Force-allowing spectating games in OLT

[Zarel]

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/rated-games-and-modjoin.3652782/

So we got a controversial suggestion to force all OLT games to allow spectators (in other words, disabling ionext). It looks like all the tournament directors approved it and pre plans to do it in a few hours.

Here's the approval log:

[16:38] pre: you wanted me to also steal /hidereplay from tours, right?
[16:40] Tony: let me double check if that's still what the other tds want
[16:41] Tony: ok yes we do
[16:41] Tony: if it's not too tricky to implement of course
[16:41] pre: Well, it's more a policy question
[16:42] Tony: i suggested it in the thread because i like the consistency it offers between smogon tour and olt qualification, while also giving the players some protection
[16:42] pre: Do we give it to all sim users? Just OLT prefixed users? Is it something we want to support at all etc?
[16:43] Tony: and the players responded positively to it, so did the tds
[16:43] Tony: well outside of olt is not really anything i have a say in i think
[16:43] Tony: it can't hurt right?
[16:43] Tony: if you have hideroom for non-olt games, then hidereplay seems harmless

There was some controversy in that thread which did not seem at all resolved, so I'm going to post this here so people watching PR know what's going on.

 

[Zarel]

My personal opinion is that it's a tournament, and the entire point of tournaments is for people to be able to watch them. /ionext makes sense when you're practicing for a tournament, but if you're actually playing in it, people watching is the whole point.

 

[WhiteQueen]

some spectators are rather obnoxious. can players be granted the ability to kick users from games? hiding the chat is not an argument; we want to see what our comrades say

 

[Perish Song]

Now that this is a thing do you think we can implement a feature for OLT games where the players will not see whoever is spectating. (the way it is on stours)

 

[Teclis]

some spectators are rather obnoxious. can players be granted the ability to kick users from games? hiding the chat is not an argument; we want to see what our comrades say

You set modchat up to + and promote your friends yourself, which should be enough if annoying users are joining your games.

If the said users are your opponent's friends and he promotes them to Voice, then it will be an issue we won't be able to avoid by giving players the ability to kick users from games. Like "if you find my friends annoying and kick them out I don't see why I would not kick yours", etc. I as a global staff member would not like to spend time arbitrating all the possible conflicts between players should this command be abused - and I'm fairly sure it would be.

The modchat is the first and only line of defense players have to control who speaks in their games ; if some people are actually obnoxious and can't be stopped with it, I would largely prefer that you report them to allow us to treat the problem appropriately with the tools at our disposal.

 

[Tony]

Now that this is a thing do you think we can implement a feature for OLT games where the players will not see whoever is spectating. (the way it is on stours)

We talked a little more in the Tournaments Discord server about this, but to give the programmers a better picture I wanted to elaborate a little on this post. jetou brought up the currently bugged command '/hidejoins', which hides the joining messages as people open a game. Now you'd still see the total amount of people watching in the userlist at the top, but even then I think this feature could be great for OLT, if at all possible.

Perish Song brought up one of the reasons on Discord, which is that some players get very nervous when they see a huge amount of people joining their games. During OLT this happens a lot, even more so now that games are public and linked in the OLT room. In my opinion, however, a bigger reason to do it is to help the players focus during their games. These are tournament games and the onslaught of joining messages is never-ending, especially towards the end of a cycle. If we can enable this as a tool for the players to use alongside ignoring spectators and modchat, then I think it could really make a difference. As for how doable this all is from a coding perspective I obviously wouldn't know, but I figured I'd bring it up.

 

[MANNAT]

Is it possible to make the ability to make ignore spectators into a toggle option rather than having to turn it on every game? That way, people who don’t want to deal with irritating spectators in their games can just turn it on once and won’t have reason to complain about further. I feel like this would be a good solution to the issue of annoying/obnoxious spectators that a lot of people are complaining about.

 

[Tony]

Alright everyone, as a lot of you know we've been messing around with the bot and its settings quite a bit since its introduction, so I figured I'd post here to give you an update on where this all stands now.

Thanks to Zarel and especially pre we are now able to strike a better balance between serving the spectators and meeting the players halfway in making it harder for them to get counter teamed. The /hidereplay command has now been upgraded. Basically, not only does it hide the replay of the game, but it also modjoins it automatically as soon as it ends. This means you can only open the game as its going on; once the battle ends you can no longer join it. This is particularly useful because of the introduction of the OLT bot, which stacks battle links in the OLT room and made in turn for a handy scouting tool. Thanks to the newly improved command the latter issue is no longer there.

So all of this comes down to the following: if you're playing OLT, then use the /hidereplay command in all of your games. You can set it at any time during the battle, just like on Smogtours. I recommend doing it right away so that you don't forget to do it towards the end of your battle. You don't have to worry about the battle modjoining immediately, as the command automatically waits until the battle has ended. A huge thanks again to pre, you are the best.

 

[Rewer]

Bumping the thread because we've experimented with no ionext for 2 cycles now.

This isn't a woe is me post because I was mostly a spectator during cycles 3 and 4 and I did have a lot of fun watching the games, such as tricking going from signup to 2.1k in 5 hours, updated kanto's win streak in cycle 3, wish killer showing up big again and samqian's insane last minute run in cycle 4. But there are points that can be brought up and debated.

1) Without ionext, the team anyone uses in high ladder will be known, regardless of a replay being available or not. The competitors watch the games too. If someone is laddering with some creative tech, or some team that forces the opponent into making moves to scout your movesets, no ionext is a huge nerf. This culminates in less creativity. People are inclined to run team staples, such as the mlati rotom balance team, manaphy rain, kokolucha offense, krokodille stall, shedinja stall, etc. There's little point in running a team that isn't fully effective even if your opponent already knows the team when you reach the high ladder. The modjoin after ending tool is nice, but doesn't cut it, people are still going to know your sets.

2) Spectators can be quite annoying. Yes there is the button of ignoring spectators but still, no ionext or not even hideroom takes away the privacy of the players. A lot of people are gonna prefer to play in private if they have to play multiple games in a short period of time, even if no spectator is annoying them, they just like their privacy, and I think players should have their right to privacy.

3) OLT is a tournament, but the qualification phase does not play like any other tournament. There is no tournament where you have to play hundreds of games in a very short time span with good consistency to qualify. It's not the same as smogon tour, where you play your best game and if you lose you're out or you win you take a break and then play the next one. There's a 150 second timer in the ladder and there's the need to get multiple games done. I can tell you that most qualifiers have reset their records because a lot of their real records would show 200, 300 or more games and it's not a good look, you also need to position yourself in the ladder for the last hours correctly, because of how crazy it gets in the end. Some very good tour players such as soulwind, cdumas, finchinator, flcl, kory, eternal spirit, dice, robjr, leftiez, xtrashine, pdc, fmg etc. have all tried to qualify this year and failed, while some people that did qualify are very clearly not as skilled as those, and I'm saying this with all due respect, because I do admire those who have the laddering skills and mental fortitude to climb it up and every qualifier rightfully earned their spots in playoffs. My point is that the OLT qualification is very different than any other tour, so why should it be treated as such as in "olt is a tournament, tournaments exist to be spectated"? it's a tournament but it's also ladder and ladder play is different from tournament play, it's just not the same thing.

4) Metagame development. One argument I saw for removing ionext is that we would witness the metagame development better. I didn't see too much of a difference here. We witnessed metagame development during every cycle regardless of ionext, from the charmflash team and rains from cycle 1, the rise of stall, serp sand and ho in cycle 2, the lati balances and mawiles of cycle 3 and cycle 4 being a big mix of all the teams popular in previous cycles plus the new metronome tapu lele team that was likely built as catch all against the popular playstyles. Even if ionext existed during cylcles 1 and 2, most of the players do know what was being used by pretty much every qualifier and it's not like every single game was modjoined. What was indeed clear is the drop of creativity who takes me back to point one.

To sum it up, I think removing ionext makes olt way better for spectators and extremely fun to watch, I enjoyed it, but I personally believe it's just straight up worse for the players competing for the reasons above and more, and it really comes down to who do you want to cater to, the players or the spectators?