Removing hiddenroom/ionext from the smogtours server

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Hiddenroom (and all sort of replays hiding thing) recently became a huge annoyance especially in live tours.
Hiddenroom main goal is to protect yourself from scouting but as smogtours announce everygame in chat it's basically useless. Hence why it should in my opinion be removed because 1) it doesn't even help players against scouting 2) it's really annoying from a spectator point of view to not be able to watch the replays if you were not in smogtour when they happened.
Even some ST round finals are under hiddenroom (like last friday ST finals between SoulWind and ABR for example) which is actually ridiculous in my opinion.
 
It would be best if we heard what the TD's would like done with this proposal before anything is done. From a technical standpoint:

A configuration change could remove a player's ability to edit the room (modjoin, public/hidden/secret room settings).
The /ioo command could be removed, commented out or have a permission check added that makes it too high to appropriatly use (ex restrict to &/~).

The question becomes, is this appropriate? Do people run practice matches on smogtours that they would rather keep quiet as possible with /ioo? If so maybe it would be better to simply enforce not hiding tournament battles. Though I'm not familiar with the tours scene, so I won't elaborate further.
 
From what I have experienced, this is mostly an issue when a smogon tour is underway. I don't know what the TDs POV on this issue is, but maybe adding an ~ command that can toggle on/off the ability to use /ioo could solve this issue nicely I guess.

Exceptions, such as the guy who tried to hideroom his OST top 16 series, can provably be turned public by the TDs individually so it's not an issue imo.
 
we're going to kill /ioo with fire as soon as we can, it has no place on smogtours whatsoever

the answer to hideroom is still pending but it's almost guaranteed to not stay as it is now, but results pending on this

edit: also moving this to tour policy
 
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Live tours (especially those being part of the Smogon Tour) are basically the only reason why such a thread exists : it's widely accepted by the community that non-live tours games are meant to be played publicly. Hence why I feel like we should reflect on the type of gameplay we want our live tours to aim for.

By essence, the Smogon Tour live tours are roughly a condensed ladder session : you face a few opponents in a row in a very short amount of time until you got knocked out or succeed in winning. That configuration means that you can't afford to prepare for every opponent, as you lack both time and knowledge of your next adversary. Laddering isn't usually synonymous with changing teams every round, as opposed to tournaments with a few days in front of each competitor to get ready for the day of their showdown. With the advent of replays, live tours became more and more focused on counterstyling than proper play : you can watch the replays from your opponent, choose a squad from the dozen of teams sleeping in your builder which can get you a good matchup and then begin your battle. Preparation became a major part of succeeding in live tours, tarnishing the original purpose of live tours (being the best with the teams you already have on a short period of time).

Let's imagine that you're a "honest" player who doesn't peep through his opponent's replays before each round. You have no guarantee that your opponent will behave in a similar fashion and you could actually pay a high price for this respectable demeanor. It is why it's almost impossible to rush through your live tour run with only a single team if you don't hide your replays : the probability of you getting counterstyled (in other words, losing not because you're worse than your opponent but because he got an unfair advantage) is way too high for you to avoid relying on replays and changing your teams each round.

Given that situation, while it's true that not being able to watch some replays from the weekly live tours is frustrating, from a player's point of view, replays being forced is extremely annoying. As a live tour lover, live tours should be about who the best player is, not about who has the best "5 min counterstyling" abilities. I think we should avoid any compromise : in this regard, two options exist.

- replays should be completely public and playing on alts disallowed : counterstyling becomes officially a part of live tours

or

- replays should be completely removed during live tours : counterstyling becomes completely forbidden in live tours

These two options seem equally valid to me, although I personnally prefer the second one. I'm sure it might be technically possible to delay the upload of replays or to simply shut down any replay upload on smogtours for the whole length of each live tour. That first idea (delaying the upload of replays) seems like the best one for me, as there are several live tours happening on smogtours (even if Smogon Tour is the most popular one) and it could be difficult to turn off replays every time a live tour starts.

Also, it's true that removing replays wouldn't totally prevent counterstyling (you could actually watch the r1 game of the opponent you'll get r2, thus getting information on the things he's more likely to use) but it would drastically reduce its prevalence. Thank you !
 
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Quite Quiet said:
we're going to kill /ioo with fire as soon as we can, it has no place on smogtours whatsoever

the answer to hideroom is still pending but it's almost guaranteed to not stay as it is now, but results pending on this

edit: also moving this to tour policy
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Why are we handling `/ioo` and `/hideroom` separately? Specifically, is the problem with turning rooms invite-only, or is the problem with hiding rooms at the beginning of the battle rather than afterwards?
 
Yes, being invite only is the big problem with /ioo. We don't want games invite only on smogtours, as the entire point is to have publicly viewable games.

/hideroom is not ideal but it's kind of a necessary evil unless we can get a command that just hides replays without hiding rooms. People will find ways to circumvent having their replays show up publicly, and as much as I don't like /hideroom on smogtours, it's better than when we had people resorting to increasingly ridiculous alts for important tour games (often combined with magically being unable to play on smogtours despite never having had issues before).

It's still not my favorite solution, especially because it means you can't use the battle tab on smogtours to find what games are going on, but at least games appearing publicly in the smogtours lobby means that the games aren't invisible, and you can either click on the smogtours lobby link or get linked by another user.
 
Exiline said:
Hiddenroom (and all sort of replays hiding thing) recently became a huge annoyance especially in live tours.
Hiddenroom main goal is to protect yourself from scouting but as smogtours announce everygame in chat it's basically useless. Hence why it should in my opinion be removed because 1) it doesn't even help players against scouting 2) it's really annoying from a spectator point of view to not be able to watch the replays if you were not in smogtour when they happened.
Even some ST round finals are under hiddenroom (like last friday ST finals between SoulWind and ABR for example) which is actually ridiculous in my opinion.
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I don't know about that, to be honest with you. There are plenty of reasons against it, if we are looking at the non-tournament aspects. First off, I would not bother if people would hide the room just for the sake of saving replays, if they think it helps they should go for it. It is pretty useful for the ladder too as people are trying totest teams, that is where u can't get scouted that easily. It can be really annoying for the watchers to not watch the games afterwards but there are not that many people who actually care about a weekly ST final in the long run. And I do think that it is helpful in the regular ladder which we got to consider as well, since it does represent a huge part of PS, most likely the bigger one.

All in all: I can see where you are coming from, I just think it is not worth getting rid of useful commands just for a weekly ST final. If actual tour games are affected, I will take back most of the points I made and don't hesitate to tell me but I haven't witnessed that yet (speaking for myself)
 
patlop2307 said:
I don't know about that, to be honest with you. There are plenty of reasons against it, if we are looking at the non-tournament aspects. First off, I would not bother if people would hide the room just for the sake of saving replays, if they think it helps they should go for it. It is pretty useful for the ladder too as people are trying totest teams, that is where u can't get scouted that easily. It can be really annoying for the watchers to not watch the games afterwards but there are not that many people who actually care about a weekly ST final in the long run. And I do think that it is helpful in the regular ladder which we got to consider as well, since it does represent a huge part of PS, most likely the bigger one.

All in all: I can see where you are coming from, I just think it is not worth getting rid of useful commands just for a weekly ST final. If actual tour games are affected, I will take back most of the points I made and don't hesitate to tell me but I haven't witnessed that yet (speaking for myself)
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Why should we look at the non-tournament aspects? If it will be removed, I'm pretty sure it will be removed from smogtours only and not main. Smogtours is primarily used for smogon tournaments and not for laddering.
 
JetOU said:
Why should we look at the non-tournament aspects? If it will be removed, I'm pretty sure it will be removed from smogtours only and not main. Smogtours is primarily used for smogon tournaments and not for laddering.
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Because although it is mainly used for tournaments, there are also other uses for the smogtours server. Plenty of friendlies are being played there. Those countless randbats and cc 1v1s: Do you think those want to be saved? Well some of them yes because theyre funny to watch but most of them no.

And my bad for considering reg PS as well, but even then, there are arguments for keeping it.
 
Let's be honest - replay scouting has become a metagame of its own. Players who have the most well-connected friends have access to many hidden replays, rendering them completely useless. In fact, hiding replays these days can even leave players worse off, giving them a false sense of security that people won't be able to find their teams, when in fact it's not very difficult at all for some to get access.

It sucks, because as a spectator, I love the fact that we have replays to watch. However, as a competitor, especially one who specializes in DPP where prior team knowledge can lead to a huge advantage, I believe replays have had an overall negative impact on the community. Team stealing/sharing, replay scouting to counter-style and prep, and joining the most well-connected cliques have all become a part of the Smogon metagame, and it's a total shame.

That said, I think we're at the point of no return with this. Because the current setup leads to asymmetric resources for competitors, I am inclined to advise that it be mandatory to play under main accounts and save replays for tournament games to count. I realize this may be an unpopular suggestion, but it's the only way to even the playing field for all players - perfect information access for everybody. No false sense of security. Go into every match knowing that your history of tournament games are available for people to study, and knowing that you can do the same for your opponents.
 
Philip7086 said:
Let's be honest - replay scouting has become a metagame of its own. Players who have the most well-connected friends have access to many hidden replays, rendering them completely useless. In fact, hiding replays these days can even leave players worse off, giving them a false sense of security that people won't be able to find their teams, when in fact it's not very difficult at all for some to get access.

It sucks, because as a spectator, I love the fact that we have replays to watch. However, as a competitor, especially one who specializes in DPP where prior team knowledge can lead to a huge advantage, I believe replays have had an overall negative impact on the community. Team stealing/sharing, replay scouting to counter-style and prep, and joining the most well-connected cliques have all become a part of the Smogon metagame, and it's a total shame.

That said, I think we're at the point of no return with this. Because the current setup leads to asymmetric resources for competitors, I am inclined to advise that it be mandatory to play under main accounts and save replays for tournament games to count. I realize this may be an unpopular suggestion, but it's the only way to even the playing field for all players - perfect information access for everybody. No false sense of security. Go into every match knowing that your history of tournament games are available for people to study, and knowing that you can do the same for your opponents.
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The following is representative of my own beliefs, not those of the entire TD team.

I don't consider information asymmetry an actual problem that is causing noticeable advantages and/or disadvantages for players. If you have some false sense of security which ends up being... false then you made some wrong assumption somewhere or took the hiding mechanism for granted when you should have been more careful. I don't think we need to protect people who theoretically lose because they thought they hid their games but the replays were passed to a later opponent - it's either uncommon or just not too impactful.

More generally speaking, let me illustrate a spectrum of scouting and spectatorship. On the left side you have minimal scouting, but also minimal spectatorship (being able to privatize games). On the right side you have maximum scouting, but also maximum spectatorship (all games saved and on smogtours). The left side has the benefit of minimal scouting (requiring people to build less frequently / less strenuous participation), and the downside of poor spectator experience (or a lack of it). The right side has the benefit of full spectatorship, but the downside of full scouting (you need to constantly watch your usage).

The reason I bring this up is because different tournament games have different needs. Big games absolutely need spectatorship and publicity - that is how they're treated right now. Every team tour game, every individual playoff game (OST top 16 too) - they're all forced to be on smogtours with replay threads available as well. This perk of spectatorship is undoubtedly worth the increase of preparation required of players. However, we don't really gain much by allowing GSC Cup Round 3 or similar games to be viewed. Not only are they relatively insignificant games, but the optionally minimal scouting aspect is a welcome one when there's such a high volume of games to be played. If someone is managing 5 different cups/opens then I'd like to make it easier on these players by allowing the option of hiding games and not needing to worry too much about scouting/prep. Those are fine at the final stages of tours but I don't want to place any unnecessary strains on our players without much gain. And it's just that - we don't gain much by forcing such games to be public.
 
hiddenroom should stay on smogtours

this whole demand for a public replay economy is a pretty new idea. the accessibility of tournament games has just recently (spl5+) come into fruition; anything prior to that, tournament games were mostly held in private. old smogon tours, spls, world cups, all these tournaments almost always had private games -- and for a good reason too. i know we all love to "watch" each others games, but at the end of the day i don't see it as a problem to give players the right to superficially hide their games. i'd rather a series be played on smogtours and hidden and selectively shared than it played on main and potentially be left un-saved (which leads to disputes or losses in quality tournament games).
 
replays should not be allowed to be hidden for tournaments that have money on the line. ideally not for trophy tours period (depends on how high prestige you place on your own tournaments), but for money tournaments being able to look back on past replays should be a given to help ensure that an eventual victor didn't cheat their way to over a hundred bucks. should evidence appear that suggests that a player was cheating in one way or another, not being able to match logs to a game would be disappointing.

edit: realized this is a bit offtopic from what OP was talking about but ill let it stay since conversation shifted to replays as a whole
 
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While I'm not aware of what the TD's want to do about this, we did add a new tool that may be able to help in specific situations.

PS Leaders/Admins can now toggle if a replay is public or private from the replay itself.
TD's can do this for replays uploaded from the smogtours server only.
 
Ok we made up our minds and have been informed that /hidereplay is feasible from a programming standpoint so...

- The TD team would like for /hideroom and /ion to be disabled on smogtours
- A command that hides the replay of the battle to be added.

It's to my understanding that this can't happen yet, but for when it's possible, we'd like to implement that policy going forward.
 
Luigi said:
Ok we made up our minds and have been informed that /hidereplay is feasible from a programming standpoint so...

- The TD team would like for /hideroom and /ion to be disabled on smogtours
- A command that hides the replay of the battle to be added.

It's to my understanding that this can't happen yet, but for when it's possible, we'd like to implement that policy going forward.
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Can someone clarify what /hidereplay does?
 
HoeenHero said:
Would hide the replay, and with a few changes, make it impossible to un-hide it unless your a TD/Sim Admin
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I guess, to be more specific, would your opponent or any spectator be able to save the replay somehow and share the link among friends? Does this only hide the replay from being searchable?
 
HoeenHero said:
Just hides it from being searchable
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Thanks for clarifying. In my opinion this doesn't really resolve the core issue brought up in this thread, and this only marginally makes it easier for people to find games (curious to see if this actually leads to any increase in live viewership in live tours... are PS! stats sophisticated enough to track that type of performance?). I appreciate that the PS! team was able to act so quickly on this; I think it's a matter of policy, though, and the proposed solution isn't really a solution. That assumes that there's a problem to begin with, which I guess not everybody agrees on.

ABR: Of course you don't think information asymmetry is a problem... you have more connections than almost anybody in the competitive scene currently ;) . Do you, or don't you get replays from friends that are hidden from search?
 
Thank you all for your input and the thoughts you've presented in this thread. The following changes have been made for the Smogtours server:
  • the ionext command has been removed
  • the hideroom command has been removed
  • a hidereplay command has been created
This means that it is no longer possible to hide your games from those idling on the Smogtours server as they're happening live, but the newly created command does allow you to hide the replay from PS!'s replay finding tool. Simply enter /hidereplay in the battle chat before the game ends and the replay will be hidden. This change should resolve the issue of not being able to watch high level tournament games live, such as a Smogon Tour final.

Thank you The Immortal and HoeenHero for helping us out with this!
 
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