Implemented Custom Avatars for Team Tour Hosts

[Lily]

Pretty simple suggestion, if a user hosts a team tournament that has a custom avatar as a reward, they should get access to that custom avatar alongside the winning team. Incentivises hosting & doing a good job for literally no extra work; the avi is gonna exist anyway, so it's just a case of giving access to one more person and sharing the fun! For SPL/SCL/RBTT hosts (i.e. tours that give every team an avatar regardless of whether or not they win) the host(s) should just be able to pick the avatar they like the best and yoink that one. We all talk all the time about how hosting is a thankless job that nobody wants to do, let's give em a reason to do it and a little reward for doing a good job. This could/should also apply to the artists that make the avatar imo!

Unsure if this is more of a TD thing or PS admin thing but I figure this is a fine place to put it anyway. Ty for considering!

 

[Finchinator]

I support this. We need to reward our hard working hosts. This is a great way of doing so.

 

[Lalaya]

can i get em retroactively

jokes aside +1, definitely helps in rewarding the hosts on it and could get more people interested in hosting as well

 

[Clementine]

yes but also consider rewarding artists the same way, very hard working pixel artists don't get any kind of reward on smogon besides the occasional art thread link in the custom avatars thread and this is probably the least we can do xo

wanted to add some stuff to this message cause it might sound a bit rude?
I 100% agree that contributors to smogon, especially those doing stuff like tournament hosting which is not always fun and that most people do not want to do should get actual rewards, and I also agree that giving them stuff like the custom avatar prize is a good way to do so, as there is unfortunately very little stuff that can be done

however, I'm also gonna use the occasion to talk about spriting artists and how little recognition they get on Smogon in general, especially those making custom avatars for other people while not even getting considered for badges and stuff
no matter how many people get a custom avatar for a given event, whether it's because they won it or helped host it or anything, if there isn't anyone to get the avatar done, nobody's gonna get it
we've seen incredibly talented people make very unique custom avatars for other people without getting anything on smogon, and it adds a lot to the prize itself
with more and more custom avatars being offered as prizes for a lot of events (which is a very good thing btw), it is time spriters get proper recognition for their work

 

[Lalaya]

yes but also consider rewarding artists the same way, very hard working pixel artists don't get any kind of reward on smogon besides the occasional art thread link in the custom avatars thread and this is probably the least we can do xo

should definitely matter towards artist badge (and prob make artist badge have good value for it) or even more ig

 

[Lily]

shoulda bolded that in the op mb! but yes artists should 110% get access to the avatars they make, that's the least they deserve for their fantastic work

 

[Dorron]

What tours would this apply for? Only Smogon ones like SPL, World Cups, Premier Leagues in general like UUPL or NDPL, RoA team tours like RoA Olympics...? Would it also apply for tours like Teamballo and RBTT? I love the idea, hosting is a pretty important aspect that isn't rewarded properly currently, but of course there should be a list of tours that this would apply for.

 

[Isaiah]

Honestly, I feel like it would be a better reward if hosting such tours had a system where you can host [some number of qualifying tours] (subject to review by whoever, perhaps TDs and admins or whatever is deemed necessary) and then once you've done the work, you can request your own individual CA as a "Tournament Host", the same way there are various systems for working towards one through badges. Seems better than having to jump onto w/e CA the winners of your tour get, and also removes the incentive for veteran hosts to just keep hosting the same tours they always host (unless obviously it's a matter of lack of trustworthy candidates or something) since after a certain point, the CA incentive won't exist anymore. This also helps any concerns about someone who wasn't participating in your team's prep/playing every week getting the reward alongside. Letting artists use team tour CAs they make seems awesome though; that shouldn't be restricted in any way.

 

[Lalaya]

What tours would this apply for? Only Smogon ones like SPL, World Cups, Premier Leagues in general like UUPL or NDPL, RoA team tours like RoA Olympics...? Would it also apply for tours like Teamballo and RBTT? I love the idea, hosting is a pretty important aspect that isn't rewarded properly currently, but of course there should be a list of tours that this would apply for.

well, every team tour that gives a CA as a prize (they're already vaguely limited in numbers anyway) I assume, so ofc no random PL out of nowhere that is outside Smogon; but otherwise, if it has a CA as a prize, it should qualify

 

[Lalaya]

Honestly, I feel like it would be a better reward if hosting such tours had a system where you can earn [some number of qualifying tours subject to review by whoever) and then once you've done the work, you can request your own individual CA as a "Tournament Host" qualifying CA. Seems better than having to jump onto w/e CA the winners of your tour get, and also removes the incentive for veteran hosts to just keep hosting the same tours they always host since after a certain point, the CA incentive won't exist anymore. Letting artists use team tour CAs they make seems awesome though; that shouldn't be restricted in any way :P

(doublepostng but his idea could work even better as it also rewards hosting INDIVIDUAL tours, not just team tours; as in, after you host X number of tours successfully you should be able to request a CA as a prize instead of letting you use random CAs, or having the choice of using one of the team tour ones, if you hosted one)

also this could connect to the thing we were discussing a while about having a badge that is "less" than TD but gives CA eligibility or is worth a lot to reach said eligibility, for example

 

[Dorron]

(doublepostng but his idea could work even better as it also rewards hosting INDIVIDUAL tours, not just team tours; as in, after you host X number of tours successfully you should be able to request a CA as a prize instead of letting you use random CAs, or having the choice of using one of the team tour ones, if you hosted one)

also this could connect to the thing we were discussing a while about having a badge that is "less" than TD but gives CA eligibility or is worth a lot to reach said eligibility, for example

Tournament Contributor badge @supermods

 

[dhelmise]

Tournament Contributor badge @supermods

Community Contributor badge Dorron

 

[Aether]

Community Contributor badge Dorron

The issue with this is that a lot of Tournament hosts have the Community Contributor badge already, and once you get Community Contributor there isn't motivation to host tournaments anymore. At least in my experience, hosting tournaments has been a thankless job that requires a lot of time and effort. Let's look at a series of tournaments, along with the number of hosts and the number of them that already have Community Contributor (as of this post):

Tournament	Number of Hosts with Community Contributor
Monotype Cup II	2/5
PU Classic VI	5/6
Ubers World Cup II	2/2
Battle Stadium Singles World Cup I	1/2
Other Metagames Grand Slam VIII	2/2*

In total, exactly 75% of hosts already have the Community Contributor badge already. As it stays, there is no reason for someone in a position like myself (already having Community Contributor) to host more tournaments outside of the goodness of my heart, which is a lousy piece of motivation and a bad thing to rely upon. I fully support having a tournament contributor badge (note: this would not replace the Tournament Director badge, despite their similar names) to provide additional motivation to people to do the tedious job of hosting tournaments, which is one of the two backbones of Smogon, the other being our analysis.
I'm unsure if I support the proposal lined in the OP, half because it doesn't really offer a reward to the hosts of tournaments that don't have a custom avatar, such as non-OverUsed classic tournaments, non-OverUsed World Cups, etc. but also because I don't think that hosting is tedious enough of a task to deserve a custom all on its own, and could also lead to some hosts hosting one tournament with a custom avatar and then quitting hosting. I do think that should a tournament contributor badge be added, it should count for either the same or more points in the badge shop as the Contributor badge.

*of the hosts chosen so far

 

[Wigglytuff]

(doublepostng but his idea could work even better as it also rewards hosting INDIVIDUAL tours, not just team tours; as in, after you host X number of tours successfully you should be able to request a CA as a prize instead of letting you use random CAs, or having the choice of using one of the team tour ones, if you hosted one)

As someone that's hosted a lot of individuals, live and not live, I think CC is adequate. Or if hosting individuals gives "points" towards getting a CA beyond getting CC, then so should other forms of contribution on the site that don't and the new CA points system would have to be rethought entirely. There's a huge divide between hosting team tours and individuals.

We all talk all the time about how hosting is a thankless job that nobody wants to do, let's give em a reason to do it and a little reward for doing a good job

This is just my personal experience so take it (or don't take it) for what it's worth, but a CA would've done nothing about how bitter I was after being a cohost for SPL XII, and if anything it feels like the difference between thanking your friend for throwing a party and thanking your friend for throwing a party, then slipping them a $20 bill on your way out. One's cool, the other's weird, except at least $20 is 2 weeks of nicotine vaporizer supply.

If giving a CA to trophy (it should be limited to trophy) team tours is going to happen, though, then it should be something along the lines of what Isaiah posted. Or make a generic Hosting Hitmontops avatar and give it to all of them


i guess to expand on this post:

why individuals shouldn't be lumped into this:
we recently just revamped how to get a CA through smogon contribution. hosting individuals is rewarded through CC - that's your progression to a custom avatar. there are very few avenues of contribution grant you a custom avatar by itself; off the top of my head it's
- sim admin, supermod/admin, and researcher
everyone else (team raters, tutors, c&c ppl, everything else that happens on the site) either needs to attain a community leadership level of contribution or contribute in multiple avenues. tournament hosting can be difficult, but i think it's pretty clear that it falls in the "everyone else" category rather than the "sim admin/supermod/admin/researcher" category.

the alternative is that the "everyone else" category has avenues to earn a CA without diversifying their contribution/attaining community leadership position, but im pretty sure that wont happen so...


why unofficial/circuit/subforum team tournament hosting shouldn't be lumped into this:
it's hard to describe the level of weight and stress that goes into hosting trophy team tournaments, but put most succinctly:
- unofficial/circuit/subforum team tournament hosts reference trophy team tournament decisions as precedent for their tours
- trophy team tournament hosts don't reference nontrophy team tournaments as precedent

i was the first host of coronavirus PL I, which if you dont know is essentially an SPL where each "week" is actually 1 day. so not only were the same guidelines in effect, there was also a significantly shorter time limit to deal with issues as they come up.

hosting spl xii was so much more stressful than that because you are setting the gold standard for how the rules are interpreted in team tournaments. not only are you hosting that tournament, you're hosting 981274827417 other ones by proxy.

this is what makes trophy team tour hosting uniquely "thankless" to what is already a universally thankless job. every host gets treated terribly by xX_Charizard_Devourer_Xx who really wants an extension after missing the scheduled time twice in Gen 9 Pure Hackmons OU Blitz summer seasonal, but nobody really cares if you actually do give them the extension. i think ignoring this factor and lumping in all team tournament hosting together misunderstands why hosting is a thankless job in the first place.

 

[Lalaya]

Not to burst someone's bubble but no host cares about CC to the point they would host entirely for that alone, that's literally the point of this thread to give them something that VALUES their efforts

and a badge that can be obtained in 42 different ways and is worth shit to the badgeshop ain't it (and the abyss between it and Tour Director is... an abyss, and not all hosts get TD - just look Theia, having hosted probably one of each tour existing under the sun) - also need an idea that cares about small tours anyway

I'll leave the tour badge discourse to another time and another thread but the point still stands: to have EVERY tour they host matter in some way or another (obviously every tour has its own weight, but they should all weigh), there SHOULD be a system that keeps count of all your tour contributions that eventually gives a CA if you did enough, that is MORE than what CC can give you, because that's the bloody point of having hosts being rewarded for one of the most tedious and time consuming jobs.

(not to draw parallels but kinda like C&C work that is basically its own beast, yknow? tour hosting isn't THAT, but it's still tedious)

 

[Dorron]

Community Contributor badge Dorron

Community Contributor covers a lot of different aspects. This badge has included from helping teaching GP in C&C to hosting tournaments and running projects. Tournaments are such a huge community that I believe a Tour Contributor badge could be worth discussing, and it might not just cover hosting tournaments but doing stats, usages and more or writing articles about them. This might not be the place to discuss it, but hosting tournaments and running projects shouldn't give the same badge.

 

[peng]

why unofficial/circuit/subforum team tournament hosting shouldn't be lumped into this:
it's hard to describe the level of weight and stress that goes into hosting trophy team tournaments, but put most succinctly:
- unofficial/circuit/subforum team tournament hosts reference trophy team tournament decisions as precedent for their tours
- trophy team tournament hosts don't reference nontrophy team tournaments as precedent

this seems needlessly gatekeepy

Many decisions in current SPLs are set by precedents of previous hosts anyway, so every host of every tournament is piggybacking off someone elses decisions to some extent. This is a strange line to draw.

If you feel that the weight and stress of trophy tournaments is so great then honestly those hosts should be fighting for a greater reward than some pixel art, rather than trying to deny pixel art to side team tournament hosts. This is literally fighting over scraps

---

I think the idea outlined in the OP works fine - if you let team tournament hosts have access to the CA from their own tournament then the "clout" of the reward will scale with the **prestige** of the tournament. SPL hosts would get the choice of an SPL team CA, and I'm not a CA person but these are instantly more recognisable and carry more importance than a side-tournament one (although being honest both are absolutely worthless and we should be doing more)

This is such a minor way of thanking people who do unseen work on the site that its obvious, agreeing with posts above about artists getting to use their own CAs too.

 

[Wigglytuff]

If you feel that the weight and stress of trophy tournaments is so great then honestly those hosts should be fighting for a greater reward than some pixel art, rather than trying to deny pixel art to side team tournament hosts. This is literally fighting over scraps

i dont think giving everyone CAs will help with much of anything anyway and my understanding is that PS staff wants to be more selective about who gets them. if this isn't the case, then sure, do whatever.

what i'm trying to point out is the difference between team trophy hosting and the rest of hosting, and that if the rest of hosting is lumped into getting CAs for this beyond the points you get from CC, then so should the other forms of contribution to this site. having done a lot of the "rest of hosting," i don't see why tournament hosting should be treated any differently than rating a lot of teams or teaching someone how to double switch a lot.

or in other words, let the ppl have CAs

 

[Eledyr]

(note that is might be a bit off-topic, if the subject is opened in an other topic feel free to move this post)
Since the subject is raised, I wanna point out that I fully support the creation of a badge specifically centered around tournaments. From my perspective, the Community Contributor is, well, not very clear in its standards.

• Community Contributor is given to users for various reasons throughout the forum. It can be rewarded for nearly every section of the site if the situation arises for it. Typically, users are rewarded for any of the following: hosting forum projects and/or tournaments, making excellent posts within the forum section, organizing and updating tournament points/spreadsheets, providing and giving away competitive Pokemon for use in live tournaments, and almost anything else not covered under the umbrella of another badge.

Note that this is not necessarily something that should be changed. The Community Contributor is rewarded for well, being useful for the sake of the site overall, thus various aspects are covered in it and it would be hard to establish any hard quantitative value for it.

That being said, Tournaments in general are at the root of Smogon, and it feels cruel for the hosts to have no rewards for their work besides the CC badge. I am not being pedantic here, this is pretty much the opposite: I've been hosting tournaments for 2 years now, both officials (I helped hosting the Smogon Tour 34) and unofficials (mostly in the Ubers community), and this is a most of the time a thankless job. Actually, not completely thankless, as I know how the moderation teams are happy to get motivated hosts, but you get the idea. Thus, making an official Tournament Contributor badge makes sense, not only as it would finally reward the efforts of so many hard working hosts, but also promotes hosting tournaments to more people in general. And that's without pointing out what has already been said in how time consuming tournaments hosting is. I sincerely appreciate hosting tournaments, and deeply want that my passion for it could be shared.

 

[Vulpix03]

before handing out the custom there should be set criteria the host(s) have to meet. Examples would be making sure the spreadsheet and replay thread are updated properly. I don't know who would monitor this, maybe do a post tour survey and have the managers give the host(s) a review.

There are gunna be a people who sign up to host so they get a custom then barely do any hosting so we definitely wanna avoid that

 

[MANNAT]

before handing out the custom there should be set criteria the host(s) have to meet. Examples would be making sure the spreadsheet and replay thread are updated properly. I don't know who would monitor this, maybe do a post tour survey and have the managers give the host(s) a review.

There are gunna be a people who sign up to host so they get a custom then barely do any hosting so we definitely wanna avoid that

I absolutely agree with this post, it's important to reward contributors for their hard work, but obviously said rewards should come with standards that ensure they're earning them in the first place. It would feel really bad to put 9 weeks of work into grinding a regular season + playoffs of a tour for a custom avatar only to see a host that did the bare minimum got the same reward you did (arguably more because of points towards CC).

Also echoing the post made by Clementine because it is pretty ridiculous that artists can't use art that they make and that should've been how it worked in the first place.

 

[z0mOG]

Yes this is all true and good and factual and stuff like that.

Counter suggestion:

Smogon pay hosts?

 

[MANNAT]

Honestly, I feel like it would be a better reward if hosting such tours had a system where you can host [some number of qualifying tours] (subject to review by whoever, perhaps TDs and admins or whatever is deemed necessary) and then once you've done the work, you can request your own individual CA as a "Tournament Host", the same way there are various systems for working towards one through badges. Seems better than having to jump onto w/e CA the winners of your tour get, and also removes the incentive for veteran hosts to just keep hosting the same tours they always host (unless obviously it's a matter of lack of trustworthy candidates or something) since after a certain point, the CA incentive won't exist anymore. This also helps any concerns about someone who wasn't participating in your team's prep/playing every week getting the reward alongside. Letting artists use team tour CAs they make seems awesome though; that shouldn't be restricted in any way.

This is the best proposal in the thread IMO. Weird bias issues aside, having hosts just latch onto the winning team's custom feels like a clunky solution. Having people work their way up to a personal custom seems like a way better solution to doing things. Hosting tournaments and keeping all of the appropriate resources updated feels like more than enough work over the course of multiple tournaments to make hosting be enough to give a custom.

 

[ironwater]

Hey, thanks for the proposal and the suggestions brought up in this thread. I’m going to answer in the name of the PS admins team (who are in charge of custom avatar prizes).

We are not going to follow the initial suggestion (give the winning team’s custom avatar to the tour hosts) for several reasons.

Before detailing them, I want to explain our view on giving custom avatars. There’s two different ways to earn one, first being winning it through an event (mostly tournaments) and second being earning one with contributions. It’s hard to compare both, but within each the way we reward people should be as consistent as possible. This means that we won’t approve any type of events for custom avatar prizes (even if there will always be some easier to win than others), but it also means that we don’t want to reward similar “levels” of contributions differently. Everyone contributing here is giving some of their time for free to help the community and this shouldn’t be an argument to reward more only a specific type of contribution. What we’re looking out to see if a specific type of contribution can have more/exclusive rewards than others is how directly useful to PS it is and how rare the skills required are. Great examples to illustrate this are Programmer or Researcher which if you look at badgeshop (for those who have access) are valued higher. Another point I want to mention before replying to the actual suggestions is that these rewards are rewards, adding an existing avatar to someone doesn’t require any work from us, but that’s not why we would give it to someone who didn’t earn it either through winning or through reaching the appropriate contribution threshold.


Taking all this into account, the first reason why we’re not going to follow this suggestion is that this doesn’t follow the consistency between similar levels of contributions we want to apply. Giving a team avatar for every tournament hosted seems excessive, but even a “giving one every x tournaments” is not something we want to do without having contributions like analysis/articles writing/translating, tutoring, team rating… having similar rewards. There’s no plan currently to have this type of contributions specific rewards outside of badgeshop and we reworked badgeshop already to take into account more type of contributions.

The second reason is that this includes a lot of inconsistencies even without looking at other type of contributions. Should hosts doing a poor job get one too? Should multiple hosts get one leading to people doing almost nothing claiming one or people cheating the system, or should only one main host get one, which would mean people are going to fight for this spot? What about hosting individual tournaments? I think this particular way of rewarding tour hosts allows way too many inconsistencies and even if we consider that tour hosting isn’t rewarded properly, this shouldn’t be the way to solve the issue.

The third reason mentioned, even if I don’t feel as strongly about it than the two previous ones is that avatars given for such events are supposed to be a common reward for the winning team players and it feels weird (at least for some persons) to have someone who isn’t part of the team included.

Official tours (and by this I mean tours for which each team starts with a custom avatar) are a special case where the above objections have less weight and they can be reviewed separately, but it won’t go over these (and as of now it concerns only 4 tours a year).


I’ll stop talking as a PS admin, and I’ll add that from my perspective, even if rewarding contributions should go through badgeshop (bar the direct PS ones not included there), having the “everything that isn’t already covered” badge to reward tour hosting isn’t fair. I think that tour hosting should be its own badge, rewarding people doing both tour hosting and “community contributing” in two different ways, but also allowing a potential shiny variant for particularly dedicated/good hosts. It would also allow the badge leaders (probably Tournament Directors) to weight both quantity and quality of contributions. This is different from the initial suggestion, but some people mentioned it here and I think it’s worth being discussed (among Smogon staff) as it is to me the right solution to value tour hosting more fairly.

This was also in the initial suggestion and in some posts here so I’m going to add a bit on rewarding artists or to be more specific spriters. In the past years we’ve been making custom avatars rewards more accessible which also means more work for spriters. I think there’s improvement to be made regarding how we reward spriters, suggestions being including spriting work in the artist badge scope (high value badge towards rewards) and considering direct PS rewards for public spriting work (on top of potential badges) like making regular PS avatars, Pokemon sprites, afd sprites…


The tldr of this long answer is that we are not going to follow this proposal. Though, as there’s a need to reward more fairly tournament hosts and spriters, we will initiate discussions about new ways of acknowledging their contributions either it is a tour hosting badge, a standardization of PS rewards for spriters or a better integration of spriting work to the artist badge…

Closing the thread as this answers the OP post and other suggestions I mentioned in the end would require their own discussion topic and are not really falling under Tournament Policy.

 

[Dave]

I am re-opening this thread to comment.

Since this thread was first posted, the TDs have created a hosting badge to award the hard (and often thankless) work of the hosts.

The TDs and PS Admins have decided to take it a step further by rewarding the long-term commitment and hard work involved by our hosting teams of SCL and SPL with their own custom "team" avatar. This avatar will represent and symbolize the hosts ability to uphold tournament integrity and be the "referee" or "authority figure" during the duration of the tournament.

These two particular tournaments are extremely high pressure and take a lot of work. Meanwhile, discussions are still being had about World Cup and whether hosts will receive a custom for that tournament. It's a very different format, but don't fret, we will have additional information on that in the future. As for specifics, here's what you need to know:

1. Hosts will receive a custom avatar
2. This CA will have a male and female variation
3. This CA will be unique year-to-year
4. Official hosts are will continue to be selected via the tournament oversight team
5. Hosts can lose their CA privileges if they do not contribute, cause issues, or have other circumstances that disqualify them from having the avatar.

We are excited to implement this change and if you have any questions, hit me up and I will be happy to answer.