We've been through this already.

Click to collapse...

I don’t believe anyone is actually suggesting this. If someone really wants to cheat they will one way or another, was just trying to suggest helpful fixes to somewhat minimize accidental or incidental ghosting/reveals. Feel free to respectfully disagree - we all know what incognito does already.