All Gens Reforming How We Advertise Spotlight Voting

[Tbolt]

Hey Ruins of Alph folks,

I've been running the RoA Spotlight Community Choice voting for a few months now, and it's generally been alright, except for one thing. The "no advertising" rule is very cumbersome to enforce and often punishes new community members who aren't even aware of its existence. For those unaware, this is the current rule on advertising:

We try our best to limit advertisement of voting.

• For generation voting, we try to only advertise the voting stage in the Ruins of Alph Room and Discord, as well as Smogon's Twitter. We know there are generation-specific communities such as the ADV community, so we strongly discourage advertising the generation voting stage to cater towards a specific generation.
• For format voting, we try to practice similar standards. This means no advertising outside of the RoA Room and Discord, and Smogon's twitter, and no encouraging people to vote for one specific format/against another formats. However, we might be more lenient on advertising rules for less popular communities. For example, Monotype has its own room, subforum, and a fairly large past-gen community; as a result, advocating specifically for Monotype during format voting is more likely to get picked up on and reprimanded than something like STABmons.
• If you want to advertise something but are afraid of the potential consequences, just ask one of the maintainers! You never know what we'll say!
• If we catch wind of you breaking these rules, the format/generation you are advocating for will be removed from voting for that month and your votes will be invalid. Don't be a party pooper.

Click to collapse...

This has led to me having to police a lot of Discord servers, and this takes time and effort that I fear is not sustainable as we add more and more generations and tiers. What's more, there are a ton of non-Smogon affiliated Discord servers that I will never be able to fully sift through, and this doesn't even bring up the very stupid idea of "malicious advertising," where people who want to "kick out" options can advertise in that tier's respective Discord server. It's created a ruling that is confusing to beginners, difficult to enforce, and can actively be exploited by bad actors. My opinion is that the advertising limitations have to go.

However, we should think about why we put the advertising limitations in place. The idea was that if there were no advertising limitations in place, tiers with large communities like RU, NU, PU, LC, and Monotype would repeatedly advertise and win the vote, leaving no room for smaller, less-played tiers (like October 2026's GSC UUBL) to see a ladder. If we remove the advertising limitations, we need to further tweak the system to accommodate this.

One potential solution is to alter the cooldowns of generations and tiers. Currently, I have it such that a generation has 2 months of cooldown after it has been voted, each tier has 2 months of cooldown after it has been voted, and each tier also may not be voted if it was selected for the generation last time (for instance, if DPP's previous tier was LC, then this time it cannot have LC, even if it had been a year since the last LC ladder). One potential solution is that I extend these cooldowns to maybe 4 months for generations and 6 months for tiers. Extending the tiers vote by this month ensures that if the "popular" tiers are always chosen, then we get at least a month of a less popular tier for people to try. The generation vote is the same concept, though there are fewer generations than tiers, so we don't need as long of a cooldown.

Of course, extending cooldowns isn't the only possible solution. That is why I am asking for opinions and alternative solutions that could make Community Choice more sustainable. To be clear, unless I see a compelling reason not to, I will try to remove the advertisement limitation rules for the December 2026 voting process; the only question is what we should do in place of it.

 

[PaperIrori]

Hard yes. The specific cooldown number is gonna be improved by trial and error imo, since we have to take into account that "big community" is a fluid concept depending on the gen: lc is big, except for rby and gsc which is smaller even than uubl (mono shares the same lack of support for those gens afaik). So in a preliminary counting, gsc for example may have less "big communities".

But anyways, keeping the same cooldown number is pretty good already and less of a headache. The result in gsc would be more niche stuff getting picked once the big communties run out sooner: stadium2, nc00, lc/mono, maybe we can even have a 1v1 ladder.

(That is if gsc gets picked again lol. This time it won particularly afaik bc rby/adv/dpp coincided in cooldown, and the oldest gen people flocked to it. That's my theory at least.

How long was it from the last gsc community pick? Considering that, it might be worthwhile increasing the gen cooldown by a single month imho)

 

[Tbolt]

How long was it from the last gsc community pick? Considering that, it might be worthwhile increasing the gen cooldown by a single month imho)

Click to collapse...

Before last month's GSC community pick, the next most recent GSC community pick was October 2023 (36 months ago!)

 

[igiveuponaname]

In all honesty I think the generation vote should be done away with altogether and only format votes should remain. To me RoA spotlight ladders are meant to promote and showcase various non-OU metagames from across all of the old generations, but as it currently stands I feel as though the generation vote is moreso a popularity contest where you see three gens win way more than the rest. Staff picks helped alleviate this by giving lesser chosen old gens a chance to put up other non-UU/Ubers metagames for a spotlight ladder, but with those gone now you're just left with the rotational UU/Ubers ladder and the monthly Sisyphus Simulator for the chance to get a ladder for some old gen formats. GSC not having been chosen for community spotlight for three years is certainly an extreme example, but the fact that it can happen at all shows that there is something fundamentally wrong with how the community spotlight ladder works currently. At least with having the generations rotate automatically à la UU/Ubers ladders you can guarantee every old gen has their time with a community pick while the format vote still gives people an actual say in the matter. I don't know, I just feel very frustrated with how the community spotlight has been going on for quite some time now and this seems to be the best place to actually bring up any sort of proposal for change.

Re: the actual advertising stuff, I think even with extended cooldowns that removing advertising limitations altogether would be a poor idea that turns votes into "how many people can you send a link to the thread on discord and bother enough to vote". I do think there could be some more leeway though. For example, about 2-3 months ago a buddy was saying he wanted to participate in the generation vote but didn't know where it was, I sent him a link to the vote but was told it counted as advertisement, so I deleted almost immediately afterwards before he had the chance to cast a vote to avoid any potential punishment. All I was doing in effect was directing someone to where the vote was after they had already stated they wished to vote, which I would say shouldn't be considered advertising. Basically just let there be a bit more nuance to how sending links to the vote thread is treated than simply "sending a link to the vote thread = advertising".

 

[PaperIrori]

Re: the actual advertising stuff, I think even with extended cooldowns that removing advertising limitations altogether would be a poor idea that turns votes into "how many people can you send a link to the thread on discord and bother enough to vote"

Click to collapse...

There was an argument on the adv megas discord that the advertising rule should be done away so that the lesser communities (like gsc uubl) actually bother to expand and compete with the big ones. Even if they're nicher, there's no reason why they have to be this dead ngl. Imo the best choice is both:

The cooldown taking into account the gen's big communities gives the smaller ones, if done right, a maximum window of time to wait for a turn. And eliminating the advertising rule not only helps orient and integrate into the forum newer players, it motivates everyone to integrate into their own format communities, to keep them alive, growing, and fighting against the big ones through advertising (which, as was said by that person in the adv megas discord, can be done smartly and benefit the whole of showdown's community: youtube format showcase videos advertising for gsc pu, for example).

Even if they don't win often, competition alone breathes new life into the formats. Rn, their dead state honestly keeps away prospective newbies.


Edit: honestly, something we may consider is 15 day ladders. A lot of ladders are pretty much dead by a certain timeframe, playing with the same 2 people if at all. The most active times are the start when there's a push for top by veterans who get their big GXEs fighting each other and then disappear, and a little more towards the end by all who want to try it some more before it disappears.

Without 15 day ladders, we either have long ass cooldowns which is killer worse conditions for the big communities which we want to thrive too, or there will be some niche formats stuck in the same unpick hell when bigs come back into rotation.

Honestly, i see no point to 30 day ladders besides tradition and the rttnl tours not overlaping with each other and being further stress on the TOs... sorry

 

[Tbolt]

In all honesty I think the generation vote should be done away with altogether and only format votes should remain.

Click to collapse...

This is definitely something I could see being done. It would simplify the spotlight decision process and would ensure that every generation gets ladders with regular intervals. We would probably just stagger them with the Ubers/UU spotlights if we did that (i.e if the ladder is RBY UU, then the community choice would be BW; if GSC, then ORAS, etc).

Re: the actual advertising stuff, I think even with extended cooldowns that removing advertising limitations altogether would be a poor idea that turns votes into "how many people can you send a link to the thread on discord and bother enough to vote". I do think there could be some more leeway though.

Click to collapse...

Yeah my thing is that I don't know how to enforce any sort of advertising limitations, especially across the sprawl of online communities that I will never be able to access. I would rather have very very long cooldown that would basically forces large communities to back off to give smaller formats a chance to shine.

And eliminating the advertising rule not only helps orient and integrate into the forum newer players, it motivates everyone to integrate into their own format communities, to keep them alive, growing, and fighting against the big ones through advertising (which, as was said by that person in the adv megas discord, can be done smartly and benefit the whole of showdown's community: youtube format showcase videos advertising for gsc pu, for example).

Click to collapse...

I like this sentiment. I'm not 100% sure if this will come to pass, but I like the idea that advertising a chance to earn your ladder would ensure that smaller formats would still keep their playerbase. And heck, even if big formats advertise as well, then maybe it would generate people from their playerbase to continue to play the ladder deep into the month.

honestly, something we may consider is 15 day ladders. A lot of ladders are pretty much dead by a certain timeframe, playing with the same 2 people if at all. The most active times are the start when there's a push for top by veterans who get their big GXEs fighting each other and then disappear, and a little more towards the end by all who want to try it some more before it disappears.

Click to collapse...

I actually don't mind this suggestion, but my concern is regarding what happens to competitors who play in the spotlight Swiss tournaments. Typically, they last through the entire month, with any finale matches happening after the month is over. I think that 15 day spotlights would make their experience worse because they cannot test on the ladder later in the month. If this is something that we are willing to give up, then that is fine by me.

I would also like to hear the input of PS admins like dhelmise who presumably would have to adjust to this kind of change.

 

[PaperIrori]

I think that 15 day spotlights would make their experience worse because they cannot test on the ladder later in the month. If this is something that we are willing to give up, then that is fine by me.

Click to collapse...

Yeah, but imo it's only a problem for the casual side of new format players. Ladder isn't that good test tbh, just fun and quick enough for basic functionality tests (that was my experience in the uubl rttnl), especially later in the month when most veterans are gone. Honestly, i'd very much wish for those promising newbies, that take it seriously enough to be advanced in the tour once ladder stops, to start using matchmaking tags on the official discords (which requires a restructuring of community support yeah, but most people already orient LFGs to the /tier discords).

Ladder friends and discord lfg friends are the best source of constant practice imo, it's just seeing them online, not the emotional drag of using the matchmaking on the disc, and this problem you alert of might lead to people getting connections in the discord, not only ladder, and becoming even better, instead of keeping away from the developed side of the meta, yoloing somewhat, and then dropping the format once it's over because they precisely haven't been eased into discord matchmaking.

(Sorry for talking so much, I'm a darn parrot lmao)

 

[LHF]

It's late but I just saw this and I won't be able to sleep unless I type something out here. I'm going to try to not let any bias as RoA staff status get in the way of these ideas. Expect this to be just a number of points to consider; some are more fully fleshed out than others.

On popularity and advertising: advertising is going to happen whether we like it or not, and as mentioned it is not something that will be realistically policed efficiently by anyone with a reasonable work-life-hobby balance. I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing that we allow for it, perhaps in exchange for a greater cooldown. As a random hypothetical, let's say the RU community is chomping at the bit to play SM RU one month and bands together to get it done. Let them have that in exchange for the understanding that they won't get to have another RU be considered for a fairly long period of time. Relevant to this, my initial gut reaction is that having 6 month cooldowns for a tier is excessive and could probably be cut down to 4 months.

Moving on, I agree with igiveuponaname. Giving users voting for a generation is probably the biggest problem here because it is clear that public perception of some generations is far superior to others and even if we assume the best/good faith voting, it still does not change that the same few gens are likely to win out every time they are available. While we cannot completely eliminate user biases and preferences in voting entirely, at the very least randomizing the gen in the room will help different generations see play.

There's room for structural changes to how we handle the generation being picked for the "community" later so that it isn't as intensely biased toward the more popular generations like ADV. I propose a public !pick command in RoA room by an RO(then screenshotted and posted on forums for transparency) for generations not on cooldown. So for example, near the end of November either Rage or Tb0lt would do a pick between the remaining eligible generations in chat, and then voting on the tier choice itself could occur from there. I am also not opposed to staff just assuming entire control over which generation is picked such that we can consciously keep a healthy rotation of generations to prevent !pick from leaving a generation out in the cold for a while, but leaving the vote of which "tier" is picked up to the voter base.


I would also suggest that we possibly have UU/Ubers rotational ladder contribute to a generation's cooldown somehow, even if it's just tacking on an extra month toward whatever cooldown is decided upon. For those of you who have been paying attention to this as I have, one little coincidence that's been cropping up recently has been that the UU rotational ladder has been melding with the generational choice. We had RBY UU and then RBY NU in quick succession months ago. GSC UU was the month prior, and then GSC UUBL followed afterward. And now after BW1 OU concludes in November, we will have BW UU in December. It's two servings of the same gen back to back. This is theoretically something that can keep happening over and over, and while it's not malicious or anything, it does somewhat bypass the generational variety I think the spirit of spotlight ladders is looking to accomplish.

Which leads me to a final, unrelated and hopefully seen as unbiased idea:

- A possible way to address tier choices and diversity would be to return Staff pick for 6 months out of the year and have voters select a tier every other month. This would allow for a blend of user involvement while also allowing staff to spotlight formats that realistically would struggle to win a vote otherwise. My ideal vision for (somewhat) reviving Staff Pick months would give formats like BDSP OU or a tier that hasn't won a vote in a while an opportunity to be played on a ladder and in a spotlight tour. Staff picks could oscillate as needed though as you can't always pick a lower traffic tier every so often, but this would at least give the smaller communities some extra help on top of a vote they are(realistically) stacked against winning. It would also allow for RoA Staff to look at which tiers have been left out in the cold as of late and push them as well. If PU hasn't been picked in like 3 months of user-based voting, then staff could consciously choose a PU in the next Staff Pick month.

PS:

- I dislike the idea of a 15 day ladder on principle as it's simply not enough time for a main to enjoy + it can punish those who are busier earlier(or later) in the month by missing out on a tier being played. I do feel sympathetic toward the idea of getting more tiers in the rotation, and this would be the only way to do so without having more ladder resources allocated to RoA, but I don't like the idea of truncating the timeframe as it feels like you're sort of dangling a tier in front of someone only to yank it away quickly unless they no life the ladder. I also know spotlights are fairly relaxed and mellow compared to regular individuals, but it does seem odd that we would only be having a ladder for said Swiss tour last half a month. It would also mean that you'd have to have more Swiss tours running in perpetuity as having two different ladders a month would suggest you need a tour for each to remain fair.

 

[Thare Regn]

Hello!

I rarely post as I'm kinda new to the forum, lol, but I do agree that this policy is hard to enforce and that we could do without it. I've thought about this before and getting rid of it doesn't stop it from being a popularity contest.

Now, as for the suggestions I have to say I really like the idea of increasing the cooldown, I do think that 4 months for generations and 6 months for tier may seem a little excessive, although it could work as it gives better chances at less popular generations to win, such as GSC. While it might not even be that excessive at all, I suggest that a middle-ground option could be tested, such as 3 months for generations and 4 months for tiers, and considering increasing it to 4 and 6 respectively if it still feels unfair for lesser picked generation and tiers, as it also gives a bigger window for those bigger community tiers that will likely stomp the voting once their tier is available again.

I don't like the idea of 15 day ladders, IMHO it doesn't give people enough time to enjoy and learn a format (one could say the better way it's always to find a discord with people willing to play something in particular, but I feel that ladder is a good way for people to casually and accessibly play a tier without having to compromise. Being more accessible is good as it's only one click away, and chances are you will fight players with a similar knowledge of the tier as you do (since battling an expert of a discord tier-specific channel might lead you to get destroyed and maybe even not wanting to try the tier again, of course this is not always the case but I can see why for some people it could be frustrating. Another point on this regard that 15 days it's simply not enough, let's say I got hooked with Platinum OU, and while I log in almost every day, I have a full time job and sometimes I go out during weekends, and it's not like the 100% of the time I would be online I would be playing PS, let alone that specific Spotlight that I liked, additionally if ladders were to last 15 days this could disincentivize people of even trying them as "let's just wait for the next one", while this is true as things are now, I believe people are more willing to try it if it lasts longer as the next option isn't coming so soon. And this is not even mentioning the mess for the Swiss tournaments. The tier going away so soon doesn't really stop the feeling of not having a clue when the tier could be Spotlight again, as an example, I quite enjoyed GSC UUBL and a factor was that I knew that it won't be Spotlight anytime soon, if ever.

Lastly, and this might sound a bit controversial, while I do think it's nice to have more variety I don't think it's wrong that more popular generations and tiers get picked more often. Should this be a bit "nerfed"? Sure, but I wouldn't take it to the extent of forcing variety by implementing extremely unpopular formats. After all, the spotlight ladder being active is a good thing. This is also coming from someone that loved playing GSC UUBL, and while it's amazing to have formats like that from time to time, the ladder was dead and was pretty much kept alive by me and 'redeeming love'. this of course takes away the fun if you have to wait so much between games. Also, it's also true that GSC not winning for 3 years is extreme and IMHO the suggestion of increasing the cooldowns could help it win a bit more and, in my opinion, the way things would look better going forward without having to commit to a drastic change such as staff picks (which, and I say this very kindly, could lead to dead ladders if something very unpopular gets picked and/or by simply having one extra this takes it back to the issue of having 3 Spotlight ladders dividing the playerbase).

Edit: to add a couple more examples and fixing some typos.

 

[Aristrea01]

Before I start, I should say that I'm terrible at explaining my thoughts in regards to things like this, so I'm really sorry if this is difficult to read.

In terms of advertising, it should definitely be allowed. The ban on advertising was not only hard to enforce, but also had the knock-on effect of stifling discussion about the format vote in places outside RoA, as people weren't willing to talk about it, lest their conversation be interpreted as advertising and their favourite tier removed from the vote. As such I do think that removing the ban on advertising will not only make moderation easier but enable more community discussion and engagement with the vote.

In terms of solutions to the problem, I think Tbolt's initial suggestion of extending the cooldowns to 4 months for generations and 6 months for tiers is a good starting point. However, while this does partially address the issues with popular generations/tiers, it doesn't fix them entirely. If this system were to be implemented as is, more unpopular gens like GSC would still struggle to be picked, so we'd still need a way to ensure that these unpopular generations/tiers will be picked within a reasonable timeframe.

While I do think igiveuponaname's suggestion to remove the generation vote would be effective in terms of allowing more unpopular gens to be picked, I personally think that the generation vote is an important part of the format vote as a whole, as it gives people much more variety in what they're able to chose, and as such I'd ideally want to keep it intact.

In terms of my own solution to the problem, I would propose somewhat of a middle ground to the current system and Igiveuponaname's suggestion via the addition of a pity system for the generation vote. Under this system, If a generation isn't chosen within a specific timeframe (say ~12 months) it is automatically selected as the generation for the next format vote. By doing this, we allow people to (most of the time) freely vote on what generation they want while ensuring that the less popular generations still get picked on a semi-regular basis. For the tier vote, I'd actually be willing to extend the tier cooldown even further (To something like 8 months instead of 6) to ensure that a wider variety of formats get picked.

 

[jimmy the card]

I'm too tired to read everyone's replies rn, sorry, but a few points. With how the spotlight tours currently function, the ladders need to stay up for the duration of the month to give you the chance to test/shake the rust off (not that it helped much in GSC UUBL's case, given that I found a whole 1 ladder game lmao).

Secondly, I'd like to raise a toast to the no advertising rule, for without ADV UUBL & RU both nuking themselves, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to win the LC spotlight. Real talk though, the rule is dumb and, as you say, unenforceable. Getting around it is as simple as someone DMing their pals the link. The rule just punishes the unenlightened who innocently share the vote.

Somewhat off topic, but thirdly and probably controversially, GSC being absent for 36 months is shocking, in that I'm surprised it wasn't longer. Finding games for GSC Ubers or UU is hard enough, but poor GSC UUBL saw 389 games played last month. It's a shame because I loved the games I played in the spotlight, but at its current level of interest, GSC hogging the community choice ladder benefits no one. Removing the generation vote is a good first step methinks. That way GSC shouldn't win unless there is legitimate interest in a tier.

Sorry if my comments come off as flippant, I'm nodding off as I write this & my brain function is minimal, but thank you for putting a spotlight on the advertising rule. It needs to go so I can shill for an RBY10U ladder <3

 

[igiveuponaname]

In all honesty I think the generation vote should be done away with altogether and only format votes should remain. To me RoA spotlight ladders are meant to promote and showcase various non-OU metagames from across all of the old generations, but as it currently stands I feel as though the generation vote is moreso a popularity contest where you see three gens win way more than the rest.

Click to collapse...

When I initially wrote this I was going largely off of gut feeling and memory from the past few years but I wanted to make sure I wasn't talking out of my ass so I went and did some digging in the spotlight tour forum. All I basically did was go into the forum and search "Community Choice" to try and quickly filter through all the tours. It's not a perfect method by any means because it requires the tour host to actually clearly state it in the OP but I believe I was able to get almost all of them down. It would have been much easier and far more accurate to sift through the actual format vote threads but unfortunately those are archived and unviewable so rip. All of this was since beginning of 2023, aka when SS was added to RoA

Out of 43 Community Choices (that I counted)
RBY: 9
GSC: 2
ADV: 11
DPP: 3
BW: 7
ORAS: 2
SM: 5
SS: 4

And yea I was right on the money. As it stands the gen vote is dominated primarily by generations with large and/or extremely passionate playerbases, leaving little room for lesser chosen gens to have their time in the spotlight (heh). While there is an understandable sentiment that more popular gens/tiers should receive ladders more often and that the less popular formats will likely never get ladders and simply have to Deal With It, I think it is far more important that RoA remains fully committed to acting as a hub for all old gens, and thus provide consistent opportunities for every generation to have spotlight ladder access. Removing the gen portion of the vote does that as effectively as possible without needing to debate on how long things like cooldowns should last and the inevitable need to tweak them.

the way things would look better going forward without having to commit to a drastic change such as staff picks (which, and I say this very kindly, could lead to dead ladders if something very unpopular gets picked and/or by simply having one extra this takes it back to the issue of having 3 Spotlight ladders dividing the playerbase).

Click to collapse...

Not that I'm clamoring for third ladder Staff Pick to come back I would have preferred it stayed instead of UU/Ubers ladder but that's besides the point, but calling them drastic is fucking wild lmao. They were a staple for years and were only removed because PS! upper staff were removing one of RoA's ladders/giving one to VGC because numbers were low across all the ladders, the community choice was going to stay no matter what so it was going to be between Staff and UU/Ubers rotational.

To actually add something here though I was looking back through the staff conversation from back when the third ladder was removed and I like one of the ideas that was brought up of somewhat merging the UU/Ubers ladder with staff pick, where the default would be the rotational UU/Ubers but that could be replaced by a different format of the staff's choice if they feel as though there is interest from the community for it.

Edit: also you know what +1 to what Lenny said about the rotational ladder contributing to the cooldown if gen vote does stay for some unholy reason. Avoids putting a large dose of a single gen in such a small timeframe and would at least help with gen diversity. Make it so that a gen can't be voted for the month before and after a rotational ladder though. Still removing gen vote altogether>>>>anything else

 

[Tbolt]

Based on what I have read so far in this thread, I will shift my current preferred solution to:

• Eliminating the generation vote and having it rotate around similar to the Ubers/UU ladder. I will probably give it a 4 generation offset (so if the Ubers/UU ladder is for BW, then the Community Choice ladder would be for RBY).
• Keeping the generation cooldown at 6 months. This ensures that large, popular, multi-generation formats get an extended cooldown while smaller, one-generation formats effectively only get a one-generation cooldown.
• Removing the advertising restrictions as I initially wanted.

Do note that this is not the end of discussion, this is just what I would implement as the new system for December after the discussion so far. I encourage you to continue discussing this new solution or other solutions.

Lastly, and this might sound a bit controversial, while I do think it's nice to have more variety I don't think it's wrong that more popular generations and tiers get picked more often. Should this be a bit "nerfed"?

Click to collapse...

Honestly, this is a fair question. If we want oldgen spotlights to have maximum engagement, we probably wouldn't have super long cooldowns. I think that the issue with just allowing big playerbases to just run the ladder just leads to the same few communities getting ladders. Maybe this is something that is acceptable to us. But we do have quite a few large communities whose tiers we host ladders for:

The idea was that if there were no advertising limitations in place, tiers with large communities like RU, NU, PU, LC, and Monotype would repeatedly advertise and win the vote, leaving no room for smaller, less-played tiers (like October 2026's GSC UUBL) to see a ladder.

Click to collapse...

The idea behind a 6 month cooldown is that if these are the 5 largest communities, then we get a month of respite from them. There are also many other significant but not super duper large communities (1v1, Doubles OU, Anything Goes) that would also have an influence in these votes. Maybe we need to make the cooldown longer? I'm not sure. This could be another thing to consider when discussing this reform.

 

[PaperIrori]

Maybe we need to make the cooldown longer? I'm not sure. This could be another thing to consider when discussing this reform.

Click to collapse...

Imo it won't work no matter how much you increase the cooldown, until effectively killing motivation and activity in those big communities bc it's punishing them for doing things right instead of giving in to the cold dead grip of lethargy. I mean, even with 6 cooldown there are still middle-big communities, and there will still be a bottom of the barrel, picked at best every 3 years.

My proposal taking into account the 2 mentions of staff pick and the 2 rejections of my 15 day ladder... is to double down harder and bribe the opposition:

What if we had a 3rd staff pick ladder run at staff discretion, for 10 or 15 days at most? It isn't affecting the hard-earned ladders, it's like aris' pity idea. It may or may not run every month, it may run at the start, mid, or end of the month: it's totally at staff discretion, which also gives leeway to times when they're busier so they don't open ladders. It may or may not have a rotational, idk about that, tho i think it's doable but not very neat for those of us ocd lol.

I still stand by that short ladders are more active than the longer ones we have: bc people stop queueing after failures to do so and it snowballs so soon that the ladder is dead. This way, I think both lenny's and thare's critiques are accounted for: the main experience is at its best, untouched, and we have at the same time experimental leeway and a pity system.

 

[Thare Regn]

Hi again, some more points

Eliminating the generation vote and having it rotate around similar to the Ubers/UU ladder. I will probably give it a 4 generation offset (so if the Ubers/UU ladder is for BW, then the Community Choice ladder would be for RBY).

Click to collapse...

Honestly this seems pretty good to me. For instance, let's say I'm interested mostly in RBY, GSC and ADV, just a bit on DPP/BW and that I don't really care about gen 6, 7 and 8, this would mean that there is only one month window in which I wouldn't have a queue for both Ubers/UU or Community Choice ladder and this is assuming I were to only play the first three gens. This is also true for people that, as an example, are mostly interested in ORAS and newer older gens, so this could ensure that people get to play their favorite generations (assuming they are consecutives) with regularity and also knowing when they are coming (now for both ladders if they both get to be rotational). This is also fair for gens such as GSC to ensure they get picked more often. I just don't understand how the 6 month generation cooldown would work if this system were to be implemented.

Now, maybe a bit of a crazy idea, the topic of a third ladder has been discussed here, but I was reading the following:

until effectively killing motivation and activity in those big communities bc it's punishing them for doing things right instead of giving in to the cold dead grip of lethargy.

Click to collapse...

and I thought, what if occasionally some big communities format could still be picked by Staff? I'm not sure if doing it while a less popular gen has its Spotlight (like if we were to implement, let's say, ADV UUBL when a community ladder vote for GSC takes place), so I'm not really sure how this could be done, maybe if a big tour is coming (such as, I don't know lol, ADV Mono/RU/UUBL) and their community is also asking for it, would that be reasonable perhaps? assuming everything goes well having that extra ladder for this particular example should be active if we combine the factors of a popular LT + people wanting practice for their upcoming tournament, just thought that maybe bigger communities shouldn't be "punished" even if we are aiming to have more variety, if that makes sense.

 

[perejil]

Make the ones that would win most votes permanent ladders.

 

[JetShock]

Remove it without a cooldown and then take it from there, essentially starting from scratch.

 

[Notater]

Hard agree on shorter ladders; if the Swiss thing is such a big issue the ladders could overlap and dovetail, but as is the last two weeks of the month are nearly completely dead, which undercuts the whole point of having the temporary ladders in the first place.

 

[Decidueye409]

Allow advertising. The anti advertising rule is total BS and stops newer players from seeing that the voting exists. We do not need to extend cooldowns. Also make it so 35 has a permanent ladder

 

[LHF]

I'm really glad that others have taken the time to chime in so while I can't address everything individually, I'll hit on what I think is most important:

- Removing the restriction on advertising is objectively just the best option all around as has been stated by literally everyone. It's good it'll be going away going forward.

- Having the generation choice rotate(and instead of being voted on is easily the best choice we can implement overall in order to create more diversity and avoid that "back to back" phenomenon I pointed out in my previous post.

- A lot of viewpoints regarding the state of ladder activity and tiering communities really boils down to what the Ruins of Alph ladders want to market themselves as.

Honestly, this is a fair question. If we want oldgen spotlights to have maximum engagement, we probably wouldn't have super long cooldowns. I think that the issue with just allowing big playerbases to just run the ladder just leads to the same few communities getting ladders. Maybe this is something that is acceptable to us. But we do have quite a few large communities whose tiers we host ladders for:


The idea behind a 6 month cooldown is that if these are the 5 largest communities, then we get a month of respite from them. There are also many other significant but not super duper large communities (1v1, Doubles OU, Anything Goes) that would also have an influence in these votes. Maybe we need to make the cooldown longer? I'm not sure. This could be another thing to consider when discussing this reform.

Click to collapse...

Is our goal to have maximum engagement on these ladders, or is our goal to try and offer a variety of formats? I don't concern myself with the behind the scenes of PS! statistics or usages, but a possible concern about the latter is that slow activity months like GSC UUBL happening in tandem could possibly have PS staff look into closing up a low demand ladder. (This is what happened to Ubers UU a year ago or so.)

For what it's worth, I do agree with igiveuponaname in the sense that Ruins of Alph is meant to try and showcase a variety of our older formats, regardless of some formats being more popular than others. Some metagames and communities may only have a limited niche(you yourself know this well as a BDSPer), but there is always someone new who hasn't gotten a chance to sample a metagame and maybe join in on a community. I am proof of this as I would have never gotten into some of my most beloved tiers without someone randomly asking for games in RoA or spectating a roomtour/match on smogtours that caught my eye. The hardest part of any sort of metagame development is building up an initial community that actually cares about it, which is why I personally like and endorse more obscure roomtours when I'm active.

Regarding spotlight ladders, though, we still have to factor in the traffic and total games played given everything I've just said. As much as I would love to have the resources to push a comparatively obscure format every month, we also can't force people to be active on ladders they don't care to play.

It's also worth noting that the reason the UU/Ubers rotational is still in place is because they're simply disproportionately popular respective to even the other formats and would often win regardless.

I do think that the old format of UU/Ubers, community vote, and staff pick is ideal given the constraints we have to work with... but it is obviously not entirely in our hands. VGC is the "mainstream" way to play competitive Pokemon and it "does" deserve a ladder. Staff pick can't really return if we only have three ladders, and I don't see a fourth being added anytime soon if at all.

Given this:

The idea behind a 6 month cooldown is that if these are the 5 largest communities, then we get a month of respite from them. There are also many other significant but not super duper large communities (1v1, Doubles OU, Anything Goes) that would also have an influence in these votes. Maybe we need to make the cooldown longer? I'm not sure. This could be another thing to consider when discussing this reform.

Click to collapse...

This is "probably" a good starting point for further discussion. I wrote my post super late last night so I had time to mull on the 6 month cooldown and it does actually make sense now that I read this portion of your post.

The only tedious part about it is that if we remove the generation vote as per my suggestion, this effectively means that the generation that gets the "OM/offbrand metagame" is really up to chance and might have a small playerbase with nonexistent or outdated resources. I know that I personally found it tedious to host tours for GSC UUBL in the room not out of personal spite for the tier, but simply because we literally did not have any samples representative of the meta at the time and we'd basically have to rely on a user or two to post "updated" samples. In comparison, BW1 OU this month, despite still being an "offbrand" metagame, is easy to host not necessarily because of the ADV clout because there were actual resources to direct people to. However, sometimes a month like GSC UUBL is bound to happen where there is comparatively little activity in general and maybe we just can't avoid this. If so, that's fine.

My proposal taking into account the 2 mentions of staff pick and the 2 rejections of my 15 day ladder... is to double down harder and bribe the opposition:

What if we had a 3rd staff pick ladder run at staff discretion, for 10 or 15 days at most? It isn't affecting the hard-earned ladders, it's like aris' pity idea. It may or may not run every month, it may run at the start, mid, or end of the month: it's totally at staff discretion, which also gives leeway to times when they're busier so they don't open ladders. It may or may not have a rotational, idk about that, tho i think it's doable but not very neat for those of us ocd lol.

I still stand by that short ladders are more active than the longer ones we have: bc people stop queueing after failures to do so and it snowballs so soon that the ladder is dead. This way, I think both lenny's and thare's critiques are accounted for: the main experience is at its best, untouched, and we have at the same time experimental leeway and a pity system.

Click to collapse...

If we "could" control having another ladder as part of Ruins of Alph spotlights, I agree this would be a good idea because it would allow staff to advocate for a metagame directly that hasn't had a ladder for a while. It just isn't something we have a choice over. As it stands, the best thing I can think of in order to foster stronger community engagement, is to encourage tier leaders or otherwise notable members of a community to request specific roomtour dates/times that they could then advertise in their own communities, thus leading to larger roomtours and possibly interest from those who would not normally enter a tour for it. But I digress and that's probably a separate conversation. This has been done before with a few formats by proactive leadership asking us for tours on a specific time/date, and it actually did have some decent activity in roomtours on the weekends while it was active.

That's something we can control as it's in the confines of the room, and it's a functional "collaborative" effort to help get more activity. We cannot control getting an extra ladder, especially when we don't even know how well it would perform.

I do understand why you hold the perspectives you do on a 15 day ladder, but it creates a lot of logistical concerns with spotlight tournaments and other points that have been rehashed by others as well. 28-31 days of a ladder is the "fairest" solution we can offer even if it doesn't always play out as we would prefer it to.

 

[Tbolt]

Make the ones that would win most votes permanent ladders.

Click to collapse...

I'm not sure what this is trying to say. Is this suggesting that we add certain oldgen lower tiers as permanent ladders, or is this saying that we should bypass the voting stage and have a small set of decision makers be the tier picked? We don't control the first option, as Pokemon Showdown maintains the list of ladders to ensure that there aren't too many and that the ones they do have are played. I also don't really think the second option is good, as it would essentially outright replace the Community Choice spotlight with something similar to the Staff Pick spotlight.

We do not need to extend cooldowns.

Click to collapse...

Currently, the cooldown is two months, and if we were to permit advertisement, then large communities would have significantly greater influence on our votes. Do you have a good reason not to make cooldowns longer?

Also make it so 35 has a permanent ladder

Click to collapse...

Assuming that 35 means 35 Pokes, 35 Pokes is not under Ruins of Alph; it is under National Dex instead. Even if it was under Ruins of Alph, we do not have any control over what becomes a permanent ladder.

Hard agree on shorter ladders; if the Swiss thing is such a big issue the ladders could overlap and dovetail, but as is the last two weeks of the month are nearly completely dead, which undercuts the whole point of having the temporary ladders in the first place.

Click to collapse...

Ultimately, the final determining factor on half-length ladders is the cooperation of the Pokemon Showdown admins, particularly dhelmise. I would like to hear whether you/some other admin would be OK with the extra workload of replacing ladders mid-month.

I will say that we currently will not get more than 2 ladders at a time, so we won't be able to get a third ladder in the middle of the month. If this were to go through, we would be replacing one format for another.

 

[Decidueye409]

I'm not sure what this is trying to say. Is this suggesting that we add certain oldgen lower tiers as permanent ladders, or is this saying that we should bypass the voting stage and have a small set of decision makers be the tier picked? We don't control the first option, as Pokemon Showdown maintains the list of ladders to ensure that there aren't too many and that the ones they do have are played. I also don't really think the second option is good, as it would essentially outright replace the Community Choice spotlight with something similar to the Staff Pick spotlight.


Currently, the cooldown is two months, and if we were to permit advertisement, then large communities would have significantly greater influence on our votes. Do you have a good reason not to make cooldowns longer?


Assuming that 35 means 35 Pokes, 35 Pokes is not under Ruins of Alph; it is under National Dex instead. Even if it was under Ruins of Alph, we do not have any control over what becomes a permanent ladder.


Ultimately, the final determining factor on half-length ladders is the cooperation of the Pokemon Showdown admins, particularly dhelmise. I would like to hear whether you/some other admin would be OK with the extra workload of replacing ladders mid-month.

I will say that we currently will not get more than 2 ladders at a time, so we won't be able to get a third ladder in the middle of the month. If this were to go through, we would be replacing one format for another.

Click to collapse...

Sorry I thought this was for both spotlights

 

[Yourwelcomethanku]

I support removing the advertisement rule along with lengthening the cooldown duration. It was really a shame when ADV RU got shot down some months ago due to this from someone unaware of the rule. 4 months for generations seems fine but I think 6 months for tiers is much. Tiers are more competitive in general I'd think and I wouldn't be as worried about them getting voted again and again. I think a four month cooldown for both is fine or four and five month

 

[unira]

It was really a shame when ADV RU got shot down some months ago due to this from someone unaware of the rule.

Click to collapse...

Just to be perfectly clear, I was the one who broke this rule and I was fully aware of it. I did it because a competing tier had taken the lead with discord advertising, and in a moment of selfish foolishness I was pretty sure I could get away with it. That decision by just one person ruined the opportunity for the whole playerbase; getting away with it was just a matter of whether mods were actively policing at the time. Many people have already pointed out problems with the rule despite this being a deliberate rule break, like the responsibility of moderators to police several community spaces, how easily rule breakers can circumvent this, how unfair it is to the rule abiding players, and how easy it is for unknowing players to break it. I agree with these criticisms and I'd support changes to the rule as well. But it wasn't a mistake just to be clear and I take full responsibility for that. Sincerest apologies to the ADV RU playerbase.

 

[perejil]

I'm not sure what this is trying to say. Is this suggesting that we add certain oldgen lower tiers as permanent ladders, or is this saying that we should bypass the voting stage and have a small set of decision makers be the tier picked? We don't control the first option, as Pokemon Showdown maintains the list of ladders to ensure that there aren't too many and that the ones they do have are played. I also don't really think the second option is good, as it would essentially outright replace the Community Choice spotlight with something similar to the Staff Pick spotlight.


Currently, the cooldown is two months, and if we were to permit advertisement, then large communities would have significantly greater influence on our votes. Do you have a good reason not to make cooldowns longer?


Assuming that 35 means 35 Pokes, 35 Pokes is not under Ruins of Alph; it is under National Dex instead. Even if it was under Ruins of Alph, we do not have any control over what becomes a permanent ladder.


Ultimately, the final determining factor on half-length ladders is the cooperation of the Pokemon Showdown admins, particularly dhelmise. I would like to hear whether you/some other admin would be OK with the extra workload of replacing ladders mid-month.

I will say that we currently will not get more than 2 ladders at a time, so we won't be able to get a third ladder in the middle of the month. If this were to go through, we would be replacing one format for another.

Click to collapse...

I see, thanks for the clarification, I thought you guys had more control of the ladders. Its a shame that some good tiers are only playable like once a year.

We keep getting older, perhaps try this one, instead of a monthly ladder, give a day of the week to each gen 1-5. You can add the others if youd like, but the retro gens are the 2d ones. By holding it every 5 days you also make it so that every gen will have every day of the week in given time.

I know its a bit off the intention of the post, I hope you guys find a good solution.