Community Rules Discussion: Timers, Alts, and Replay Hiding

[Sabelette]

Hi everyone,

It's RBYPL season and with that comes the usual discussions on acceptable amounts of time between games in a set, incomprehensible usernames, and playing hidden games on main with replays hidden. Rather than having the mod team or hosts institute rules on the playerbase with no input, we thought it sensible to make a thread and see what people think about these things.

I. Time between games in a set
Ever since the switch to lower tiers and one OU set being BO5 in RBYPL, we've had a lot of difficulties with sets taking multiple hours, in part because of long breaks between games. At least two incidents have occurred in my memory where one player flat-out vanished without informing their opponent, only to reappear nearly 15 minutes later looking to continue the set. This is obviously completely unacceptable, but granting an activity win instead of seeing the set finished sucks, even if it's also unfair to drag an hour-long set into a nearly 2-hour set just by taking extensive breaks between games. We want community input on the following:

Does it make sense to implement a time limit between games of a set? If so, what should this look like and how should it be enforced?
How strict/loose should a time limit be if implemented? If we say 10 minutes before penalty, should someone get penalized for returning 2 seconds after the limit?
What should a penalty look like? Should a set loss be given? Game loss? Other options we may not have considered?
Should we simply have stricter "I know it when I see it" hosting calls?
What is the acceptable length of time for an unannounced break between games (e.g. getting water for 2 minutes between games) or an announced break (such as a bathroom break for 10 minutes)?

II. Alts and replay hiding
Several players go out of their way to make games as inaccessible as possible to the detriment of players and spectators, whether by changing alt names between sets or even mid-set, by hiding their replays to make them more difficult to find, or by playing on the main server despite this being THE big community RBY team tournament event. Official tournaments already prohibit replay hiding and heavily discourage playing on main due to occasional server outages, inability to recreate games, the different timer length, and of course the fact that spectators literally cannot find these games if not informed of them. Therefore, we're asking you about the following:

Should players be locked to one PS! account name for the duration of an RBY tournament? Should this even be stricter and require people to designate a main account for any RBY team tournament that they play on? Are there other ways to address this?
Should players have to play on Smogtours by default barring exceptional circumstances? Random Battles had a reason to play on main during the level balancing era but otherwise, is there any reason not to force Smogtours for RBY tournament matches? If playing on main server is allowed, should players be allowed to hide the game room so spectators cannot join without a link?
Should players be allowed to hide or unlist tournament replays?


General question about any new rules we'd potentially implement:
Should these apply to RBYPL only, RBY team tournaments only, or all RBY forum tournaments?


Share your thoughts below so mods/hosts can figure out what, if anything, we should codify in the rules.

 

[Sabelette]

Personal thoughts, not on behalf of the mod team, etc etc:
Re: timer we shouldn't encourage activity fishing by calling it when people go one second over a line, but hosts should absolutely start issuing game or set losses to people who just up and vanish for 10, 15 minutes without saying anything to their opponent. Also, just informing the opponent does not mean you can go and leave for 15 minutes and expect them to wait around for you while you walk your dog or make dinner or what have you. At some point you should have to start the game and let your in-game timer start to run. I think one long (roughly 10 minute) break per player per set, communicated to the opponent rather than done in silence, is very warranted, but I think taking 10 minutes between every game of a BO5, for example, is ridiculous and punishing to players playing in later time zones. For example, if I play a +8 player (I'm -7), I am generally playing during my nighttime. If during a BO5 they decide to take 10 minutes every game, they can drag me into playing a 2+ hour set late at night that I have no option to avoid in scheduling because my 9am is their midnight and they can simply say no to playing at that time. If they do say yes to playing in my morning, I could do the same to them and force them to stay awake past 2am. I can very much do the same to a European player playing during my afternoon/their night, and this should not be acceptable. Obviously sets can run long because of in-game choices and that should never be penalized, but players should not additionally be able to drag a BO5 set an extra 40 minutes or more outside of the actual games being played.

Re: alts and replays, I think it is completely unacceptable to hide or unlist tournament replays, full stop. We should follow the same policy on this as officials and you should get a set loss for hiding your replays. There is zero reason to hide a tournament replay except to be a dick to people trying to scout you. Improve your building and team diversity instead of grubbing for tiny advantages by wasting peoples' time. Similarly, I'd support a "one account per tournament" rule. It's an acceptable compromise even if some people will absolutely make one new account per tournament just to waste an extra 5 minutes of everyones' time searching for what alt they entered into each tour, but it still alleviates the annoyance for spectating and scouting of trying to figure out who "ajkfldshjflksagnksa" is and getting 8-10 slightly different versions of this per tournament into your scouting tool. I think if you play on main you shouldn't be able to hide your games from spectators, but I also see no reason not to force a Smogtours default for all tournament matches except maybe Random Battles - randbats people feel free to weigh in, idk if you have a reason you need to play on main but there's also no concerns about scouting in your tier. Obviously there's valid reasons to play main sometimes, but I just do not buy that these situations are more than occasional, and hosts can be asked for an exception when needed.

I think all of the above should apply to every RBY forum tournament period, and ideally we should see if we can extend the alting/replay hiding stuff to crossgen team tournaments too, because it's insufferable. The timer stuff I'm less worried about because crossgen team tours are always BO3, not BO5, where the timer problems are more pronounced.

 

[ButtGallon]

I pretty much agree exactly with Sabelette's take here. These are all cases where relying on community goodwill has been the status quo, but ultimately I have to admit that having a rule in place is better than simply hoping everyone is a good sport. The timer situation is a little dicey because with a hard-and-fast rule, someone could intentionally be annoying and wait 1 minute less than the timer threshold every time. But notably that's already true of the act win timer as well, and you rarely see people abuse it just to be annoying— plus having some rule to point to is better than no rule. You don't want people to find themselves in the situation of "uh my opponent hasn't accepted my challenge for 10 minutes without saying anything, is this allowed" and then the tour host has to jump in and make a vibes-based judgement call on whether to punish or not. There should be some documentation for hosts to point to as a point of order, and then they can make exceptions at their discretion, not the other way around.

Alts and replays both fall under the same umbrella of "deliberately obscuring your scout", and I think directionally they should both be discouraged. As Sabelette said, there is no good reason to purposely make your tournament games harder to find. It is not a form of skill expression, it's not conducive to an enjoyable site atmosphere, and its only justification is to get a slight advantage over honest players by acting dishonestly. It should be heavily discouraged for any public RBY tournament, full-stop. The question of HOW you discourage that is another story, and I think it's a much easier story for replays than for alts. I'd personally be happy with Sabelette's suggestion of: "if your opponent hides/unlists a tournament game and refuses to relist it with the /relist command before the room closes, pointing that out to hosts means they forfeit the set". Probably a harsh punishment, but given the relist command exists, it should be easy to avoid honest mistakes from people who don't know the rule. The bigger problem to me with that definition is legislating the obvious edge cases.

1. If someone loses a set, there's no longer anything stopping them from going in and unlisting the games, since a forfeit is meaningless if they already lost.
2. If someone manually unlists a game with the /unlist command, tournament hosts would know who did it and be able to punish them. If someone checks off the "Don't allow spectators" box on main, there's no message in the replay to refer back to who unlisted it, and it wouldn't be noticed until "I didn't do it, it must have been them" would be valid for both players to assert.
3. Regarding #2, I'm fairly confident that would pose a problem for any main gaming, but does checking off "Don't allow spectators" automatically unlist games on smogtours? If so, it would be extremely easy to exploit and there'd be no smoking gun to point back to.

Alts are a bit harder to arbitrate imo. Playing with joke names isn't something I've ever done, so I don't have any skin in the game really, but I wouldn't be opposed to a "you have to play with a consistent name across any given tournament" rule. It does seem difficult to track and enforce though. How would players know what name their opponent designated? What happens if a tour host realizes after a set is played that someone used a different account? Would we really disqualify someone who won a set just because they forgot to change their name beforehand? The first question seems solvable pretty easily, but the latter two are tough. On one hand, looking the other way would defeat the purpose of the rule in the first place, but on the other hand, I would definitely be opposed to someone retroactively taking win after a loss because their opponent used the wrong name. That seems incredibly silly on the face of it. The alts problem is really only an issue if someone abuses it, imo. An innocent mistake here and there doesn't make that much of a meaningful difference in a scout, and it's MUCH easier to make an honest mistake this way than in hiding a replay. For both of those reasons, I would personally be in favor of a more vague rule that tournament hosts can use if someone is breaking the spirit of the rule, rather than one with a strict single-instance punishment. Something to the affect of amending the root tournament message to "post 'In as [showdown username]' to sign up. You will be expected to play all games under this showdown account, and abusing the spirit of this rule can result in a disqualification at hosts' discretion".

I do think these issues, particularly the replay unlisting, have been due to be addressed for a long time, and I'm glad that discussion is being opened on it. I'm in favor of applying whatever action is taken to all RBY tournaments, not just RBYPL or teamtours. If they're problems, then they're problems— and they don't stop being problems when the tournament is smaller.

 

[igiveuponaname]

As one of the hosts for RBYPL this year I think it's best for me to not comment on most of this stuff until a decision is made. That being said when it comes to the issue of time spent between games in a set/should there be a time limit and penalty for going over said limit, I do believe that the main issue would be enforcement. If the penalty in question were to be a game/set loss then either me or my partner would likely need to be around in order to sort out the situation as it happens, because unlike regular act calls you can't verify them easily nor can they be officially called at the end of the week. In an ideal world, one or both us would always be around to resolve such issues, but unfortunately there are not-insignificant periods of time where neither of us are available to hop online and make such calls. For example, I work midnights and whenever I'm scheduled to work there's a good 4-5 hour window where I'm completely unavailable because I'm sleeping/getting ready/driving to work and most if not all that time is past midnight for my co-host because there's a six hour time zone difference between us two. If a set were to be played during that time and a situation arose where one player is taking way too long to begin the next game, we would simply not be able to respond. So then what? Either the game would be played and go unpunished as if a rule didn't exist, or it would be overruled despite there being nothing illegitimate about the result of the game (I don't think I need to say just how much would be wrong with that). This was something I mentioned to Sabelette on Discord before posting here and she suggested maybe giving out warnings, then infractions/tourbans for people repeatedly crossing the line when it comes to time. If people think that giving out game/set losses for going over the time limit is too unreasonable then I think that this is a good option, it would also be easier to enforce retroactively for when neither me nor my partner (and any future RBYPL hosts) are around.

Idk I hope this made sense I always have trouble expressing my thoughts when it comes to this sort of stuff.

 

[phoopes]

Time between games in a set:

(skip to end past the tl;dr section where I kind of relax on some of this, but I ultimately think what I wrote here are a decent set of guidelines)

Sorry this is so long and detailed, but I think we need explicit rules so that people stop abusing the time they take between games. I've heard all sorts of excuses over the years for why my opponent won't just accept my damn challenge and move on to the next game, so this is an attempt to legislate against that.

For a Bo3, I think five minutes of "dead time" between games is plenty for a Bo3. This gives you time to get up, stretch, take a sip of water, clear your head, and select a team. And it gives a max of ten minutes of "dead time" for the whole set. Here, "dead time" is referring to the time it takes for one player to accept a challenge from the other player. If after a game ends, Player A takes three minutes to send a challenge, Player B has five minutes of "dead time" to accept that challenge, for a maximum of eight minutes between games in this scenario.

We probably don't need a specific countdown clock with a to-the-second timer, but I think around five minutes is MORE than enough time to accept a challenge and is pretty generous if there's no communication from opponent to opponent as to why it's taking so long to accept said challenge. If there is communication, like my opponent says "hey I suddenly need to take a shit can I have a bit more time between games two and three" I (phoopes) PERSONALLY am probably not going to force you to play while you're on the toilet. But I also don't feel like I should be obligated to accept the wait time either. Basically, if you want to gentlemen's agreement so that you can wait more than five minutes between a sent and accepted challenge, be my guest. But just be prepared that if you ask for more than five minutes your opponent has every right to say no. That's my ideal world.

For a Bo5, I also think five minutes of "dead time" between games is good. However, due to the longer nature of the set I'd be willing to let each side have one extension to ten minutes so that you can go to the bathroom or do whatever else after a particularly grueling or taxing mental game. It absolutely needs to be explicitly declared in the chat though. If Player A sends a challenge, Player B has five minutes to accept that challenge or ask for an extension to ten minutes. Player B can tell Player A at any time during the initial five minutes that they want the extension to ten minutes and it will be granted. Scenario: Player A sends a challenge to Player B. The five-minute clock immediately starts. At four minutes and thirty seconds into the clock, Player B says "extension to ten minutes" in the chat (or something similar). Five additional minutes are then added to the clock for Player B to accept the challenge. This admittedly isn't like an elegant solution or whatever, but I think it's the most fair. Open to hearing what other people think though.

This means that if the set goes to game five and each side takes their extension, that's thirty minutes of "dead time" in the set at a maximum. This is honestly WAY more time than I would like, but I'm trying to compromise my ideas here with what the larger community would want and accept lol. Again, you're more than welcome to ask your opponent for more time (maybe you have to take, like, a REALLY big shit this time) but your opponent should not be obligated to wait for you for more than five minutes, or your one-time ten minute extended break.

As for penalties, I think a game loss is reasonable for the first violation of the five-minute rule (or a violation of the extended break). I think a second violation within the same set should result in a set loss, because at that point you're just wasting everyone's time and should be punished accordingly for it. On this note though, I would suggest that the rule could be violated twice between the same two games. Example: Player A wins game one. Player B challenges sends the challenge for game two. If Player A doesn't accept the challenge within five minutes, that's a game loss for Player A and the set is now 1-1. If Player A doesn't accept within ten minutes, that's a set loss for player A (essentially two consecutive five-minute violations equals a set loss).

I hate that this is probably going to cause some act fishing ("it was five minutes and two seconds until they accepted my challenge, I claim the game win!") but I think we have to respect our players' and our spectators' time more. We have to realize that we're playing online Pokemon here. I know we all care and want to win but it's not that serious, you should not be agonizing for multiple minutes over what team you're selecting for the next game in the set, especially when you've had prep time before playing the actual set. And you should not be trying to game the system, making your opponent wait as long as possible either. Just sit back after the game, take a minute to collect yourself, and then hop back in. If you're not going to respect my time and make me wait more than five minutes between games, you deserve a game loss IMO.

I hate that I had to be so explicit and over-detailed here, but I think "vibes"-based mid-set activity rulings haven't been working (or really done at all), so I felt the need to get specific with my suggestions.

TL;DR
-Bo3 you get five minutes between each game from challenge time to accept time ("dead time").
-Bo5 you get five minutes between each game from challenge time to accept time, but each player gets one ten minute break that they have to explicitly declare during the initial five minute window of dead time.
-If you violate the dead time rule once, you get a game loss.
-If you violate the dead time rule twice, you get a set loss. The dead time rule can be violated multiple times in the same break, which would result in a set loss.
-You can ask your opponent for more time for whatever reason, but they are not obligated to say yes.

---

Okay I was going to say that I was done with the post but igiveuponaname posted just before me and makes a good point. What if the hosts aren't around? It is certainly unrealistic for hosts to be around at all hours of the day during every set to make these kinds of calls. I didn't think of this when writing my initial proposed rules. I'm not going to delete anything I wrote but maybe instead use the above as a set of guidelines. That way, if anything gets really egregious you can screenshot timestamps/messages and report to the hosts but they won't have to be around hanging on every tick of the clock to make these kinds of calls. So like, the above guidelines are strict in theory, but in practice they should only be needed and used when it becomes very obvious that someone is abusing the clock.

I will probably make another post regarding alting and such but it's late and I've already spent way too much time trying to fix this scenario that wouldn't even be a problem if people weren't assholes lol so I'm just hitting post

 

[GirlsSeeGhosts]

here we are again, it's always such a pleasure

Should there be a timer between games? Yes.

How should the timer be handled? I think it's fair to say that what we've often seen with 10-minute breaks between each game is unacceptable, as it's a terrible experience both for the spectators and the opponent who has to be at the ready the whole time. I don't think it's unreasonable to have a single 10 minute break, especially in Bo5s where needing to go to the bathroom and get water once is very understandable. I think there are a few ways this can be handled, each with pros and cons.

You could give each player one long break per set, with more limited breaks for other games. This is, in theory, fair and reasonable, after all these players might feel the need to take their break at different time. In practice, this could still take quite a while, as a combined 20 minutes of break potential can be as much as two fast-paced games. Still, I think having a player be able to call "Taking a break" once a set is good.

An alternative could be to make a specific moment in a set a break for both players. You could write it in the rules, for example, that either player is entitled to take a 10-minute break after Game 2 of a Bo3, or after Game 3 of a Bo5, and all other moments in between games have a 3-minute break. I might favor this approach since both players and the spectators know about potential breaks in advance, and it limits the amount of time spent not gaming even more. Of course it's less flexible for the players, which could cause some problems if a player REALLY needs to piss between games 3 and 4 and no other.

In any case, I think the best way to handle the regular breaks (2-3 minutes) is to start the timer from the moment either player challenges the other, since usually this doesn't happen instantly and gives a bit of leeway. Both players should have timestamps on in their DMs to be able to prove when a game challenge was sent, and after X amount of time if the challenge gets cancelled a game loss can be issued. I don't think there needs to be much of a grace period in this case, timers have to mean something, and I think leaving an important decision like this to a TD with pressure from both sides is a bad idea. A similar idea works for longer breaks, where from the moment someone calls "Taking a break" they have 10 minutes to do their thing, plus potentially 2-3 minutes to accept the challenge. Going over that, game loss. The main thing is that both players need to have timestamps on in their DMs for it to work, which is obviously not always gonna happen. alas.

Alts wooooo I hate alts so goddamn much u have no idea

If I was Dictator Supreme of Smogon, I'd force people to play on a single PS account for all their tournament games, and changing it would be as much of a hassle as changing your Smogon username. Alas, I think this is probably too draconian of an idea, since so long as other communities allow alting, we're gonna get alters in our own tournaments, and punishing players after a set is already played is one of the worst things you can do to the vibes of a tournament. I must begrudgingly say we should keep alts legal, if discouraged.

Games should be played on Smogtours barring exceptional circumstances, but it's hard to check what those exceptional circumstances are or if they're real. I've heard that some players in Asia have had difficulties with their connection to Smogtours, which could be something that'd warrant a game being played on main, but verifying that for anyone who asks to play on main is a lot to ask of TDs. Overall, I think the current system where either player can force the game to be on Smogtours is good, and I don't think games being played on main should be punished after the fact. Games should probably be made public on main too tho.

Hiding replays is kinda the same thing as with alting. If I was Ralph Smogon, I would completely remove the command to hide replays, I think it does nothing good for players or spectators. ButtGallon's post makes some good points in his post about the various edge cases and possibilities to fix mistakes in accidentally unlisting games, but like with alts I think punishing someone who won a set with a set loss after the fact for what is otherwise a standard practice could be horrendous to the vibes of a tournament. I don't think hiding replays should be punished.

 

[LHF]

Weirdly, when I'm tired is when I write the most long-winded posts. However I feel very strongly about both answers I'm about to give here.

Let's get the most immediately obvious answer out of the way: YES, lock players into using one alt per tournament. It's frankly obnoxious to do anything else because it isn't going to stop someone who is seriously intent on scouting you. If I really want to, I can just see your tour history through your smogon profile and just check the replay thread of the tours you've been in relevant to my scout. This took me exactly 0.5 seconds to think about doing in my head, yet the amount of time it would take to comb through said profile is just obnoxious to think about. Surely we can be better about assuming a good faith competition here, right? There will probably be some people that still get cheeky about this and switch up the alt they use every tour, and maybe that's something that has to be discussed later, but for now I think it's blatantly obvious that switching an alt every week is counterproductive to the entire spirit of tours. The most that replays should ever be omitted is in R1 of a tour where byes exist. The double-edged sword of scouting has always existed for a good reason: people with well established experience in a tier are prone to having their team data scouted, but if you're a newer player you get to avoid being scouted but also probably have little experience in said format as well. I bring this up because I don't think that players should be rewarded for making it harder to scout them and wasting more of the scouter's time than realistically necessary. That just feels like it goes against the sense of honest competition in a realm where we already voluntarily give our free time to this site for no reward other than our own personal enjoyment. Pardon my French but if you're scared of being scouted because you run the same sort of structures every single time, skill issue imo and you should probably become more versatile with your team picks.

This is not relevant to the argument but also a neat add-on: there are people that click on tiers thanks to seeing names they might be familiar with and then get interested in the formats. Ask me how I know.

Now let's move on to something more controversial. I think there is absolutely something important/valuable to being able to take a clear bit of time after a particularly haxy game(especially in RBY of all tiers) to clear one's head, stand up and stretch, whatever the case may be. Frankly one of the few things I wish I did more was just not jump into the next game immediately(part of this is trying to respect the opponent's time in my case but I don't mind admitting that that I can be a bit of a Charlie Clicker at times), and I think that we should not pressure people into thinking that they MUST immediately load their next team and jump into the game. As much as I respect other people's time and realize we don't always get perfectly isolated blocks of time to play mons, I also would like to say it's a two way street here and that a player shouldn't be shamed for taking a minute to mentally map out their next team choice or reflecting on what went wrong.

However I'm also empathetic toward the other side of things where I completely understand that each player hypothetically using up an "established" time could make for ridiculously long sets that cut into other real life activities or commitments; this applies doubly so when timezones do not line up neatly. This is also not mentioning the bad faith users that calls for an act win 10-15 seconds after the "timer" runs out. But that also leads me to my next point. How can we properly enforce this? Do you have to screenshot logs with timestamps of when someone accepts the challenge? Are we really going to go that far? This isn't rhetorical, it's an actual question.

I do agree that users who continually abuse the ability to break in between sets are not acting in good faith and that there should be something proposed to try and prevent this. I don't know what it should be, but echoing GSG: from both a spectator and an opponent standpoint, it's an awful experience. I just hope that whatever option(s) considered to address it is well thought-out to respect the integrity of a player doing what they need to do to stay alert for the next match, while also minimizing the chance that it can be used to negatively impact the experience of a set.

EDIT: Also at least for team tours I 10,000% endorse banning gameplay on main server and believe everything should be on smogtours. Individuals I believe should be able to be negotiated between both players, but when a team is involved, just make it easier on everyone else - including hosts and teammates and managers alike.

 

[Amaranth]

realistically i dont know if theres a practical way for wait-between-game situations to be policed. you dont get a natural timestamp for end of game and the time windows we're talking about are so small that you really do kinda need the exact timestamp to the second. cuz like 30s with no communication is fine. 1min with no communication you're pushing it. 2min with no communication i start wishing you were dead. the lines are thin

i feel like the ideal solution here would be to bug PS devs to keep developing improvements to the best-of-x feature. the "30 seconds to next game" bit is already inbuilt and very very nice.
you would "just" need to add a feature for team select (currently the best of X feature forces same team every game), and if one player needs a longer break, an option to go like "+2 mins after this game please" that you have to actively click + gets automatically displayed in chat for your opp to see. with like a customizable field when you challenge for "max total added minutes between games", and each tournament setting that number in the rules (say 5mins for bo3s and 10mins for bo5s or something like that)

this feels to me like a wayyyyyyy more practical way to handle the issue than anything that requires host intervention. in the meantime, social shame should go a lot of the way, with the official case-by-case 1pt unsportsmanlike infract if someone goes missing for 10 mins between games or something (and maybe setting a hard number where you can just take the win)



re: information hiding, RBY has mandatory replays like everywhere (huge shoutout emma) and as someone who has played BW a good bit recently, you have no idea how good we have it as is. now this is of course not an excuse to shoot for better, but just individually i am not really pressed abt these issues cuz nobody can hide very far as-is. if you play tours, your replays are out there and that's it. already feels VERY good to do info gathering in this tier compared to many others. if you expect to just type a name into a scouter and get a perfect scout, I'm sorry to tell you that will never be a good enough way to do it, for a myriad of reasons other than unlisted replays.

so on this area too, i feel like enforcement would be a bigger headache than it's worth. actually enforcing an alt rule (as seen in officials when tried) results in a good number of stupid gray areas. remember xrn getting infracted for playing on the alt 'xrn' cuz he had submitted a different alt as his main for the tournament?
i cant fathom an implementation of these rules that is actually worth the effort. it's a nice idea in theory, implementation has never worked well though

 

[virae]

Random Battles had a reason to play on main during the level balancing era but otherwise, is there any reason not to force Smogtours for RBY tournament matches?

Just regarding this point, playing random battles on main is still good practice since iirc set changes are implemented on main more frequently. And there isn't really a downside since you don't need to scout your opponent (I know, I know there's technically value in watching your opponents replays, but come on you really don't need the scouter for that)

 

[LHF]

Just regarding this point, playing random battles on main is still good practice since iirc set changes are implemented on main more frequently. And there isn't really a downside since you don't need to scout your opponent (I know, I know there's technically value in watching your opponents replays, but come on you really don't need the scouter for that)

I'm unfamiliar with how long it takes set changes to be implemented from main to smogtours(maybe it's long in which case that does actually matter), but I think that in an ideal world there's still value in being able to watch how your opponent plays rands. Some people push more offensively/aggressively, others are more reactive, etc. Small things to pick up on that do help when you think about how your opponent might respond in a situation. Ik it sounds like nitpicking, but in a thread where we're looking to at least try to shoot for the stars to land on the moon, it feels like it's worth mentioning even if, to your point, rands is much less scoutable than a standard team building tier

 

[hammer798]

i feel like the ideal solution here would be to bug PS devs to keep developing improvements to the best-of-x feature.

I agree that this is basically the only way make a rule like this feasible, it’s just difficult to get movement going on things like this. We’re also just bad about keeping up interest in it, since this isn’t something that comes up much in any tour besides RBYPL, mostly because the effect is significantly reduced in Bo3

 

[NotVeryCake]

Asking someone to always play on their main account on tours is the most unreasonable thing I've ever heard asked of for a tour like RBYPL, let alone individuals. As mentioned above by many, there are entire regions of the world that have issues connecting onto Smogtours, and there are also many individuals who have issues at specific times or just in general connecting to tours. This would effectively block RBY from these people, because having to go hope a TD is online and then fetch a TD every time you want a "Mains pass" for literally any RBY tournament is just completely undoable in any measure.

As mentioned by virae, this is also a complete slap in the face to Random Battles players, as the changes implemented to the format are quite slow to catch up with Smogtours. I saw some points about a "Rands exception" But this just sounds like wanting to have it go both ways, having your cake and eating it if you will. It confuses things a metric ton to go to then like "oh some tiers have exeptions to this never play on main or else you lose rule while no others do unless you ask a TD if you can play on main just hoping they're online".

There's also the fact that there are many non-mainers who are not going to take their time to learn RBY's proposes special rules regarding alting and hiding replays, one of the most common practices on Showdown which is practiced by countless, countless, users. The amount of incidents of people getting accidently disqualified because they didn't read a specific gens fine print would skyrocket, which would be bad obviously for the normal expectation of us all that we want to see games played and done and we want them to be competitive and fair.

And also on hiding replays, it adds skill to the art of scouting. These replays are very easily accessible through Emma's massive replay compendium, or just easily going into the round posting on Smogon. It's not terribly hard to do a quick 5 minute replay gather.

Re. Timer:
Any new rulings are just unenforceable for the most part aside from some sort of big memorandum sent out to the playerbass that "We will give act losses to those who dissapear for large periods of time (maybe like 10-15 minutes, 5 is far far too low to just be giving act because you were a few seconds past 5 minutes doing a challenge. 5 minutes is not even enough time to take a toilet break) without agreement from the other side". Need I mention how this is just against the spirit of having the game played if arguing semantics in the seconds. Sure if someone ups and dissapears it's an issue that should be dealt with, but if they have explicitly communicated their need to "take a few" this shouldn't be the source of any sort of whining, let alone an act call. You can say this needs to be followed in spirit, not to a letter but there shouldn't even be a ruling on this when dissapearing in the middle of a set is already something you can claim act for. I hope we can all agree we don't want abuses of things like this. With act calls like these happening where the other player clearly does not care about getting their game done and just wants act, and they are protected by Smogon rules, because that's what this proposed change is, a rule change. And these are prone to abuse no matter how you do it, especially one like this where the contents of what people want are so, well, "airy" for a lack of a better term. Everything about this is just setting up to be abused in some horrendous way. Because no one here seems to be able to agree on what "too much time between a game" is, some people even suggesting it as little as 5, which is as previously said, a clear setup for this potential rule being abused. I would also like to add, try explain to a tour player in an RoAPL tiebreaker that in GSC Bo3 or any other Bo3 they are A OK to take a break, but in RBY they are on the stopwatch of death just to grab a water.

 

[Zcarlett]

Restricting people from unlisting replays simultaneously feels hard to enforce & simply doesn't accomplish much

When youre scouting someone, typing their name into a replay finder and scouring what comes up is probably one of the worst things you can do. Often what will show up are old ladder/room tour games from multiple years ago that dont hold much weight, unserious public games played by friends on smogtours, and other games like these that you don't want in your scouting pool even if all tour games were unlisted. This is before accounting for the fact that people change overtime and having a full scout of a veteran users replays could be detrimental due to including tournament replays that no longer adequately reflect the players mentality and habits. The most effective way to scout someone is to manually compile their recent replays (relative to the player & tier) from tournaments, and forcing games to be public does not change this.

From a spectators perspective, the Replays and Usage threads for tournaments are already the most convenient way to watch replays to the point where I often find myself using it to watch back my own games rather than using the actual replay search.

 

[Soda_Eesti]

Not gonna be the most in depth post just gonna go over my feelings.

Hiding Replays:
Even with all replays public its just ineffectuve to not grab them yourself due to friendlies and ladder. This is pointless.

Alting:
Let me alt plz. If im not on akkruevsbsowoanab plz let me use GarEggMie when ive already used Soda Krys that tournament.

All Games on Stour:
Yeah id support if there werent connection issues often.

Timer In Between games:
Yes. While I dont think its necessary others do and i see no issue with it.

Plz if implemented make it only rby team tournaments bc new players wont be playing in them.

 

[NotVeryCake]

Asking someone to always play on their main account on tours is the most unreasonable thing I've ever heard asked of for a tour like RBYPL, let alone individuals. As mentioned above by many, there are entire regions of the world that have issues connecting onto Smogtours, and there are also many individuals who have issues at specific times or just in general connecting to tours. This would effectively block RBY from these people, because having to go hope a TD is online and then fetch a TD every time you want a "Mains pass" for literally any RBY tournament is just completely undoable in any measure.

As mentioned by virae, this is also a complete slap in the face to Random Battles players, as the changes implemented to the format are quite slow to catch up with Smogtours. I saw some points about a "Rands exception" But this just sounds like wanting to have it go both ways, having your cake and eating it if you will. It confuses things a metric ton to go to then like "oh some tiers have exeptions to this never play on main or else you lose rule while no others do unless you ask a TD if you can play on main just hoping they're online".

There's also the fact that there are many non-mainers who are not going to take their time to learn RBY's proposes special rules regarding alting and hiding replays, one of the most common practices on Showdown which is practiced by countless, countless, users. The amount of incidents of people getting accidently disqualified because they didn't read a specific gens fine print would skyrocket, which would be bad obviously for the normal expectation of us all that we want to see games played and done and we want them to be competitive and fair.

And also on hiding replays, it adds skill to the art of scouting. These replays are very easily accessible through Emma's massive replay compendium, or just easily going into the round posting on Smogon. It's not terribly hard to do a quick 5 minute replay gather.

Re. Timer:
Any new rulings are just unenforceable for the most part aside from some sort of big memorandum sent out to the playerbass that "We will give act losses to those who dissapear for large periods of time (maybe like 10-15 minutes, 5 is far far too low to just be giving act because you were a few seconds past 5 minutes doing a challenge. 5 minutes is not even enough time to take a toilet break) without agreement from the other side". Need I mention how this is just against the spirit of having the game played if arguing semantics in the seconds. Sure if someone ups and dissapears it's an issue that should be dealt with, but if they have explicitly communicated their need to "take a few" this shouldn't be the source of any sort of whining, let alone an act call. You can say this needs to be followed in spirit, not to a letter but there shouldn't even be a ruling on this when dissapearing in the middle of a set is already something you can claim act for. I hope we can all agree we don't want abuses of things like this. With act calls like these happening where the other player clearly does not care about getting their game done and just wants act, and they are protected by Smogon rules, because that's what this proposed change is, a rule change. And these are prone to abuse no matter how you do it, especially one like this where the contents of what people want are so, well, "airy" for a lack of a better term. Everything about this is just setting up to be abused in some horrendous way. Because no one here seems to be able to agree on what "too much time between a game" is, some people even suggesting it as little as 5, which is as previously said, a clear setup for this potential rule being abused. I would also like to add, try explain to a tour player in an RoAPL tiebreaker that in GSC Bo3 or any other Bo3 they are A OK to take a break, but in RBY they are on the stopwatch of death just to grab a water.

I would also like to add that if someone really wanted to waste others time in a tour set, they absolutely can and will unpunished regardless of if this ruling on timers exists. This ruling does nothing aside from give tools to act fishers to fish more. Abusers of the leniancy Smogon has for late players can do the following without repercussion:
Show up 29 minutes late to the set.
Use a stall team designed to make a game last as long as possible.
Use their timer (and I don't mean timer stalling like not moving until the timers down to 5 seconds left every turn, that is of course rightly reportable. I just mean like, taking 30-60 seconds between some turns, and then 10 seconds for others, just normal timer usage but coupled with the other actions can be used malicious).
Take 5 minutes between Game 1 and Game 2 and then between Game 2 and Game 3.
I hope this helps people realise that malicious actors can still act in bad faith regardless of this potential ruling, and that this proposed rule just hurts good faith actors who genuinely have a reason to take a couple of minutes between a game.

 

[ButtGallon]

There's also the fact that there are many non-mainers who are not going to take their time to learn RBY's proposes special rules regarding alting and hiding replays, one of the most common practices on Showdown which is practiced by countless, countless, users. The amount of incidents of people getting accidently disqualified because they didn't read a specific gens fine print would skyrocket, which would be bad obviously for the normal expectation of us all that we want to see games played and done and we want them to be competitive and fair.

And also on hiding replays, it adds skill to the art of scouting. These replays are very easily accessible through Emma's massive replay compendium, or just easily going into the round posting on Smogon. It's not terribly hard to do a quick 5 minute replay gather.

These are good distinctions to make, but I have to disagree with them for a few reasons. On the face of it, the replay hiding issue has a baseline bar to clear— is there any good-faith reason to hide tournament games? If the answer to this is no (which I believe it is), then I don't think the "new players might not know about a rule" issue is actually an issue at all. The discussion should be about the acceptability of the action itself, and whether people currently do it or not really doesn't weigh on if action should be taken— until there's a rule forbidding something, people have a right to do it. That doesn't make it not bad sportsmanship to do.

As for the all-important "is there a good-faith reason to hide tournament games" question, I think the answer is definitively no. Everyone should have the same level of access to their opponent's games. It's in the best interest of the community as a whole to remove things that serve no other purpose than wasting time, and hiding replays falls squarely into that category. It doesn't add skill to the art of scouting— there isn't any nuance, it's just a binary question of "do I want to waste my opponents' time?" If yes, then unlist all my replays, while still being able to benefit from my opponent's good sportsmanship if they want to gain an advantage based on skill rather than based on tedium. To be honest, I think having scouts be much easier to obtain forces an increase in skill expression of the actual game. If I know my opponent will be able to see what I've brought to games, I have to adapt and learn to not only bring diverse teams, but learn to pilot every viable mon in a tier with similar skill and at a representative bringrate, lest my opponent capitalize on that.

Ultimately, I think there's merit to the "the vibes would be off if a new player unlisted a game and got insta-DQ'd" argument, but it doesn't outweigh the points above, and is easily rectified by allowing tour hosts to offer a warning to a mistake that's made in good faith by someone new and unfamiliar with the rule. It's not a problem if any individual replay isn't findable, but it is a problem if all of someone's replays aren't findable. You'd also have 3 built-in stopgaps in place to insulate from unfair action, which I think is more than sufficient here— 1) The opponent would have to be new to RBY and an unlister in the first place. 2) Their opponent would have to not tell them that it's against RBY rules once they see the unlist command (in this case, once they know it's against tour rules they can use the /relist command). 3) The tour hosts would have to mistakenly attribute both prior mistakes to malice rather than recognizing them as honest mistakes. Given the opponent in step 2 already didn't speak up about the relist command, it seems quite unlikely that hosts wouldn't give the benefit of the doubt here. We shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of better here, and letting people spend as much of their prep time as possible analyzing games instead of scrounging for replays is undeniably better for the health of the game.

 

[Sabelette]

Just going to interject to say "assume for the purposes of any hypothetical rule that hosts have brains and basic human empathy and an understanding of how rancid tournaments would be if you just DQed everyone for mistakes, and are therefore intelligent enough to issue warnings before jumping to DQing and banning people immediately." Like, we already have activity rules, and hosts still make subjective calls to not grant activity early even when by the book it's a valid call, and when they fail to do this the community calls them out and forces it to be overturned anyway. We had this happen already in RBY seasonal recently where someone tried to call activity on like Wednesday and we said no, reschedule this one, because we could subjectively see there were other factors that made it a bad call to give activity. There's no reason to assume that with any new rule the hosts would be draconian and inflexible with it.

Similarly, if we had a hard rule of "10 minutes between all games" and someone was waiting 29 minutes to start their match then 9:30 between each game, it is really easy to spot the bad faith actor and give a warning for blatantly wasting the opponents' time and a set loss/DQ if the behavior continues, or an infraction for unsportsmanlike conduct if hosts weren't available to make a call mid-set. It's obviously stupid to overturn the results of a set after they happen for this, but I don't think it's hard to say "your behavior during that wasn't acceptable, you get an infraction and if it continues you will be DQed or banned from this tournament" and if they do it again in a later set then it's the same thing as people getting banned mid-tournament for outside reasons. We can codify rules or guidelines while still having subjective referees and an appeals process for subjective calls - this is literally what almost every rule on Smogon or PS! already is, except for the super black and white ones.

 

[AM]

Scouting shouldn't be encouraged as a skillset, especially since this implied skillset is only called this cause paranoid players like to alt hop for fear of scouting which is already ridiculous as is when we have replay threads. And if necessary I can literally go through your post history to find your alts if I cared that much.

re time limit between games cause this is the big one and its why I've always been anti bo5 in lower tiers specifically. 2 minutes should be the max between games, I'd actually encourage people to use the timestamp feature on PS more often to maybe have this be more practical, in case act calls need to be made. A bo5 lower tiers set should not be taking an hour and possible change because people decided to just go do something else. Understandably emergencies may happen so it's case by case, but taking 10 minutes to get water, play with your pet, pick your nose for 14 minutes, etc . means you weren't actually ready at the time you agreed upon. It's already hard enough because some people take forever in their games to make a decision in-game but compounded by in between game sets is crazy to me.

Idc too much about enforcement of smogtours or main, I just kind of like playing on main to not have to port over my teams everytime I play since that's where I load/build most of my stuff. I do think if someone simply can't log onto smogtours though they should provide some sort of picture proof to show it if you're gonna enforce games to be smogtours only.

 

[ButtGallon]

Just going to interject to say "assume for the purposes of any hypothetical rule that hosts have brains and basic human empathy and an understanding of how rancid tournaments would be if you just DQed everyone for mistakes, and are therefore intelligent enough to issue warnings before jumping to DQing and banning people immediately." Like, we already have activity rules, and hosts still make subjective calls to not grant activity early even when by the book it's a valid call, and when they fail to do this the community calls them out and forces it to be overturned anyway. We had this happen already in RBY seasonal recently where someone tried to call activity on like Wednesday and we said no, reschedule this one, because we could subjectively see there were other factors that made it a bad call to give activity. There's no reason to assume that with any new rule the hosts would be draconian and inflexible with it.

Similarly, if we had a hard rule of "10 minutes between all games" and someone was waiting 29 minutes to start their match then 9:30 between each game, it is really easy to spot the bad faith actor and give a warning for blatantly wasting the opponents' time and a set loss/DQ if the behavior continues, or an infraction for unsportsmanlike conduct if hosts weren't available to make a call mid-set. It's obviously stupid to overturn the results of a set after they happen for this, but I don't think it's hard to say "your behavior during that wasn't acceptable, you get an infraction and if it continues you will be DQed or banned from this tournament" and if they do it again in a later set then it's the same thing as people getting banned mid-tournament for outside reasons. We can codify rules or guidelines while still having subjective referees and an appeals process for subjective calls - this is literally what almost every rule on Smogon or PS! already is, except for the super black and white ones.

Well put. I'd also draw attention to the person who flaunts the spirit of the rules but meet the letter of them, the hypothetical person who waits 29 minutes to log on, waits 9 minutes between games, etc. Without rules or guidelines on what's acceptable, not only could that person still do everything you're describing, they wouldn't be breaking any rules— not even the spirit of any rules, since nothing is in place. Are you suggesting we should also remove the 30 minute act timer because it allows people who show up at 31 minutes to get act fished despite having good intentions? The obvious answer is no, having a baseline rule that can be flaunted in edge cases does more good than harm, and it seems hard to argue otherwise.

Even the existence of a quite lenient rule like "you can only wait x minutes but you won't be punished unless you do it multiple times or do it obviously maliciously" will force the playerbase to be good sports over time. If nothing else, it allows hosts to actually punish people who are being maliciously compliant, which I think everyone agrees is a good thing. Nobody likes the guy who says "well I'm technically not breaking any rules, so even though I'm going out of my way to be annoying by exploiting the goodwill of others, you can't take action".

 

[Acetylaldehyde]

I'm gonna try to keep this brief and avoid rants and only put in one rant ok 2 rants fine

Timer: Look, the best way to get games played and reduce "actwincon culture" is to actually enforce the rule. If we develop a culture that if you don't show up, you will get a loss, people will start showing the fuck up. I want to get games done too, not wait around for you to diddle yourself in between games. The MAIN reason I don't play this game more often is because of the frequency with which people don't respect my time. Having the rules helps me guarantee my time is respected and allows me to actually play. What you have to understand is that if I schedule my game on a Tues, then the other shit I would've done during that time gets pushed back and still needs to get done. So no, I can't always just reschedule because it's Tuesday and "we have all week".

Rant 1

The other week I had someone ask for an hr delay day of (I could only give them 30mins), they showed up 12 mins late to that extension, said "emergency" and took 25 mins between g1 and 2, then tried to give me shit for asking for 2 mins between g2 and 3 for a piss. Tbh, if we had a rule in place I still would've given this person that allowance because I've never had issues with them in the past; but it would be nice to be protected from those who make a habit of this shit

I think the best way is to have a running total X break/delay time in a set. say X = 10mins, then every 10 mins total you're late or delay results in one game loss. You take a 5min break between games 1&2 AND 2&3, game loss. You're 9 mins late, then take 5 mins after g1, game loss. We just have to agree on what X should be, and how much "grace" time is given before start set (I think manager ping at 20mins is a fair start personally). This way, if you need a 10 min break, sure take it while communicating. But that's all you get for the set (you dont need to pee and refill water every game, just prepare before, c'mon).
I also don't think enforcement on time between games is hard with screenshots and timestamps. Yeah it doesn't record game end, but it does record challenges and literally anything you say. So if "break time" is from challenge to accept, that's a non issue. Lastly here, if you're arguing over seconds, you've already pushed it too far. If it's 4mins55sec or whatever, that's too close, so you can't argue if it's 5mins1sec. Ultimately nothing will happen because it doesn't align with smogon policy; and I think this concern is valid considering most users don't even read smogon's tour rules page, let alone an RBY specific set Just stop wasting my time, please.

Alts: This can be annoying, but it's not a real issue. Public shaming should be sufficient here. don't make a new skjlfghildfh alt every set, that's super lame. I agree with GSG, that if I was emperor supreme, I would mandate no alts, but it hardly matters. Just, if you regularly play on alts, don't expect me to know who you are and please communicate clearly.

listing/hiding/main/tours: I also think this is a non issue. Mandating your opponent play tours is enough, and punishing replay hiding is probably too harsh. Just link your games or get shamed.

Anyway, thanks for starting the conversation even if nothing will happen. I vote for GirlsSeeGhosts for supreme chancellor of Smogon.

Rant2

Use their timer (and I don't mean timer stalling like not moving until the timers down to 5 seconds left every turn, that is of course rightly reportable. I just mean like, taking 30-60 seconds between some turns, and then 10 seconds for others, just normal timer usage but coupled with the other actions can be used malicious).

You really want to talk about timer stalling?
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen1ou-2316538491
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1ou-840656
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1ou-848211

 

[Ctown6]

too subjective. Play your games. If you need 5-10 mins then let your opponent know. If you are constantly waiting the maximum amount of time to show up to your game and In between games; you are an asshole.

It isn’t a crime to be an asshole but it should be heavily frowned upon. 10 mins total between all games in bo3. 15 for bo5.

 

[Kaz]

5mins inbetween games: "hell no bro, my time management is tight"
30minutes writing a bedside book on possible abusable rules: "heck yea, gimme that act win; won't even have to think about the next load that way!!"