BBP Mod Transparency Thread

nightblitz42

is a Forum Moderatoris a Community Contributor
Moderator
Discuss your thoughts on mod transparency here. Keep it civil.

Guidelines:
  • Refrain from making personal attacks against any individual.
  • Each post should offer something new to the discussion. If you agree with all the points somebody made, then simply Like their post.
  • Offer only sincere suggestions (no hyperbole or satire).

History (Grossly oversimplified):
For much of BBP's history, different facets of BBP were overseen by "Committees." In many cases, Committees would publicly discuss potential changes within Smogon threads, then vote on a course of action.

At one point, BBP hit an extended and unprecedented slump in activity. The number of active players was in the single-digits and I recall threads from a year ago or longer persisting on the front page of BBP. Because of the total lack of player activity, committees ceased to be operational. JJayyFeather took the helm and wound up proposing and enacting many core game changes with varying amounts of feedback from other players. At the time, there certainly were complaints about this method of administration, but it was accepted because realistically it was the only way important changes were going to get done. And get done, stuff certainly did (not only by JjayyFeather, but by other players as well). Due to everyone's hard work, as well as some fortunate changes in circumstance, the situation for BBP slowly improved.

As updates and QoL changes lured back old players, and increased forum visibility attracted new players, administrative policies largely remained unchanged. Granted, huge game changes (such as the fiercely-controversial introduction of the JC system) were discussed informally among all players within Discord. However, many smaller system and balance-related changes were only discussed between a Moderator team of 3-4 players before being implemented.

Some players who lacked access to Discord complained about not being able to participate in discussions, so we added various feedback and discussion threads to the Policy Center. Although players eagerly provided their valuable opinions in these discussion threads, the discussions themselves often did not lead to real action before they fizzled out. After which, the topics would get picked up by moderators in private discussion months later before the moderators enacted a course of action themselves. The most glaring example of this would be Signature Z-Crystal rebalancing, which was discussed on-and-off for a very long time with no outcome until the Moderator Team suddenly implemented the Gen 8.3 update. Surprisingly, the Gen 8.3 update included a change that seemed to run against the flow of the public discussion: the embracing of double Z-Move use, which was previously agreed to be an overpowered effect.

Of course, the most controversial aspect of the Gen 8.3 update was its drastic change to Combinations, a long-standing core mechanic of BBP. Although general feedback to the change was positive, many players expressed frustration at a lack of transparency because the change was not discussed outside of the Moderator channel ahead of time. Which brings us here.

Discussion Topics:
  1. In your opinion: what differences are there between a change that can get pushed immediately by mods with little/no feedback, and a change that necessitates wide and open discussion?
  2. What measurable guidelines would you like Moderators to follow (with regards to transparency) when preparing to potentially enact changes?
  3. When a moderator has an idea for a change, how soon should it be brought to public attention?
  4. Are you yourself satisfied with your ability to propose new changes? If not, what concrete changes would you like made to the system?
  5. After public discussion takes place, how should a final decision be reached?
 
Hey everyone, as someone who brought up a bit of concern at the initial push of the new changes, I want to preface the post by saying I love this community and much of my rejection of the changes was likely partially do to being a stoned old-time BBPer who is afraid of change. Love you all and I don't want anything to come across in my post as attacking or aggressive, that isn't my intention.

Alright now to the questions!

Discussion Topics:

OP said:
In your opinion: what differences are there between a change that can get pushed immediately by mods with little/no feedback, and a change that necessitates wide and open discussion?
I think that in general, hotfixes, balance tweaks, and anything smaller in nature would be absolutely fine for mods to push with no feedback at all. Something like the recent changes to Fling are a good example. The scope of the change was small enough that it didn't alter too much and I feel like discussion on the topic would have had indifference, this was a great change to push through. Also anything that's just tweaking numbers feels like a good thing to push as well (IE changing energy cost inconsistencies across moves to make things more consistent)

In general topics that necessitate discussion to me are anything major game mechanics related, or completely alter the functioning of an existing move/ability/item etc. I think this is the reason for this thread's existence in general, the change to combinations in particular being a core facet of BBP for a long time that has been changed, and the lack of discussion or announcement felt very sudden and hard to predict. In contrast, the 8.1BBP change to the new stat system had weeks of discussion, making the change a much smoother and easier transition. In terms of changes to existing items/abilities etc, I think that the way discussion was handled around 8.1 was also very productive, having a chance to talk about defunct items, discuss what niches felt missing and all of those topics felt very player centric which was much appreciated.

In general I think that the 8.1BBP update is a good update to look to in terms of what was and wasn't discussed. Minor updates got changed that didn't need much discussion, but large updates and overhauls had dedicated threads, this seems like a good template for future discussion and updates to me!

OP said:
What measurable guidelines would you like Moderators to follow (with regards to transparency) when preparing to potentially enact changes?
This is a more difficult question to answer, because I understand how much the mods deal with under the hood of the game, and how impossible it is for everything to follow a set of guidelines when so much is changing.

I do think that, while not everyone uses discord, a good measurable goal would be to post in the #announcements channel, or a similar new channel to just update players on what is on the moderators radar. Maybe a biweekly or monthly announcement or something? That way it can't get lost in discord chat as messages flow through, and everyone can check what is on the minds of the mods when they please. An example post in my eyes would be something like:

"Hey everyone, for November we've decided to take a look at Sub clause timing, Infatuation status, and the following items: Enigma Stone, Focus Band, Sitrus Berry. If any progress is made on these topics, a thread will follow!"

OP said:
When a moderator has an idea for a change, how soon should it be brought to public attention?
This one I think depends on the scope of the change. For things with a smaller scope like a change to the function of an item I think that once the moderators have a concrete idea of what they want to do, that would be a good time to bring it to the players (IE "I propose that Enigma Stone now increases ranks instead of gives Stat Boosts" but not "I propose we change Enigma Stone").

Large scale changes I think are better a little bit earlier than that, perhaps when there are still a few ideas floating around for the change itself. This gives crochety old players like myself more time to process and adjust to the idea that a mechanic will change and I think ultimately will result in the least "outrage" for lack of a better word.

I know I've called back to 8.1 a lot, but I really think that 8.1 stat changes were perfect in terms of this as well, the ideas were bouncing around and brought to us before they were 100% formed. I recall discussing if the stat cutoff should be at 90 or 91 for example, this was a great way to transition us into the new change, while still allowing time for us to process and think about things a bit.

OP said:
Are you yourself satisfied with your ability to propose new changes? If not, what concrete changes would you like made to the system?
My initial response is no. It does feel like players have a great avenue to bring up the "squeaky wheels" of the game but not actually proposing changes. Things like mechanical inconsistencies, or slight typos, or things that need clarification I feel like I have great access to fixing, which feels great. However in terms of actually proposing a change, like an update to an item or ability, that seems a bit harder to do.

I think having a separate "Game Proposals" thread from the "Game Issues and Feedback" thread would be helpful to give players the ability to propose changes like this, currently Game Issues and Feedback feels like it's been relegated to the squeaky wheels that I spoke about before, so having a thread dedicated to proposals would feel very good.

I know this runs into the issue of a lot of proposals being rejected, which I think is alright as the mods do have a better top-down view of game design than most players do. But knowing why a proposed change isn't going through will also give the players a better idea of what the mods have in mind for the game, which I think is a good thing.

OP said:
After public discussion takes place, how should a final decision be reached?
I think the moderators having the final decisions on a topic after discussion is the way to go. Voting can get messy, be hard to organize, and cause issues to be dragged on sometimes. I think as long as the moderators are keeping the points brought up in discussion by the players when making their final decisions, even if the decision goes against public consensus, then at least they know where the mindset of the players is when moving forward.

I do think that if our playerbase ever reaches historic levels, that councils for different topics (facilities, policy, tournaments etc.) could be useful as they were in the past. But for the time being, the playerbase is small enough that I think the moderators and their variety of stances will generally represent the players enough to be able to make decisions without them for the time being.


=================================================

Cheers everyone! And thank you to the mods for bringing this thread up, we appreciate all the hard work you put in, and thank you for listening to the concerns we have!
 

Mowtom

I'm truly still meta, enjoy this acronym!
is a Forum Moderatoris a Community Contributor
Moderator
I mostly agree with GT, I'm only going to be adding things that he didn't say.

  1. In your opinion: what differences are there between a change that can get pushed immediately by mods with little/no feedback, and a change that necessitates wide and open discussion?

    Surprises are totally fine, the announcement of Season's Beatings was done well with a good balance of hype and actually telling us what the thing was, and similarly Jay mentioned in discord something being planned for early 2022. I don't think I would have been happy if Season's Beatings was announced on December 1, time to prepare is pretty crucial for that sort of thing. There's a difference between "not being transparent" and "carefully choosing when to reveal things".

  2. What measurable guidelines would you like Moderators to follow (with regards to transparency) when preparing to potentially enact changes?

    I'm not sure if this counts as measurable but something like "topics should never be a surprise, nor should if a change will have a large scope". So for the most recent update, in advance saying something like "We're looking at major changes to combos and DE moves, finally settling the signature Z move thing, and miscellaneous item updates.".

  3. When a moderator has an idea for a change, how soon should it be brought to public attention?

    Gonna use this as a chance to rant a bit: despite the end result being favorable to me I really don't like how the signature Z move thing was handled. For significantly more than a year it was "common knowledege" that all double use Z crystals were going to be nuked and for roughly 5 months now I have had a 5* Mimikyu. Every time this came up I pointed out that Let's Snuggle Forever is only 1 BAP more than Z-Play Rough and the status quo was that without the double use, Fairium Z strictly outclassed Mimikium Z. Like, the signature one has no advantages at all. Before now, the most recent feedback that I got on this was "the real question that i might be playing with here is if sig ones actually need to exist" as of two months ago. Then nothing at all, and then I see that actually double use gets to stay? What??? I am happy with the end result but strongly against the concept of "it is common knowledge that one change will be made but then a totally different one does instead".

    (Aside from that what GT said here sounds fine.)

  4. Are you yourself satisfied with your ability to propose new changes? If not, what concrete changes would you like made to the system?

    I think my main issue here is that I say things and then they are forgotten about. Like, in Discord fair enough, that's the way Discord works. But I asked in the general policy thread to fix Fling five months before it actually was, with zero idea that any mods had read my post. Or four and a half months ago I made a post about Corrosive Gas that as far as I know has resulted in no discussion. If I felt confident that me posting things in the feedback thread would lead to things happening I would have no concerns in this area.

  5. After public discussion takes place, how should a final decision be reached?

    Is voting an option? No? Fair enough. Mods can just decide things then, it's not like you're going to go against a clear group consensus.
 

nightblitz42

is a Forum Moderatoris a Community Contributor
Moderator
I'm hearing some good stuff here, gimme 24 more hours and I'll post a response. Still gotta organize my thoughts a bit.
 

nightblitz42

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Moderator
Ok, so I'm hearing a few different angles of attack. As far as avoiding sudden changes, we could create a policy that requires announcements to precede balance changes (for example, an announcement/discussion thread must precede each non-hotfix balance change by at least a week). Shouldn't be too difficult.

In my opinion, a lot of the "minor updates" we implement are either: clarifications for situations where rules do not exist, resolutions of conflicting rules, or typo fixes. I suppose those typically wouldn't warrant a full formal discussion.

A channel where we regularly tell people what the mods have been discussing seems nice on paper, but might have issues in practice. "Having talked about something" isn't a very good indicator of intention, and a channel where we list off discussion topics every week might just become white noise. I think it might be a decent idea, but I'm having trouble making it work in my head.

My initial response is no. It does feel like players have a great avenue to bring up the "squeaky wheels" of the game but not actually proposing changes. Things like mechanical inconsistencies, or slight typos, or things that need clarification I feel like I have great access to fixing, which feels great. However in terms of actually proposing a change, like an update to an item or ability, that seems a bit harder to do.
I have a feeling that this isn't really the result of administrative procedures. Mechanical inconsistencies, slight typos, and clarifications to existing rules are all very easy to implement and tend to require relatively little thought and consideration. That's why those kinds of requests usually get addressed very quickly. Updates and overhauls like the Fling rework and Z-Crystals are much harder changes to enact because of how much forethought they need. So it shouldn't really be surprising that it's difficult to get those sorts of requests approved quickly. Even coming from mods, these sorts of ideas usually receive a lot of friction -- Gen 8.3's Iron Ball effect was proposed by TMan87, a mod, and it was still difficult to get shipped out (in the end, the final product has an awfully restrictive effect). That's why I don't believe the difficulty in proposing item/ability changes is a result of how our inbox is formatted.

One thing I can say for sure is that Mods need to post responses to suggestions in the Feedback Thread sooner. Looking back, it's clear that requests which the mod team thought were important often did not receive a response within the Feedback Thread.

As for timeliness of changes: I don't think there's much that can be done about that. the Fling proposal was seen and received a lot of work and attention. However, it took a long time to finish because there's a lot to discuss with that particular move. No matter what changes we make, certain kinds of suggestions will still take a long time to process. (Side note: I don't believe Corrosive Gas has received much attention at all. At the time of its writing, Corrosive Gas was intended to be a straight copy of in-game. But information about it during the release of SwSh was very unreliable. Personally I don't mind leaving it as-is at this point, unless it has balance issues.)

I suppose my main reason for wanting to limit the outflow of information from moderator discussions is to prevent an excess of noise. Constantly hearing about things that *might* be implemented but haven't actually been is confusing. That's why I held off on sharing the details about the new version of Battle Tree for so long -- I didn't want to confuse people by publicly saying things that might never see implementation. In that sense, I want to strike a good balance between openness and consistency.
 

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