Pending Why we ought to Resign instead of Forfeit

[platinumCheesecake]

Okay, this one has been on my mind for a few years now.

I'm a big believer that language, and the way we utilize it, characterizes our reactions and perceptions of the world around us. Words have power, which is why there are single words which people get incredibly offended by regardless of context, and why slogans and catchphrases can so easily stir emotion. Forfeit as a term does not have a purely positive connotation. It's a word of apathy. You forfeit when you don't care anymore about the outcome of a match so much that you don't even show up to play the rest of it. I've been moderator of the Random Battles room for about 3 years now, and just about every day we get users posting replays in chat wherein they mock someone for forfeiting, or celebrate their 6-0 by saying "my opponent is so salty he forfeited." While these comments can appear harmless at first, they perpetuate a culture among the userbase of smogon and PS whereby a forfeit is deserving of mockery or a signal for disrespect. For all the time I've been a leader of this community, we have needed a rule that says players may not post replays just to be salty. And even with that rule in place, we see violators nearly every day.

Consider all the interactions you've had on this site. I think you would agree with me that there are plenty of spheres within the PS/Smogon community that could benefit from a little more civility. If even just a small step, I propose we change our collective language to one where we Resign a match that's clearly headed towards defeat. In chess, a game so synonymous with civility and professionalism that the players wear suits and ties to events, the word resign is used when a player concedes a losing position. Resignation grants honor to your opponent, acknowledging you've been bested, while a forfeit implies no match was played at all, potentially even signalling complete dishonor, as done by Magnus Carlsen in the well-known Niemann scandal.

If I load up a random battle and I'm brought to my last pokemon camerupt against a +2/+2 Gyarados, there are no buttons I can click to make me win that game. There are only buttons my opponent can click to make them lose. To continue the chess parallel, in chess at mid to mid-high ELO, it's actually seen as more respectful to resign if you blunder away significant material, signalling you acknowledge your opponent is competent enough to win the game without making a huge error. In that random battle example, I can type a command to end the game, speed along this foregone conclusion and still honor my opponent in their ability to bring about a winning endgame. Draw it out further and you can start to see how subtle language connotations can really matter here. If I'm down 5-6 in a lengthy stall game and my Corviknight gets crit to death, I could try and flounder about for another 40 turns if I wanted. I could also Forfeit, but yikes, seeing "platinumCheesecake forfeited" show up when I still have 4 pokemon up sends the message that I don't care, or I'm tilted, or salty. But if you saw "platinumCheesecake resigned" it sounds more modest. Like I acknowledge I can't win, but I'm not mad about it (even if I totally am).




Ultimately this is a small issue, but one that I think can only have positive consequences. It is low-effort, moderate reward project I suspect can probably get resolved in less than an hour.

As far as implementation, we would also need /resign, with /forfeit being an alias. Wherever "forfeit" or "forfeited" appears in the code as strictly text to display to the player, replace 1:1 with "resign" and "resigned." Any variables already called forfeit are fine to stay named that way.

 

[dhelmise]

For everyone who had their post deleted:

If you can't find a way to oppose the suggestion without laughing at, mocking, or insulting the poster, you probably shouldn't be posting to begin with.

Thanks!

 

[pokeblade101]

It could be player fled the battle instead because at least it would be Pokémon themed then and it would be funny

 

[Ransei]

The OP admittedly brings great points to the table, however, I don't think changing the term from "forfeit" to "resign" will truly stop most people from making mockery posts in the long run. I believe people playing competitive Pokemon tend to be younger/less mature on average than people playing chess (no offense) and will still find ways to call out players for salt from them "resigning". Additionally, it's been ingrained on the sim for so long that people will see both as one in the same.

On another note, since this is competitive Pokemon, a lot of matches are prone to be so volatile at times that the OP's definition of forfeit will fit in more. People will often close out of a game because they no longer care about the outcome of it. I've even done that at times. Players aren't entitled to respect the outcome of the game or the game itself, especially when the RNG Pokemon gives us sometimes can genuinely make matches bad.

It could be player fled the battle instead because at least it would be Pokémon themed then and it would be funny

This suggestion would make it hilarious, but would also only exacerbate the issue addressed by the OP.

 

[LBN]

If we are throwing suggestions in the mix, perhaps "Folded" would work fine. It's a term used in card games, primarily poker, and its both bills of being hilarious, and less negative than forfeiting.

 

[platinumCheesecake]

I believe people playing competitive Pokemon tend to be younger/less mature on average than people playing chess (no offense) and will still find ways to call out players for salt from them "resigning".

I would agree, and yet I still urge us to find improvements where possible. I don't think "many people are immature so this doesnt matter anyway" is enough of a reason to pass up on a minor, yet strictly beneficial change.

People will often close out of a game because they no longer care about the outcome of it. I've even done that at times. Players aren't entitled to respect the outcome of the game or the game itself, especially when the RNG Pokemon gives us sometimes can genuinely make matches bad.

A couple people have come to me in DMs and said something to this effect. "I want my opponent to know he cheesed me, and want my forfeit to be taken more aggressively." That's just toxic, I'm sorry. If your goal is clicking forfeit so as to not respect the outcome of the game/opponent, if your goal by clicking forfeit is deliberately to send the message to your opponent "you outlucked me and i dont respect you for that," at best all you're doing is displaying some salt, but at worst you're perpetuating a culture of toxicity we could instead be reigning in. I think this is actually an argument for my proposal. Unless there is some other rational reason for deliberately maintaining the ability to salty-forfeit or disrespect-forfeit?



I'm not asking for much here. In fact, I'm literally asking for the smallest level of action possible. If we change the command and the text, people will slowly start referring to it by the new name. That's it. Of course, the term forfeit is going to remain being in use two weeks, six months, five years down the road. I think it should be pretty obvious that trying to collectivize the entirety of smogon to "hey guys! stop using this word please!" simply isnt going to happen, and I would appreciate my post not being taken as such. The level of maturity and toxicity seen on this thread and in this forum on a daily basis is proof enough that that never could happen anyway. My proposal is simply a measure to incrementally whittle away at the rampant toxicity evident on this site and in the chatrooms of PS like the ones I choose to moderate on a daily basis.



Of course, now that this post has been brigaded, any action done by upper staff will be viewed under the lens "woke crybaby asks to change a word and punching bag devs comply" anyway so lets be honest really any toxicity i tried to inhibit would just redouble anyway.

 

[pulsar512b]

I would support this suggestion - the reasons in the OP are quite reasonable.

In addition, I would want to note that 'forfeit' to me somewhat signifies that the player lost for a non-game related reason (for instance, forfeit losses in tournaments are usually due to activity or not showing up).

I would be fine with 'resign', but 'concede' might be a better choice (pulled from MTG and other games)? I don't know how big the semantic difference is, but I think 'concede' might be more understandable.

If you want it to be pokemon themed, one could emulate whatever the analogous button in a wi-fi battle is (I believe it's run? not sure)

edit to not double post: probably good to change the variable names too to avoid future confusion

 

[platinumCheesecake]

I had considered Concede as well. I think it works as well as Resign.

 

[1LDK]

The way I see it, in this particular context, forfeit means giving up, since by doing that you automatically lose, so when searching for synonyms for "giving up", these are the words you get

• abandon
• back down
• bail out
• bow out
• capitulate
• cease
• cede
• chicken out
• collapse
• comply
• concede
• cry uncle
• cut out
• desist
• despair
• drop
• fold
• forswear
• hand over
• leave off
• pull out
• quit
• relinquish
• resign
• stop
• submit
• surrender
• waive
• walk out on
• yield
• buckle under
• cave in

Now, besides that, there's the concept of timing out and falling out of a game due to internet and stuff. Honestly, I think "forfeit" is a pretty tame term, and in this kind of environment, you will see people putting dominance in a toxic way even in a small way like that, I don't mind changing forfeit to resign, but in that train of ideas, maybe also add different words for different ways of losing? I don't know if this is possible, I don't think so, I'm not a programmer nor a language teacher, so I could be just clowning here

 

[pulsar512b]

I had considered Concede as well. I think it works as well as Resign.

yeah i think the main advantage is that for someone with no knowledge of other games concede makes a little more intuitive sense than resign? maybe?

 

[Lily]

inertia to change is very real and people will be bothered by it (and get over it), the main reason im making this post is to say this should be a total non-issue as long as functionality remains the same (i.e. /forfeit still works). obviously the change doesn't Need to happen, i don't really care at all myself and i'm sure 99.9% of us don't either, but if you're genuinely upset by the idea of changing to resign or w/e you gotta reflect

in case options are wanted, when a player dips on cart it just says "The battle was cancelled." and cuts to the win/loss screen. ps obviously does not have to replicate that but it's something to consider maybe?

 

[Mossy Sandwich]

in case options are wanted, when a player dips on cart it just says "The battle was cancelled." and cuts to the win/loss screen. ps obviously does not have to replicate that but it's something to consider maybe?

While I wouldn't follow cart for this over something like resign/concede, this makes me think using passive voice for the forfeit message might also help focus on the action rather than the player. The current message for forfeits is something like:
"[Player] has forfeited"
While something like
"The battle has been conceded (in [Player]'s favor)."
could work better to make it more of a "You won" than "Your opponent stopped playing" kind of message. Probably nitpicky, but felt worth bringing up nonetheless.

 

[sufys]

i disagree.

continuity > change when the change in question has no tangible benefit, and frankly, changing the word isn't going to change how forfeiting or "resigning" is perceived. those who want to use their opponent's quitting maliciously will continue to do so irrespective of how it is phrased.
i've been forfeiting for 5 years, and to be honest, i'd find a sudden, unnecessary change like this mildly annoying.

 

[Annika]

this is extreme bikeshedding, but I like "concede" best of the options presented here if we're going to change it

 

[Myzozoa]

I am sorry I just don't understand, 'forfeit' is a word of apathy but 'resign' isn't? As in 'they appeared resigned'? That doesn't have an apathetic connotation to you all?

I think if you're genuinely upset w 'forfeit' you should reflect on that and sit w those difficult feelings with a view towards practicing not acting on them, and rather staying with your wise mind. 'Forfeit' to me doesn't have any negative connotations, maybe because I've been forfeiting battles for so long I feel v neutral towards it. I forfeit battles not because I don't care or due to emotional reasons, but because I'm in a lost position and I want to go to the next game. I will often say 'gg' before doing so, and I think it's a sign of respect to forfeit rather than make your opponent go through the motions to play it out. And when I'm on the other end I find it disrespectful when my opponent wastes my time by continuing in a lost position rather than forfeiting, which might save many turns in games where pp is involved.

One person might dislike forfeit, another concede, another resign, we can't make everyone happy. But this seems really arbitrary to me. There are so many problems with the culture on this website as the OP mentions, but changing the forfeit word is not going to get to the root cause or even rly change any part of it, it's just bizarre rhetoric meant to rationalize an arbitrary opinion on diction.

 

[pastagirl]

i disagree with the idea that "forfeit" is a term with negative connotation on the face of it tbh, i think you only feel that way because of the way that the community treats it. i don't think that it's any different inherently from "concede" or "resign". all 3 of them are colloquially used in the exact same context across various different games, and there's virtually 0 difference between any of them. i do appreciate the thought though. little differences between words are important, i just don't think that there is one here. i think it'd be a silly and meaningless change to make at this point.

 

[Hulavuta]

I think that resign does make more sense than forfeit from a literal standpoint. Forfeit always seemed to me the word to use when someone was disqualified from the game for breaking a rule or committing some other kind of infraction. If you look up the definition of the word, they are all something like "losing a privilege as a penalty for wrongdoing". That would be more appropriate for a mod forcing a game to end or refusing to show up in the first place, etc.

That being said, I agree with others here in that I don't know if changing a word will change the behavior or attitude around it. People will always be making fun of their opponents and that's just how competitive communities are as they attract those kinds of people. Anonymous people in chatrooms are always going to be toxic and that's an issue that would have to be addressed in a different way.

For the Chess example, you mention people showing up to events in suits and being well-mannered; I wonder how much of that is a consequence of those being in-person events and Chess already having a long pre-internet tradition of being considered a gentlemanly sport.

 

[BigFatMantis]

Personally I would be much more bothered by the word “resign” than forfeit. If I “resign” it signals that I have given up all hope, that the battle is insurmountable and I have succumb to my failures. At least with forfeit a lot of times it’s just like, well I forfeit bc I don’t have time for this etc. I’m not resigning though.

If you think that sounds silly it’s because it probably is - there’s no real way to change this in a way that is palatable to everyone other than the “battle was canceled” message from cart, which truthfully is probably what it should be since we are trying to simulate cart as much as possible.

 

[pulsar512b]

following up to say again concede is best, would also be fine with 'battle is canceled' on the principle of following cartridge.

 

[ArkenCiel]

Include all synonyms for the fun of it as a command that does the same thing and let the player decide how they want beautify their skill issue or loss

 

[zIcarus]

I'd like to cease and desist

 

[TheWyvernKing]

I like the ability to customize what you use to forfeit, or to show your opponent forfeits. For example, instead of "Opp forfeited" or "Opp resigned", I'd be able to have it say "Opp Resigned In Despair". Similarly, instead of "offer draw", I'd be able to customize to make it say my opponent "Begs For Mercy".

Forfeiting is what I think is best as a standardized system, but if we make any changes whatsoever, I'd hope my voice is heard for consideration. Having it customizable on the individual level seems like the only way to not cause an unnecessary UI changes that annoys half the playerbase - who at this point is already used to /forfeit. Kinda seems like it addresses the concerns of those above, while not being a shift away from what people are already happy with.

 

[Blizihguh]

Agreed that the impact of this would be small no matter what the language ends up being. I don't think inertia is a good reason not to change here though. 99% of people won't notice, and the few people who both notice and care will move on fairly quickly. If it makes even a small impact longterm it's worth a few people complaining short term.

The connotations of forfeit, concede, resign, etc are all pretty subtle and, if this thread is any indication, people disagree broadly about what the difference is between them. Personally I would go concede > resign > forfeit from least to most salty, but I'm not at all confident I'm in the majority. I very much think a passive-voice message would be better though, ideally one that doesn't even say the player's name: "Game ended in resignation" followed by "Player1 wins!" on a separate line would be ideal imo.

 

[Wigglytuff]

Resignation grants honor to your opponent, acknowledging you've been bested, while a forfeit implies no match was played at all, potentially even signalling complete dishonor, as done by Magnus Carlsen in the well-known Niemann scandal.

Even within the Wiki page you linked, there's ambiguity as to whether this is the case:

This + what Myzozoa pointed out makes the purported difference between these two words dubious. Nobody actually cares whether this change happens or doesn't, but the reasoning behind it should be solid.

Words have power

Words have power that we assign to them, see reclamation of slurs or the differential interpretations of "cunt" in US vs Australia. I don't say this to start some Idubbz type wave where we just start spamming slurs, but it's worth keeping in mind when the difference between forfeit and resign is both minute and questionable.

Or more succinctly put:

To continue the chess parallel, in chess at mid to mid-high ELO, it's actually seen as more respectful to resign if you blunder away significant material, signalling you acknowledge your opponent is competent enough to win the game without making a huge error. In that random battle example, I can type a command to end the game, speed along this foregone conclusion and still honor my opponent in their ability to bring about a winning endgame. Draw it out further and you can start to see how subtle language connotations can really matter here. If I'm down 5-6 in a lengthy stall game and my Corviknight gets crit to death, I could try and flounder about for another 40 turns if I wanted.

I don't care about resign vs forfeit, but this part is troubling to me.

For better or worse, Pokemon players are not as good at Pokemon as chess players are good at chess. Maybe it's safe to assume that your opponent will not "misclick" out of a won position in chess, but this is not necessarily the case in even the highest level of Smogon tournaments, where watching your teammate talk shit to your opponent's teammate leads to throwing the game and coming within one game to losing the trophy. Even further, TDs have punished forfeiting in situations where you believe the game is 100% unwinnable (Durza vs Amukamara).

The possibility of your opponent misclicking or throwing is present in Pokemon as it is in chess, but there's also the additional factor of crits/freezes/paralysis etc swaying what should statistically be a lost game into a win. It is always the player's right to pursue these avenues of winning, and to characterize the inclination to do so as not "honoring your opponent" or "less respectful" is concerning and contrary to how top level play is administrated.