Rejected - Inactive Getting rid of the hide replay button for other options

[Thunder Pwoell]

Getting rid of the button is the first step, let's call this first rollout a beta. There could be a persistent version of /ionext that has a signal to the user that they are in this mode and here's a command to pull them out of it; just a flag. or if you want more people to get into it, make ionext more visible, actually, have all of the commands more visible.

this is a continuation of the thread here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...ignoring-spectators-etc.3652588/#post-8539038

 

[Zarel]

I haven't changed the status of this from "Pending" because I honestly don't understand what you're asking for, here. Can you clarify?

 

[Thunder Pwoell]

I haven't changed the status of this from "Pending" because I honestly don't understand what you're asking for, here. Can you clarify?

get rid of the " Don't allow spectators" and instead add it in options and/or make it a command. id recommend adding it in options and maybe even going so far as it only hiding the next game so it's VERY active

 

[pre]

Wow, you could not have titled this thread more poorly. But anyway, since this is intended to be a run on to your previous post and you have not changed tune at all, I'll indulge you.

hey so I do product management for a living, and I have some pretty strong feedback for the " Don't allow spectators" button feature. It is not just 'ionext' in button form. I understand that this was meant for tour players and youtubers to hide their games easier, but the ease of use and lingering that it does (lingering meaning that it's automatic until actively unclicked ) not only takes away the user's agency, it guarantees that large majority of the users will be the unintended users for this and thus have a larger effect than intended. The market size for who this was intended for and who's using this is on the scale of 10000x , and thus now virtually 80% games above 1600 are hidden and it even games in the 1200s + are being hidden on the regular. A lot of this is due to people just clicking it and forgetting about it, as seen in this exchange here, which in turn goes against the goals of the site to have a community of games and people exchanging ideas.

"
☆Omari P: why is this game hidden
☆ASD 999: no clue i dont remember clicking it
ASD 999: it is dumb. high key makes the sight look dead when you go to watch battles
ASD: site*
"
It's an antisocial and anitcommunity feature, as it shoehorns hidden games and it makes it harder to enjoy the experience of watching or sharing games with other users. A better idea would be to make the ionext far more visible, maybe even having a dropdown in settings so that users that actively care about this featuer will go through and click it. Or at the very least having to click it each time, so that you simulate the ionext experience, because the consequence is that people just forget and it has far wider reach than intended.

I do not agree that remembering the last state of the ionext checkbox "takes away the user's agency" and find it slightly paternalistic to suggest so. A user's desire for privacy should not be something that they repetitively need to assert, and the consequences of accidentally having made a game private (which is loudly announced at the top of the logs and trivial to reverse) pales in comparison to starting a game which is public by accident (as even being public for half a second = the team been leaked and the damage has already be done).

I don't know how much of this is really users' not noticing the state of the checkbox that is presented to them every time they decide to start a battle (though I am not surprised this is occasionally the case - users' certainly block out things that are no longer novel) as opposed to a revealed preference. I agree that placing the setting front and center means it sees much wider use than if it were buried in a settings menu (though placing it in the settings menu also has UX implications and is even more likely to lead to 'why is this game hidden?' questions) as it simultaneously improves convenience *and* spreads awareness.

I am sympathetic to the detrimental effect that alerting users to the option of making their games private (and making it trivial to do so) has on the spectating experience. I disagree that the solution is to hide the setting or make it more difficult to use (should we be penalizing players for not digging through the settings to find out that hiding their games is even an option?), and instead believe the balance between the player's and spectator's experience can be achieved via other means:

• Last year we made the decision to force OLT matches that occur on the ladder to be public (https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/force-allowing-spectating-games-in-olt.3653092/). Many of the concerns raised by players were unfortunately lost when the thread linked in the OP here was accidentally spam-cleaned, but in the end it was decided that official tournament games necessarily needed to be public. Tournament games can also be watched on smogtours.psim.us or via the Tournament room (PS room tournaments support forcing games to be public) - perhaps UIs to surface and highlight these public battles are necessary.
• Random Battles on the ladder can potentially be forced public - rated random formats makeup ~50% of all battles, so if we want to avoid the site 'looking dead', forcing the ladder battles to be public (as there are no concerns about teams being compromised), this is the simplest solution to do so. This is a non trivial policy change, as players may desire privacy for reasons other than their builds being revealed, but this seems like it would have substantially lower impact than in non-randomized formats.
• Stats around the number of battles occurring in a given format at any time or some other metric around the average wait time for a battle in a given format could be exposed through the UI, if there is a worry that not being able to see the number of active battles for a given format makes laddering in that particular formats seem undesirable.

 

[MAMP]

for what it's worth, i frequently accidentally leave the ionext button checked when i don't want my games to be hidden. i find it very easy to forget that it's still on when i go from testing a tournament team to playing hackmons cup games with friends for instance

 

[Thunder Pwoell]

Wow, you could not have titled this thread more poorly. But anyway, since this is intended to be a run on to your previous post and you have not changed tune at all, I'll indulge you.



I do not agree that remembering the last state of the ionext checkbox "takes away the user's agency" and find it slightly paternalistic to suggest so. A user's desire for privacy should not be something that they repetitively need to assert, and the consequences of accidentally having made a game private (which is loudly announced at the top of the logs and trivial to reverse) pales in comparison to starting a game which is public by accident (as even being public for half a second = the team been leaked and the damage has already be done).

I don't know how much of this is really users' not noticing the state of the checkbox that is presented to them every time they decide to start a battle (though I am not surprised this is occasionally the case - users' certainly block out things that are no longer novel) as opposed to a revealed preference. I agree that placing the setting front and center means it sees much wider use than if it were buried in a settings menu (though placing it in the settings menu also has UX implications and is even more likely to lead to 'why is this game hidden?' questions) as it simultaneously improves convenience *and* spreads awareness.

I am sympathetic to the detrimental effect that alerting users to the option of making their games private (and making it trivial to do so) has on the spectating experience. I disagree that the solution is to hide the setting or make it more difficult to use (should we be penalizing players for not digging through the settings to find out that hiding their games is even an option?), and instead believe the balance between the player's and spectator's experience can be achieved via other means:

• Last year we made the decision to force OLT matches that occur on the ladder to be public (https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/force-allowing-spectating-games-in-olt.3653092/). Many of the concerns raised by players were unfortunately lost when the thread linked in the OP here was accidentally spam-cleaned, but in the end it was decided that official tournament games necessarily needed to be public. Tournament games can also be watched on smogtours.psim.us or via the Tournament room (PS room tournaments support forcing games to be public) - perhaps UIs to surface and highlight these public battles are necessary.
• Random Battles on the ladder can potentially be forced public - rated random formats makeup ~50% of all battles, so if we want to avoid the site 'looking dead', forcing the ladder battles to be public (as there are no concerns about teams being compromised), this is the simplest solution to do so. This is a non trivial policy change, as players may desire privacy for reasons other than their builds being revealed, but this seems like it would have substantially lower impact than in non-randomized formats.
• Stats around the number of battles occurring in a given format at any time or some other metric around the average wait time for a battle in a given format could be exposed through the UI, if there is a worry that not being able to see the number of active battles for a given format makes laddering in that particular formats seem undesirable.

For starters please check your absolutely unwarranted condescending tone. calm down.

Any lets address this one by one. Overall, it seems like you lack even cursory training or knowledge of HCI, which is absolutely fine it's pretty clear where the huge disconnect is.

1) "

I do not agree that remembering the last state of the ionext checkbox "takes away the user's agency" and find it slightly paternalistic to suggest so. A user's desire for privacy should not be something that they repetitively need to assert, and the consequences of accidentally having made a game private (which is loudly announced at the top of the logs and trivial to reverse) pales in comparison to starting a game which is public by accident (as even being public for half a second = the team been leaked and the damage has already be done)."

This is very strange to me that you said this. When you normalize a pattern, users largely ignore them and they have unintended consequences as I said before. It is also strange that to said "loudly," because it's a very bland and blending color (hues), and it's not that visible if you aren't actively looking for it; which most users will not be. for the "A user's desire for privacy should not be something that they repetitively need to assert," when it goes against the goals of the site it absolutely should be, which is also why I said possibly put it in options if you didn't want to go that far.



2)

"
I don't know how much of this is really users' not noticing the state of the checkbox that is presented to them every time they decide to start a battle (though I am not surprised this is occasionally the case - users' certainly block out things that are no longer novel) as opposed to a revealed preference. I agree that placing the setting front and center means it sees much wider use than if it were buried in a settings menu (though placing it in the settings menu also has UX implications and is even more likely to lead to 'why is this game hidden?' questions) as it simultaneously improves convenience *and* spreads awareness."

UX wise it's extremely clear what has happened and what is happening. it's not even occasionally the case it's an absolute certainty that it will happen. especially as you've said and I've made it clear before, the intended audience for this and the actual market size are at a ratio of 1: 10000, less than 1% of users. Having the question of why is this game hidden results in the same amount of clicks and certainty as what is right now, so that portion was also strange for you to say. Spreading awareness is also strange to me, as people who really actually cared about this were most certainly aware that you could hide games.


3)

"
I am sympathetic to the detrimental effect that alerting users to the option of making their games private (and making it trivial to do so) has on the spectating experience. I disagree that the solution is to hide the setting or make it more difficult to use (should we be penalizing players for not digging through the settings to find out that hiding their games is even an option?), and instead believe the balance between the player's and spectator's experience can be achieved via other means:"

The settings are one click to see/set them all. What are you talking about?


And lastly you said all of that last part to dance around the simple fact that this feature was made to appease less than 1% of the userbase who just happens to be very loud. It's very clear that you're going out of your way to not acknowledge that. But that brings up my last point. These users are showdown enthusiasts. These features you add for them, likely in settings, will be known to them in the first five minutes of release. I promise you. These people actively care about hiding their games and achieved so without the intruding button (which in HCI terms, this actually shifts the balance and encourages people to hide their games).

One love brother

 

[pre]

For starters please check your absolutely unwarranted condescending tone.

I apologize if my response came across as being in the same tone as your original post (and posting history on the forums). FWIW, your technical claims might carry more weight if you demonstrated the ability to properly quote posts.

Let's make this simple - users are uncomfortable with the fact that it's fairly trivial for an actor to log 100% of non-private games, gather not just their teams but their 1:1 conversations with friends that they thought would be private. Users finding out that what they assumed to be private, ephemeral conversations have been exported and are now easily searchable indefinitely is what we'd like to avoid here, and the target audience of 'who needs to be aware of battle privacy' is, in fact, close to the entire playerbase, not just loud tournament players.

 

[Thunder Pwoell]

I apologize if my response came across as being in the same tone as your original post (and posting history on the forums). FWIW, your technical claims might carry more weight if you demonstrated the ability to properly quote posts.

Let's make this simple - users are uncomfortable with the fact that it's fairly trivial for an actor to log 100% of non-private games, gather not just their teams but their 1:1 conversations with friends that they thought would be private. Users finding out that what they assumed to be private, ephemeral conversations have been exported and are now easily searchable indefinitely is what we'd like to avoid here, and the target audience of 'who needs to be aware of battle privacy' is, in fact, close to the entire playerbase, not just loud tournament players.

ok so you're changing the goalposts, fine by me; even by your own goals that you just set, you're not even close to the correct estimation nor severity. let's start with the first one

"users are uncomfortable with the fact that it's fairly trivial for an actor to log 100% of non-private [teams and conversations]: "
the first part of teams is an non issue. an overwhelming majority of peoples teams are almost identical with the absolute lowest % of the ladder having the highest diversity; this includes tour as well. most people's teams are not special. i would not focus on this part, as the severity for over 95% of people is nonexistent.
What really matters about what you said was "1:1 conversations with friends that they thought would be private." This is a legitimate concern that can easily be solved with a sleight of hand and not, in fact if you make it known that conversations will be public at all times unless in private this would change. This would affect around 25% of users, which actually is significant, but if this is a goal of this featuer, the current feature does very little in solving that goal but A LOT in causing other consequences that affect everyone.

the second part is this, lets say youd want to keep everything how it is regardless of consequences. my proposed solution, by your own metrics, that you defined would actually help solve the problem a lot better, with intended consequences for who it is for. if this is really the issue that you are focusing on - friendlies and convos - having the button only appear in challenges and work only for that would be a wonderful addition for my proposed solution that I mentioned earlier, which you clearly had no feedback for, which is fine i know it's good. Even your boss agreed the unintended consequences were in the forefront of his mind.

Lastly on a personal and strange note....

I apologize if my response came across as being in the same tone as your original post (and posting history on the forums). FWIW, your technical claims might carry more weight if you demonstrated the ability to properly quote posts.

Sir, I do not know you. We've never conversed a single day in my entire life. Who are you? Calm down lol.

 

[Geysers]

"users are uncomfortable with the fact that it's fairly trivial for an actor to log 100% of non-private [teams and conversations]: "
the first part of teams is an non issue. an overwhelming majority of peoples teams are almost identical with the absolute lowest % of the ladder having the highest diversity; this includes tour as well. most people's teams are not special. i would not focus on this part, as the severity for over 95% of people is nonexistent.

As a competitive AG player, I can say that this is utter bullshit. If I’m trying a fresh team on ladder, I sure as hell want to keep it hidden so no-one‘s cteaming me except for the person who I just played. Invalidating the ability to hide teams completely changes ladder play, not to even mention tournament play, where it’s of the utmost importance to hide your teams. Additionally, this site exists primarily for the competitive scene, not for low ladder’s ash theme teams, so saying that it doesn’t effect the community to do this is completely wrong. The majority of those low ladder players also don’t participate on Smogon, so their concerns are functionally irrelevant for these purposes. Personally, I’d say that these concerns handily outweigh the increased difficulty in spectating battles. These are, however, just my opinions, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go on a profanity-filled tirade about how I’m wrong.

I honestly don’t know what this suggestion is saying, but I greatly appreciate the increased ease in hiding battles, so I really hope that the checkbox remains as an option. Thanks!

 

[Thunder Pwoell]

As a competitive AG player, I can say that this is utter bullshit. If I’m trying a fresh team on ladder, I sure as hell want to keep it hidden so no-one‘s cteaming me except for the person who I just played. Invalidating the ability to hide teams completely changes ladder play, not to even mention tournament play, where it’s of the utmost importance to hide your teams. Additionally, this site exists primarily for the competitive scene, not for low ladder’s ash theme teams, so saying that it doesn’t effect the community to do this is completely wrong. The majority of those low ladder players also don’t participate on Smogon, so their concerns are functionally irrelevant for these purposes. Personally, I’d say that these concerns handily outweigh the increased difficulty in spectating battles. These are, however, just my opinions, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go on a profanity-filled tirade about how I’m wrong.

I honestly don’t know what this suggestion is saying, but I greatly appreciate the increased ease in hiding battles, so I really hope that the checkbox remains as an option. Thanks!

"so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go on a profanity-filled tirade about how I’m wrong."
?????????? not a single pejorative term was used in any of these exchanges. who are you?

but anyway you described what is a very rare use case which I described as a low %. so I mean, cool beans. we arent even talking about "Invalidating the ability to hide teams " this is putting it in a different place. anyway, one love brother.

 

[PartMan]

Just my two cents here:

I agree that the extent of how often battles are now hidden is kinda irritating, especially for someone who regularly likes to browse through ladder matches to have a basic grasp of the meta.

There is definitely a need for modjoining battles though, but neither side actually takes that away - from my point of view, those who feel that their battles should be modjoined for any use whatsoever (primarily high ladder and tournament players, or at the very least players who have some amount of experience with Pokemon Showdown settings) would certainly be aware of a modjoin option should it be added. While I agree that it was initially useful to be able to hide replays without repeatedly ionexting while testing out critical teams, the annoyances of having a vast majority of the matches I see being modjoined (I'd estimate around 80% of the matches I've had on ladder have been modjoined by the other player) quickly became apparent. To new users, who are the group most affected by this, this option is a simple option that says `Click me if you don't want people to see this`, and since there's not really a point not to, click goes the checkbox. Normally, this wouldn't be anything of relevance, but the fact that this option is literally situated millimeters away from the Battle! button means that this sees staggering overuse.

TLDR; Those that have even the slightest need to hide their battles are certainly capable of operating the options menu, or asking around - an answer wouldn't take long.

There's also the issue of conversations; but hiding the whole match from the public doesn't really seem like the right way to go about this. And I don't really see that many new users discussing private matters in battle rooms that end up being uploaded and then shared to any significant userbase.

Another point is that even users that normally have the option unticked can accidentally leave it on after needing it once or twice. Once an option's position begins to seem normal, unless you need it, it'll rarely be changed. And with hidden battle rooms, people rarely have the requirement to make them public, and that doesn't usually happen until after the match starts, in which they just /modjoin off in the battle room, leaving the actual option unaffected.

Of course, if there's any other aspects I might've missed, please point them out.

 

[Darth]

Thanks PartMan for linking me, didn't see this before but I'd like to pitch in with what I posted in suggestions (whoops):

Not sure to how many people this applies, but I feel like ever since the addition of this button, battling has been a lot less fun.
I run into the 'hidden' battles in probably half the games I play and it's a serious drag to invite people all the time when we make a meme team together or when you're having fun with your friends on the sim, all because people turn it on for no reason. The fact you get the warning when you try to share a replay doesn't help either, since you essentially (according to the warning) are disallowed from sharing (or people interpret it that ways, either way) replays.

I feel there's room for middle ground here.
The button isn't necessary, the command /ionext could just remain active until you turn it off.
I get I might be in a minority of people that minds this, though, so it's just a suggestion in the end, but I do really feel like the button makes battling way more of a drag than it should be for 'casual' battlers who are just looking to have fun without being hit by annoyances like this by people who only click the button because it's there

There for sure is merit in stating that the button or the function has major benefits for the competitive scene, I just believe that the crux of the issue is that it's currently displayed right in your face, for any person to randomly click whenever they want to be salty or otherwise troll. I think simply moving the button to a cogwheel setting solves the issue. If you're a competitive player or playing in a major tournament, surely all your friends/co-players/captains would tell you to turn it on, I honestly don't really see a situation where a competitive player would not know about the option to hide all their battles.

The tone of the initial post(s) aside this is an issue I feel that does affect a fair chunk of players who are on PS to just have fun, and don't want to have to deal with all the annoyances that come with it; for me personally I definitely find "this battle is hidden" the biggest annoyance there is these days. It lost its value of taking a battle seriously.

The last point I'd like to address is actually to merit tournament players:
A hidden battle has lost all value. If I see a hidden battle, I'll usually either leave or just play the same as usual. But it is not infrequent people do the opposite: they get salty, they troll, or they just share a replay link anyways, all three of which beat the general purpose of hiding battles, namely testing teams or otherwise not wanting your battle to be seen by people. More hidden battles = less chance people take a hidden battle seriously = hiding your battle becomes much less safe than it was intended to be, because your opponent honestly just has no urgency to actually keep it hidden. If anything, seeing that bright red box encourages the saltier people to /invite all their friends nowadays.

 

[PartMan]

Thanks PartMan for linking me, didn't see this before but I'd like to pitch in with what I posted in suggestions (whoops):


There for sure is merit in stating that the button or the function has major benefits for the competitive scene, I just believe that the crux of the issue is that it's currently displayed right in your face, for any person to randomly click whenever they want to be salty or otherwise troll. I think simply moving the button to a cogwheel setting solves the issue. If you're a competitive player or playing in a major tournament, surely all your friends/co-players/captains would tell you to turn it on, I honestly don't really see a situation where a competitive player would not know about the option to hide all their battles.

The tone of the initial post(s) aside this is an issue I feel that does affect a fair chunk of players who are on PS to just have fun, and don't want to have to deal with all the annoyances that come with it; for me personally I definitely find "this battle is hidden" the biggest annoyance there is these days. It lost its value of taking a battle seriously.

The last point I'd like to address is actually to merit tournament players:
A hidden battle has lost all value. If I see a hidden battle, I'll usually either leave or just play the same as usual. But it is not infrequent people do the opposite: they get salty, they troll, or they just share a replay link anyways, all three of which beat the general purpose of hiding battles, namely testing teams or otherwise not wanting your battle to be seen by people. More hidden battles = less chance people take a hidden battle seriously = hiding your battle becomes much less safe than it was intended to be, because your opponent honestly just has no urgency to actually keep it hidden. If anything, seeing that bright red box encourages the saltier people to /invite all their friends nowadays.

One of the biggest things that hiding a battle does is to make the replay private, apart from concealing it from general public view. That being said, keeping a battle public allows everyone to see it - which can cause major problems in many situations if a team is revealed - in comparison to your situation, where a salty opponent posts a replay. Should there be a situation in which a user shares a replay, there is no reason for them to not do the same if it's a public battle. Additionally, with the recent increase in usage of online scouting tools that track player teams, sets, and statistics, hiding battles is somewhat crucial. These are some of the many reasons why I agree having the ability to hide battles is a necessity.

What I'm currently pursuing is for the client to have a less conspicuous location for the Hide Spectators button. As I've outlined before, there is no reason for most users not to click it, and that results in incredibly high usage, which detracts from the spectatorship aspect of Pokemon. I analyzed the replays for tournament battles in the HPL that I'm currently hosting - I am not joking when I say that 80% of the replays are hidden, and very few of those were intentional. The ability to hide replays is an incredibly important one, but the current layout overuses it and detracts from the whole aspect of spectating. A simple solution that I'd suggest would be to use the ionext behaviour, but to have it persist and be toggleable via commands and an entry in the Options menu. This maintains the ease of hiding multiple consecutive battles for people that need to, while not keeping it front and center and ending up with an unnecessarily high percentage of hidden replays.

Now that that's written, time to eat my pizza.

 

[Darth]

One of the biggest things that hiding a battle does is to make the replay private, apart from concealing it from general public view. That being said, keeping a battle public allows everyone to see it - which can cause major problems in many situations if a team is revealed - in comparison to your situation, where a salty opponent posts a replay. Should there be a situation in which a user shares a replay, there is no reason for them to not do the same if it's a public battle. Additionally, with the recent increase in usage of online scouting tools that track player teams, sets, and statistics, hiding battles is somewhat crucial. These are some of the many reasons why I agree having the ability to hide battles is a necessity.

What I'm currently pursuing is for the client to have a less conspicuous location for the Hide Spectators button. As I've outlined before, there is no reason for most users not to click it, and that results in incredibly high usage, which detracts from the spectatorship aspect of Pokemon. I analyzed the replays for tournament battles in the HPL that I'm currently hosting - I am not joking when I say that 80% of the replays are hidden, and very few of those were intentional. The ability to hide replays is an incredibly important one, but the current layout overuses it and detracts from the whole aspect of spectating. A simple solution that I'd suggest would be to use the ionext behaviour, but to have it persist and be toggleable via commands and an entry in the Options menu. This maintains the ease of hiding multiple consecutive battles for people that need to, while not keeping it front and center and ending up with an unnecessarily high percentage of hidden replays.

Now that that's written, time to eat my pizza.

Long block of text but for clarity's sake: We basically agree entirely

 

[Aquaa]

I'm very late to this and I did not notice this thread existed.

I skimmed through some sentences and I agreed the most with one of pre's points here:

• Random Battles on the ladder can potentially be forced public - rated random formats makeup ~50% of all battles, so if we want to avoid the site 'looking dead', forcing the ladder battles to be public (as there are no concerns about teams being compromised), this is the simplest solution to do so. This is a non trivial policy change, as players may desire privacy for reasons other than their builds being revealed, but this seems like it would have substantially lower impact than in non-randomized formats.

I support making Random Battle formats on the ladder public. I've played NU and Random Battles, and I feel the privacy is quite needed when I'm laddering NU. The reason for this is because there are certain players I have been defeated by on the ladder who tend to follow me in my other battles to study my team, which is quite annoying.

For Random Battles, teams are generated randomly and there is not much to examine other than the playstyle of the player (which I believe is a great thing to observe if people look up to certain players to improve in Randbats). I don't think there is a purpose to make 70% of Random Battles privatized - it seems somewhat impractical. Random Battles is an extremely commonly played format as it serves as a great home for users who don't prefer teambuilding.

If the users are displeased with this reverted decision, they always have the choice to manually type out the command or set moderated chat. However, this doesn't need to go as far as implementing the button on Random Formats.

- aquaza.

 

[Tmi489]

the obvious solution would be banning scout bots, but ofc impractical

If I see a hidden battle, I'll usually either leave or just play the same as usual. But it is not infrequent people do the opposite: they get salty, they troll, or they just share a replay link anyways, all three of which beat the general purpose of hiding battles, namely testing teams or otherwise not wanting your battle to be seen by people.

this would actually break smogon / ps rules and is kinda sorta easy to enforce (they share replay unfairly they get punished)

 

[Petros]

Plenty of players already aren't using /ionext to ladder random battles because they prefer to do so. Sometimes people want to ladder in privacy, and I don't like taking that right away completely. That's like telling those people not to ladder random battles at all.

 

[PartMan]

Like I've mentioned tons of times, we're not denying anyone the right to ionext. All we're suggesting is keeping the Hide Spectators button somewhere other than a place where every single user will click it without needing to.

 

[Petros]

That actually sounds like you're saying that they click it by accident, or unintentionally. I don't think that's the case, people who choose to not allow spectators should be able to do so easily.

 

[Pirate Princess]

As someone who only plays random formats, I prefer having the button easy and accessible, rather than having to type a command every time I battle. I don't agree with the idea that random battles should not be allowed to be hidden. As my usercard tends to be high up on the list in chat rooms, I get a lot of randoms joining my matches. And to put it simply, when I battle, I don't want an audience. I don't need a reason why I don't want one, or to justify it. The simple fact is, if one player wishes to make their battles private, regardless of format, then they should be able to do so easily.

 

[PartMan]

A simple solution that I'd suggest would be to use the ionext behaviour, but to have it persist and be toggleable via commands and an entry in the Options menu.

It's almost like people don't read the whole post. :think:

No one's denying the use of hiding replays. Nor am I suggesting that you need to use ionext each time.

That actually sounds like you're saying that they click it by accident, or unintentionally. I don't think that's the case, people who choose to not allow spectators should be able to do so easily.

Not by accident, but because there is no reason not to, for a player. To anyone, it's a simple `Don't let people see this`, which is accurate. But the problem is that this is used almost all the time, regardless of there actually being a need to use it on every single battle.

In simple words: The button's not bad, just used to an alarming extent; which has reached the point that there's an entire discussion thread on it. There is no need to keep it literally a millimeter away from the Battle! button on the home screen - put it on the Options menu so that the people who need it can use it, but it doesn't end up being ticked needlessly.

 

[pokeblade101]

Well from my experience in random battles for some time now, this option has noticeably made laddering less enjoyable overall. I can't watch people I know as easily and they cannot watch me as easily and this goes for many others. People haven't noticed but this option has actually increased multiple people joining battles that are actually not hidden which might actually drive more people to use the option. (my battles regularly has 7 people are so in them). Many people actually just use the option just because it's there, not because they really want to. After a while, it's irritating to see it consistently.

This is only speaking for random battles, though. The option is very good for tiers where people want to hide their teams from randoms joining which I support.

I've seen people arguing back and forth but I haven't really seen people suggest fixes to this. Why not just turn this option into a command that works for all battles? Something like /io on or /io off. It functionally works the same as the button and people who actually want their battles hidden will actually use it and it doesn't create an endless stream of private battles.

My last point though is one not really touched one. This command actually increases rule breaking and terrible behaviour. People hiding in battles have more incentive to be rude and it will only be found if the other person reports it. If you were to look at locks (for people who can see it I guess), the vast majority of them are actually from private battles which is alarming. Even when /ionext was the only option, I kid you not that 90% of the people that I met on ladder that used that command were shady or rude people. The option substantially increases people doing just that; Hiding battles and breaking rules.

This is just my two cents on the matter.

 

[Kalalokki]

My last point though is one not really touched one. This command actually increases rule breaking and terrible behaviour. People hiding in battles have more incentive to be rude and it will only be found if the other person reports it. If you were to look at locks (for people who can see it I guess), the vast majority of them are actually from private battles which is alarming. Even when /ionext was the only option, I kid you not that 90% of the people that I met on ladder that used that command were shady or rude people. The option substantially increases people doing just that; Hiding battles and breaking rules.

I wouldn't say that rulebreakers are more easily found in public battles, it's p much only ever found out about if the opposing player reports them, public or not. Whether or not people are more willing to act poorly if they believe that no one can find out about it is impossible to say, so I wouldn't make broad statements like that.

 

[pokeblade101]

I wouldn't say that rulebreakers are more easily found in public battles, it's p much only ever found out about if the opposing player reports them, public or not. Whether or not people are more willing to act poorly if they believe that no one can find out about it is impossible to say, so I wouldn't make broad statements like that.

Just to be clear, my point isn't about easily found stuff but that people tend to have worse behaviour in private battles. There are still some factors such as public replays and anyone being able to join that can affect a person's overall behaviour in a battle. However, I don't really have much evidence of anything to much further this point (I'm not gstaff) so I'll drop it.

I still stand with my suggestion or to at least remove the button for random formats where they can still private with a command.

 

[Darth]

Well from my experience in random battles for some time now, this option has noticeably made laddering less enjoyable overall. I can't watch people I know as easily and they cannot watch me as easily and this goes for many others. People haven't noticed but this option has actually increased multiple people joining battles that are actually not hidden which might actually drive more people to use the option. (my battles regularly has 7 people are so in them). Many people actually just use the option just because it's there, not because they really want to. After a while, it's irritating to see it consistently.

This is only speaking for random battles, though. The option is very good for tiers where people want to hide their teams from randoms joining which I support.

I've seen people arguing back and forth but I haven't really seen people suggest fixes to this. Why not just turn this option into a command that works for all battles? Something like /io on or /io off. It functionally works the same as the button and people who actually want their battles hidden will actually use it and it doesn't create an endless stream of private battles.

My last point though is one not really touched one. This command actually increases rule breaking and terrible behaviour. People hiding in battles have more incentive to be rude and it will only be found if the other person reports it. If you were to look at locks (for people who can see it I guess), the vast majority of them are actually from private battles which is alarming. Even when /ionext was the only option, I kid you not that 90% of the people that I met on ladder that used that command were shady or rude people. The option substantially increases people doing just that; Hiding battles and breaking rules.

This is just my two cents on the matter.

While I cannot back this up with statistics (Given I have no access to them) this does tie in with what I raised at some point: the youtube room has seen a large influx of troll content ("Salty player eXPOSED" "SALT ON LADDER" "Randbats SALT" and so on and so on). In the past it was pretty easy (usually) to join a battle without logging in and see whether their content is legit, set-up, or plain inappropriate (harassing players for a response and then recording the response, temp ) but nowadays out of the 5 people I currently know that upload this type of content, 4 of them battle exclusively in hidden battles. Result: it's impossible to verify.

I'm well aware this isn't the biggest or most important point, but it ties in with the idea of 'the button being where it is right now makes it unnecessarily difficult or unenjoyable to be on ladder' etc.