Discussion Ruling-Seeking Feedback Thread (and Editing Orders and Periphery)

[LouisCyphre]

In the last week, I have received a deluge of private ruling-seeking messages for all manner of matches, involving all manner of stakes. With both the League Circuit in full swing and a contingent of new players dipping their toes in the game, this is understandable. I am, for all intents, the rules manager, and thus the natural first person to ask.

However!

Putting aside any logistical concerns I may have with this (my being a bottleneck point of failure in the rules engine is not a desirable feature), I and the other mods would like to address the rather icky implications of answering rules questions privately. These being, in no particular order and not being exhaustive:

Kingmaking - These questions often concern game-deciding interactions for a player looking to secure a win. Early in a match, players seem to go for safer, less niche lines of play rather than attempt something needing clarification. It's only in a match's climactic moments that players have to resort to sketchier actions that might require mechanical explanation. That is to say, answering these rulings questions often feels like being asked to select the winner manually.​

Exclusivity - The rules interaction that was unclear to the asker remains unclear to all other players even after a rules question is answered privately. If the interaction was clear or intuitive, it wouldn't have prompted a question, after all. Not only does answering such a question arm a player with rules knowledge that all other players lack, it also paints us moderators into a corner for answering. If we make changes to the rules to clarify the interaction, the asker's carefully-laid plan could be revealed and put to waste. If we don't make those changes right away, we risk the ruling being lost in a deluge of maintenance work until the same battle situation comes up once more. (The value of protecting a player's plan is open to debate and will be touched on later.)​

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Instability - Players' faith in the rules working as written is shaken just a crumb more every time a ruling comes out of a private conversation that contradicts that player's understanding of the rules. If the rules of the game are subject to negotiation, the game as a whole just doesn't really work. Instead, every battle devolves into a debate exercise.​

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Waiting and Scheduling - If matches hang until we're able to respond with a ruling, then it puts an onus on us to be available around the clock, lest players wait beyond their DQ times for our reply. In the worst cases, matches might be extended by players with the dreaded "Sorry, I can't order until I get an answer" post; which is both of dubious legality and is horrid for the play experience.​

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So that's the "why" of this thread: I and the other moderators would be delighted to find a better solution for players seeking rules clarity, that works better than "DM Lou whether or not I can abuse my opponent's substitution on a technicality and put them unrecoverably behind." That said, I think it's important to share the reasons I think players resort to private questions:

• To conceal their plans. This is bluntly obvious. Players don't want to tip their opponent off to their gameplan. This segues cleanly into the next reason:
• There are no clear rules for editing orders. As a result, a player's opponent can see that player's question, and edit their orders to counter that stated plan. Worse, depending on the strictness of your point of view, they could edit their orders or their substitutions to remove the offending illegality when it's brought up in a question, robbing the asker of a potential advantage.
• There are no clear rules for rewinding, either. This makes it harder on players affected by rules snags, who may have ordered based on a rules assumption that proved to be incorrect, but reasonable. No clear line is drawn as to what constitutes a foul worthy of a re-do, as opposed to a simple player error that they have to hold.

The sum of the above is a habit, that is perhaps justifiable, of seeking private founts of rules clarity whenever further clarity is needed. While understandable, this certainly isn't sustainable for the game's growth; nor is it particularly comfortable for us as we give these rulings. To reiterate myself, there's a certain gross feeling that arises when picking sides in a conflict-to-be that one or more parties involved are as yet unaware of, at the time of choosing.

So, with all of that said, I'd like to open the floor to discussion as to what would be an agreeable solution. What bounds do most players find acceptable when editing a post? What safeguards would players like against having their plans spilled? How could players seeking help with the rules in competitive matches do so without undermining the match result?

And if it can at all be helped, I'd rather solve this particular problem without returning to the era of making a needlessly hostile empty reply "to lock opponents' orders" within minutes of a player's post. Those who know, know.

 

[F Amadon]

• What bounds are okay when editing a post?

I think this answer, for me, is "anything that can be legally posted in that post and is part of this round". You can edit your post upto the end of the chance for a counterswitch/switch phase, and go as far as rethinking moves or subs. You cannot change Pokemon or held item that you just sent out, as that was part of the Switch Phase that is now over.

• What safeguards against spilling plans?

I wonder if a sort of timer could be implemented- not a five minute timer after post, but once you do post, you can no longer edit your post after (placeholder number) half the DQ time has passed in a staked match (so in a DQ: 2 days match, you have an edit window of 24h). If you want rules clarification, but are worried about your opponent seeing it because you are ordering first and you want to bait an option, you should message other players instead of mods- people who cannot make rules but instead only interpret. If the ruling is unclear to multiple people, don't use that option for that round and bring it up so that it can be clarified later.

• How can players in comp matches ask for ruling clarifications without affecting the match?

I think for competitive matches, ruling questions should go directly in Smogon DMs to the ref- as a compromise for the need for privacy versus need for fairness. The ref is required to be impartial, and if they do not know how to rule it, the ref should say so to the player and other set of orders should be chosen, with a ruling clarification/change taking effect in all future rounds.
I don't know if there is a current requirement for competitive refs specifically, but if not, this implementation would require it.
Alternatively, you could introduce a sort of "ruling party" for comp matches, where some odd number of players who have demonstrated great rule knowledge can be sent a ruling question and vote on how the rules are written and how they should be interpreted in that situation, similar to judges. Set up, like, a blind forum or something, or failing that just set it up via group DMs every time. What matters is that mods who could make ruling changes are not involved.
If a ruling is unclear to one player, but clear to another, then asking non-mods privately for clarification should be fine- if the other player has a clear interpretation of the situation, that's what matters, even if it's wrong. That's just player error at that point.

 

[Keriel]

- What bounds are okay when editing a post?
My inclination is that the rule I would like to have here is that editing cannot be based on certain types of information - like, to take an absurd example: it is illegal to edit your orders based on finding your opponent's PC IRL, looking at their screen, and seeing they have punished a mistake you made. This rule is however obviously unenforceable.
The problem with time-based bounds is that it can incentivize waiting - if my opponent is only allowed to edit for the first day after posting, I might want to wait until 1 day after their post before asking rules questions, and this slows the match down by an entire day unnecessarily.
(That said, some part of me likes the idea of forbidding editing after the first poster's original DQ time has ended, which might actually encourage earlier posting...)

- What safeguards against spilling plans?
I really like the idea of allowing people to post exactly two sets of orders, where one has a condition like "if X interaction works in Y way".
Obviously this should only happen when ordering second outside of cases of "waiting on ruling but posting to avoid DQ" - and if it does happen, in any case it's now fine to get the ruling in public since the plans have been posted.
I think that protecting the ability to bait mistakes when you're ordering first is much less important than protecting the ability to punish mistakes when ordering second, so I'm okay with this making the former harder.

- How can players in comp matches ask for ruling clarifications without affecting the match?
To some extent the problem is that I think that the rules are in a transitional state.
In games like Magic, you are allowed to call a judge and ask them to answer a rules question you have in private. This is because the question is almost certainly settled - your opponent is responsible for knowing the interaction, or at least knowing that they should also ask a question, and the rules provide that.
While Lou is doing excellent work with the ruleset, it's definitely still a WIP, and therefore a lot more questions involve creating new rules or at least interpreting ambiguous ones. If we can have some reliable judges who are able to answer questions "yes", "no", or "this isn't settled rules", it would be much more feasible to work on that model - keeping any questions of non-settled rules public for Lou to resolve, while letting people confirm things that are already known in private with another judge, and leaving the responsibility to notice the interaction in the latter case to the opponent.
But I think that isn't possible until the rules are finished, and I don't have any good transitional ideas.

- Other:
I don't know if there's a solution for this, but I'm finding it frustrating that in an ongoing match my opponent's substitution was the same as one I saw in a different game, but (per discussion on discord) I'm being told that it should actually have worked differently than it was reffed there. This feels to me like it's equivalent to other cases where a ruling is changed mid-match and shouldn't apply to the current round, but I'm concerned it may be treated differently.

 

[epicdrill]

For editing posts, tbh I don't really see any good solution to this. I guess the best solution is probably for unstaked matches to allow editing up until the next person in the post order posts, since that leaves opportunities for newer players to ask about mistakes and stuff and if someone abuses it who cares, it doesn't change the result, and people can just choose not to play with that person. For staked/competitive matches, though, it's a little bit harder. I think I'd favour a rule based on information, even though that's very difficult to enforce. Even something as simple as "you can't edit your post to defend against a line your opponent is talking about publicly" could work, although again, that's difficult to enforce (and how do you determine if an edit is response to a question about ability interactions, for example), but I really don't see a better solution.

For asking about rules clarifications, I see two possible approaches. The first is the approach Keriel suggested, where you are free to ask in private and your opponent is expected to either know the interaction or know enough to ask the question themselves. The two main drawbacks I see to this approach are that it relies on moderators being available to answer questions and it's not really a fair approach with an incomplete ruleset. I don't think asking the ref is an appropriate solution, because it will result in some deep dissatisfaction - it feels very unfair to ask the ref for a rulings clarification, get told something inaccurate, order based on that, and then have the interaction go completely differently from what the ref told you because someone pointed out the issue; however, if the mistake is not corrected, it also feels very unfair to have the correct understanding of the rules, exploit something your opponent did based on that, and have that just not work because the ref told your opponent something different. The latter approach, which I think is much more likely to work well, is to require at least some degree of asking in public. I think it is completely reasonable to require anyone ordering first to ask rules questions publicly, so that both you and your opponent know what the answer is when placing orders. For second order, it's a bit more complicated. I think with an appropriate rule on editing (which might not be possible) then you could force both players to post rules questions publicly, but without that I think some degree of asking privately should be allowed, provided you share the answer when you post your orders.

 

[Novax]

I am officially in the 1000 post gang after this :D

Okay so as far as editing in concerned, I feel like 12 hour or until your opponent has posted (whichever is smaller) seems a reasonable time to edit your post in staked matches, mainly because the player is expected to know how their orders interact with the different aspects of the game. In unstaked matches the time can be as long as your opponent has not posted or the ref has not yet rolled (similar to what is generally followed now).

How to prevent spilling of plans?
Though its hard to enforce as Epic already pointed out, something like not being able to edit after your opponent is publicly discussing about an interaction seems logical. Asking the ref might cause issues if the ref had the wrong interpretation of the rules/mechanics themselves.

How much asking is enough?
Since the game is in WIP , there are constant changes in different areas, there are some interactions which have prolly not even seen usage yet so I believe up to a certain degree of asking in the public should be allowed, like for example : how does a certain sub written by the opponent work. How does an ability of a combo interact with another ability. Like : "How does neutralizing gas interact with regenerator" or "IF X then Protect and push back subs" how does this sub interact with other subs and so on. Yea referring to what epic said, quoting the answer while ordering seems the best in interest for both the players in a battle.

I have seen that the union room casual discussion thread is rarely used for discussion regarding a match. Asking how a particular sub/ability/move would work when triggered while in a match or just generally discussing about a particular casual match/facility match or even a staked match once it is done, will bring more topics about discussion to the table which will be accessible to the whole community rather than only the part of the community which has access to discord, which will better the understanding of different aspects of the game.

 

[Keriel]

Per discord discussion of re-reffing rounds after an error is discovered:
I strongly prefer changing as little as possible and using existing rolls where possible.
This is because it prevents a minor correction to something that wouldn't have mattered anyways from changing the entire course of a round.

 

[Mowtom]

Along similar lines I am very against cascading rolls after an error has been pointed out. The fact that a move S1 should have had an extra effect roll should not have any impact on if a move S3 hits or not.