Proposal Make a separate chat for game discussion during tournament games

Posho

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Greetings, Smogon gamers, this is my first proposal thread and I wanted to suggest the creation of a separate chat for tournament games, where players are able to fully discuss the undergoing battles.

To preface, I believe the current ruleset for the smogtours chat is completely fine and it prevents any ghosting instances that the players could take advantage of; however, with so many limitations, there is almost no purpose for the chat other than chitchat and shittalking. I am of the opinion that the joy of spectating games comes in the form of being able to give or read perspectives on the gameplay. Sure it is possible to just go on another chat or discord server and comment there, but not everybody is fortunate enough to share a chat with a big community. Therefore, not only is the implementation of a separate chat for discussion more engaging and interactive, other players, unfamiliarized with certain metagames, get to join in the fun and possibly learn a thing or two. Furthermore, although it might be a bit chaotic with so many logs, players themselves also get some insight on their games by reading the chat after a game is over.

The way to implement this could be by creating a separate chatroom that is only accessible by voiced users (Isa's idea). This way joining with an alt could be preventable.

I hope I have made myself clear enough with this post and that it gets support, because I believe this is a positive implementation for tournaments.
 

Vileman

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I approve
- makes game discussion way more interesting
- stops any form of ghosting or suggestions that don't directly fall under ghosting ("is this a 50/50", "will he do the play", etc are not ghosting but like. suggest game routes players may not have considered)
- would also be cool to not have logs of new games starting interrupt the chat, so that's another plus
- just a note: keep the room with modchat % until a game starts the players are kicked out, this stops any possible ghosting before players leave and gives purpose to the lobby room honestly lol
- if a new official game starts, we just accept the fact those players will be able to see this chat until a mod kicks them out. Easy to also track if someone purposedly tries something sus.

Just a matter if implementation is factible (hint: it should as theres already private rooms n such so makes u think. . . ) so good idea posho n isa
 

Pokeslice

Thanks for the Dance
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This is an amazing idea and I think that it would definitely make chilling in Stours a lot more fun when big games are going on. +1 from me.

My only question is would it be possible to code in some type of way to instantly kick people from said room once they join a game on Stours up until they leave the battle/the game ends? That would take away the need for a mod to remove someone from the chatroom, especially during off hours where only some friends of the players would be on to watch and commentate and really ensure no funny business is going on.
 

Quite Quiet

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[23:22] Misdreavus: @ discussion room thingy, I talked to tech ppl to get an idea of what's realistic to implement and they'll get back to me
[23:22] Misdreavus: going to post that in the thread when I do

I'm putting this here so everyone has the same information. I would say this is approved, but without knowing what our options are I don't want to fully commit to anything. What I will say is that I'm working under the assumption that most people would be fine with this (though I didn't actually ask), since I'm sure nobody particularly likes the current lobby situation (TDs or spectators).
 

Adaam

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I like this idea a lot. I only have a suggestion for a possible implementation. Instead of having one single room to discuss all active battles, I propose that each new match on Smogtours will have an option to “create battle chat.” Once invoked, the server will automatically generate a new room that will live for the duration of the battle while banning the two players from entering (at least until it ends).

The pros of this suggestion are that it contains discussion pertaining to each game in its own room. When multiple games happen at once, it will be easier for spectators to follow chat and understand what match is being discussed. In addition, it prevents users playing friendlies from being banned from the game discussions until they end their game.

The downside would be people trolling and creating rooms for a bunch meme matches,
perhaps you can limit how many rooms a user can generate in an hour? In any case, unless there is a physical limitation to amount of rooms that can exist, this isn’t that big of a problem. I hope this helps
 

Heika

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Ok, this might not be the best idea, but it might be easier to implement, so I figured I’d share it.

So as of now, what we do is mods use a modchat command to put the game chat in modchat player during official games. What might be an alternative could be to set up a command that instead of prohibiting other people to talk would enforce the “ignore spectators” option for the player. Effectively prohibiting them to read people talking in the game chat outside of their opponent and gstaff.

Of course there is the issue of gstaff not being ignore, but other than that it seems to do the same as generating a new room, while being potentially easier to implement.
And maybe their is a simple work around this issue too.
Also it means every discussion happening is saved on the replay, providing logs of potentially interesting analysis to the player once the game is over.
 

Lily

wouldn't that be fine, dear
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Ok, this might not be the best idea, but it might be easier to implement, so I figured I’d share it.

So as of now, what we do is mods use a modchat command to put the game chat in modchat player during official games. What might be an alternative could be to set up a command that instead of prohibiting other people to talk would enforce the “ignore spectators” option for the player. Effectively prohibiting them to read people talking in the game chat outside of their opponent and gstaff.

Of course there is the issue of gstaff not being ignore, but other than that it seems to do the same as generating a new room, while being potentially easier to implement.
And maybe their is a simple work around this issue too.
Also it means every discussion happening is saved on the replay, providing logs of potentially interesting analysis to the player once the game is over.
Global staff can /hiderank so what you've mentioned isn't a huge issue tbh, the issue w/ this is that there isn't any restriction on joining the battle with an alt and just watching the chat that way. I don't know how many people would actually care to do that, but opening an incognito would make it extremely easy. You don't even need to be logged in.

I like Adaam's suggestion best (although the OP's is perfectly fine too if it's more technically reasonable). I think it'd be best if the permission was restricted to Drivers+; there's almost always one online during official tournament games unless it's at some unholy hour, and it'd prevent the abuse Adaam mentioned. Currently the /subroomgroupchat command exists on PS main, which allows you to create temporary rooms from other rooms which I think includes battles; maybe this could be repurposed to work here?
/battlechat (or something similar)
- creates subroomgroupchat from the battle room
- anyone with rank Voice (+) or higher can join the chat; only exception is rank Player (⭐) which should be restricted. This shouldn't be an issue if players are in other games, as they will only be rank Player in their own battles and thus their own battle's subrooms; they will be rank Voice in the battles they're spectating
- battlechat can expire when the battle room itself does. If that's not feasible, current group chat expiry (i.e. after X minutes of inactivity) should work fine too.

A button in the battle under the turn information saying "Join battlechat" (or "Create battlechat" if it doesn't exist yet) would be great if possible but isn't super necessary as the Driver+ creating it can simply announce it via /wall.

The only con I can see here is that non-Voiced users will no longer be able to see battle chat, but given Smogtours voice has very few requirements idt this should be a huge problem in practice either. This feels like it'd solve the speculation issue while not being overly complex while also helping out with the problems of multiple games, casual chatter, and random foreign language floods.

Admittedly this doesn't really account for unofficial tournament games (which are less likely to have a Driver+ spectating) but chat for those doesn't really happen on Smogtours anyway from what I've seen. Tier discords tend to do the heavy lifting there, but if needs be the command can just be given to Voices+ and those who abuse it can be demoted.
 

Mathy

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Hi! Sorry for putting off posting for like a month but I've written code going off what adaam and lily suggested. I'm aware that this won't even necessarily be implemented in the end but it wasn't too much work overall and I wanted to get out a proof of concept: https://github.com/smogon/pokemon-showdown/pull/8816 That link has some more of the technical details as well as a video demonstration.

Currently the permissions are as lily proposed, driver and up can create the chat and voice and up can join. This seems solid for how smogtours does ranks, but I'll add some IP checking as well if we do go with this proposal. A potential issue is someone battling on an alt could join the chat on their voiced main using mobile internet.
 
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Quite Quiet

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Requiring a Global Driver to always be online kind of kills most of the use we would get from this, since quite a good portion of tour games that happen on Smogtours doesn't really expect there to be one online. Maybe for SPL/WCoP/SCL/Playoffs games that could be expected, but there's more tour games than those that this would completely miss with this. Ideally any implementation here should be usable for any tour game that happens on Smogtours (Circuits, Unofficials, Live tours, Playoffs, Team Tours) so we can actually have a consistent setup and rules that always work in the same way rather than depend on specific users being online.
 
Is it possible to implement a "tournament game" button when challenging/accepting a game? So like creating a provisional role that automatically prevents the players of watching an specific PS chat while the game is happening? I think it could help i guess (?)
 

airfare

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any solution without modjoin + means players can hop on a vpn/their phone to evade. alternatively, i think a modification of how the command /makegroupchat on main would work well:
  • gvoices can create them, not just drivers+, so they can be used for any game
  • modjoin + can be implemented as a default so that only voiced accounts can join, while all users inside have showjoins/alt check perms to find people if they alt off of their main
  • ideally the main modification would be that it could take parameters of the usernames battling (so if i were playing someone it'd look something like /maketourchat airfare, airfaresopponent) to create the room with the two users inputted banned
this might achieve something more than one specific room because infinite rooms like this can be created without the need for a driver to be online, and it's probably easier to implement. the only issues would be blocking more than one groupchat from being created for the same game and displaying their creation in chat, but it doesn't seem too hard to just only accept the first groupchat for two username inputs and display all new groupchats created in lobby, similar to battles. they also auto delete after a certain period of inactivity which is cool

this would solve a few problems: anything requiring a new room entirely or changing modchat/join or banning people manually requires a driver to be online, while this is more autonomous and would be able to be created by any voice while modjoin/users banned are ideally easy defaults. it's also nice that these are pretty easy to create and delete by themselves, and seem probably easier to implement than adding a whole separate connected battle chat prompt to every new battle/challenge screen. any form of abuse can easily be stopped by any mods online, as with any other command
 

Hipmonlee

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Would the simplest thing just to be to set up a room with modjoin + for every battle on smogtours, and automatically tear it down like 5 minutes after the battle?

[edit] - actually, is modjoin really that necessary anyway? Like, people joining a public channel on a vpn has got to be the most conspicuous form of ghosting imaginable?
 

Zokuru

The Stall Lord
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anything overly complex here is bad

idk if there are any specific good solutions but yea, also personally do not care if someone tries to alt / vpn into a… lobby??? literally more of a distraction at that point
This, people who wants to cheat will do stuff way more effective than that. It's not like one need a bunch a memers in a lobby to help you play their games anyway.
 

McMeghan

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Would it be possible to have PS room that is only accessible to voiced users?

I was thinking we could have smogtours work like Discord servers during team tournaments. So basically we'd have a room for voiced users only, and the smogtours admins/tds would devoice the players during their tour game so they can't peep into the room while the users can talk freely inside.
 
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Aqua Jet

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I was thinking we could have smogtours work like Discord servers during team tournaments. So basically we'd have a room for voiced users only, and the smogtours admins/tds would devoice the players during their tour game so they can't peep into the room while the users can talk freely inside.
I think that QQ already addressed this:
Requiring a Global Driver to always be online kind of kills most of the use we would get from this, since quite a good portion of tour games that happen on Smogtours doesn't really expect there to be one online.
I do think this is a good start though, and maybe it could be expanded upon to say that anyone with the Player Rank would not be able to join this room, in addition to your proposed idea of not allowing non-voiced people to join the room (if this is technologically feasible). As far as I can tell, the only collateral would be people who are in the midst of another game wanting to watch a big tournament game, which should be relatively few and far between considering that the person could just schedule for a different time.
 

Fear

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What if there was a tournament server where said tournament games were somehow slightly delayed for spectators?

Game begins -> Spectators joining get X amounts of time of delay, say 2 minutes. Spectators get to watch what happened 2 mins ago. Obviously the first 2 minutes, there would be a message that says game is in process and will be viewable in X amounts of time. Game discussion chat would be harmless to the actual outcome and free to talk/speculate with a system like this. Obviously if something like this is feasible and accepted, it would be applied to selected tournaments, not your day to day ladder and friendly games.
 
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Expulso

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Requiring a Global Driver to always be online kind of kills most of the use we would get from this, since quite a good portion of tour games that happen on Smogtours doesn't really expect there to be one online.
dont think this objection is super accurate, stour hosts being driver means that ive seen a stours driver on for most relevant games. For instance p much any game that gets a matches tag would have one unless it’s an ungodly hour. if it has enough people to discuss in stours there would usually be a driver on to enable it.


there's more tour games than those that this would completely miss with this. Ideally any implementation here should be usable for any tour game that happens on Smogtours (Circuits, Unofficials, Live tours, Playoffs, Team Tours) so we can actually have a consistent setup
For at least lower tier circuits/playoffs/teamtours, there is a tier discord server with game discussion functionality: the players will be removed from that discord channel and active community members discuss there. implementing this to discuss major games on the smogtours discord is a theoretical parallel to this, but that sounds awful and idt anyone wants it — a discussion on stours would be much more readable (since u can see more text at once) and convenient. implementing this feature on smogtours just expands the ability to discuss to smogon’s most important/widely-viewed matches, which currently dont have a centralized place for ghosting-free discussion.

I dont think requiring a global driver for this feature would hurt the effectiveness at all and would personally love to see something like this implemented asap
 

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