The Smogtours Server

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Our previous guide was seriously outdated, so here's an up-to-date new Smogtours guide. Smogtours (short for Smogon Tournaments) is the dedicated server for official tournament play. While Smogtours has a lot of fundamental similarities to Pokemon Showdown!'s main server, there are also a number of distinct differences that I'll address in this guide. Official tournament games are expected to be played on the Smogtours server, unless there is a good reason not to.

Authority

As Smogtours is our Tournaments server, the main authority on the server are the Tournament Directors. I'll give a bit of a rundown on who wields what power.

~ Administrator
Administrators are PS! main developers and Tournament Directors.

@ Moderator
Long time Smogon Tour hosts are moderators on Smogtours. Former TDs, members of Smogon's Senior Staff and other trusted users can also be moderators.

% Driver
Smogon Tour hosts.

+ Voice
Voice is needed to be able to chat in the Smogtours Lobby. More information on the requirements for obtaining Smogtours voice can be found directly below.

Smogtours Moderation

First and foremost, Smogtours server is a side-server of Pokemon Showdown!. PS!'s official rules therefor apply to Smogtours as well. The PS! rules can be found here. We'll reiterate some of the rules listed as they're crucial to Smogtours, too.

Language
English is the only language that's spoken on Smogtours. You will be muted or even devoiced if you don't adhere to this rule.

Pornography
Don't post any pornographic materials whatsoever. Not in the lobby, not in a private message, just don't. You will instantly be devoiced if you do. You're extremely likely to be infracted or even banned from our forums for posting pornographic materials, too.

Slurs and hate speech
While we are not banning profanity outright, hate has no place on any official Smogon outlet. We are defining slurs/hate speech as disparaging or abusive terms for groups or individuals based on race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion or disability. This includes simple spelling variations of common terms; for example, you cannot avoid punishment by calling someone a "faqqot". Bypassing the PS! nickname filters using such spelling variations will result in an infraction as well.

Offensive references to suicide
Telling another user to commit suicide is never, ever appropriate. Offensive references to suicide will be met with immediate punishment. Some moderator discretion is appropriate here: for example, telling someone to go jump off a cliff will likely not be punished, while telling someone to kill themselves or slit their wrists will be. Context matters here as well: in the previous example, telling someone "lol screw you go jump off a cliff" without other vitriol is probably not going to be met with any punishment, but saying "I fucking hate you and I think you should literally jump off a cliff and die" likely will be. Vent in private if you must, please!

Extreme invective
Invective or vitriol that goes well beyond the bounds of shit-talking or normal behavior may also be punished. While this is difficult to define, things that will meet with this type of punishment include threats, continued harassment of users, references to sexual violence and vitriol that is taken too far. Mere profanity, shit-talking or insults are not worth a punishment here; no one should be kicked or banned for telling someone to fuck off or complaining that they've been haxed, even if the language is colorful. However, telling someone they deserve to be raped, promising to kill their family or harassing them for twenty minutes certainly should be.

Lobby ghosting
Information, observations or even damage calculations posted in the Lobby that could influence players that are playing a tournament game on Smogtours is absolutely NOT allowed. Assume the players are reading the lobby as you're watching a game on Smogtours, because they can.

The punishment scale is as follows:

First Offense
You will be temporarily muted.

Second Offense
You will be temporarily devoiced. This can range from 24 hours to a week depending on moderator discretion.

Third Offense
You will be indefinitely devoiced.

Smogtours Moderators reserve the right to escalate to an immediate devoicing in severe instances. Keep in mind that the Smogtours server is one of Smogon's official PS! servers and that breaking any of the rules outlined above can lead to an infraction on our forums as well.

Smogtours Voice

You will need voice to be able to chat in the Lobby. The reasons for this are primarily to prevent people from spamming the chat without any real recourse or punishment, as well as making it a lot easier to recognize and find other players. Please note that you do NOT need voice to PM another user or to start matches on Smogtours.

Getting voice

You need to send a PM on Smogtours to either an Administrator or a Moderator with a link to your Smogon Forums profile, which you can access by clicking on your name at the top right of the Smogon Forums interface. Please make sure the username and the numbers behind it are included! We cannot give you voice if we are not on the server at the same time as you are, so only PM Administrators and Moderators that are online on Smogtours at the time.

We will not voice alts

Your PS! name needs to match your Smogon forum account in order to be eligible for voice. Should the name of your Smogon account be taken on PS, you need to match it as closely as possible. It is not allowed to have more than one account voiced on Smogtours.

Your Smogon account must be at least a month old

If you're new you're unfortunately going to have to wait it out. This rule exists to prevent people from creating alts on the forums to get voice on multiple accounts on Smogtours. As mentioned above, you're still able to play and watch tournament games without your account being voiced.

Alongside a regular 5 minute timer there is also a separate disconnection timer of 5 total minutes as well. The 'total' in 5 total minutes refers to the fact that the disconnection timer does not replenish like the regular timer does. Should you disconnect during your match, then the regular timer will stop going down and the disconnection timer will kick in instead. The disconnection timer automatically keeps track of how long a disconnection lasts and switches back to the regular timer once the player reconnects to the server, regardless of it being one lengthy disconnection or multiple shorter ones. Once the disconnection timer expires the match ends and the Tournament Directors/hosts will determine whether a recreation or timeout result is appropriate. In order to minimize the opportunity of abusing disconnections, we won't reveal the exact criteria for a recreation to the public.

In summary, these are the important things to note regarding the Smogtours timer:
  • The regular timer starts at 300 seconds.
  • Once a disconnection occurs, the regular timer will be paused and the disconnection timer will kick in.
  • The disconnection timer lasts for 5 total minutes.
  • If a player disconnects from the server and doesn't reconnect before the disconnection timer expires, the Tournament Directors/hosts will determine whether a recreation or timeout result is appropriate.

Modchat is automatically set on all games that start on Smogtours. We don't want the players to be distracted as they're focusing on their game. Talk (appropriately) in the lobby, that's what it's there for. If you're playing a friendly game or perhaps for an unofficial tournament and you'd like your friends and team mates to be able to talk in the battle, then you can turn off modchat by offering /requestmodchatoff to your opponent. If they accept, any voiced account on Smogtours will be able to chat.

Replays are saved automatically on the Smogtours server. If you're trying to find one of your replays, try and search for your username using the Replay searcher. If you do not want people to find your replay, then make sure to enter the command /unlistreplay in your battlechat before the match ends. This makes sure your replay doesn't pop up in the Replay searcher.

If you notice any true bugs (ie. a mechanic is not working properly), particularly for our past generations, please report them here. If it is a major bug, please let one of the Tournament Directors know as soon as possible and we will make sure the appropriate people are made aware of the issue.
 
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Slurs and hate speech
While we are not banning profanity outright, hate has no place on any official Smogon outlet. We are defining slurs/hate speech as disparaging or abusive terms for groups or individuals based on race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion or disability. This includes simple spelling variations of common terms; for example, you cannot avoid punishment by calling someone a "faqqot". Bypassing the PS! nickname filters using such spelling variations will result in an infraction as well.
I want to emphasize the importance of the (ab)use of nicknames in tournament games. In recent history we've seen a lot of poor behavior and use of slurs via nicknames and that has stop immediately. Bypassing the nickname or chat filters (for example, by adding asterisks or formatting to a word ordinarily filtered) is strictly prohibited by both PS! and Smogon forums policy, and any user found to do so will be infracted and devoiced.
 
I'm bumping this thread to announce two changes to the server that are important to know the commands of. The first is /unlistreplay replacing the previous /hidereplay command. The reason for this is because /hidereplay implies full privacy like hidden games on the main server, whereas /unlistreplay more accurately implies that the replay simply becomes unable to be found by the replay searcher. By fully hiding the games we're unable to properly maintain usage statistics for our tournaments, especially Smogon Tour. The viewing experience also becomes a lot worse on top of that. /unlistreplay functionally works the same as /hidereplay did when it was first introduced, but is now more accurately named to emphasize the difference in definition.

The second announcement is an update to the new automatically set modchat on Smogtours. While we've gotten positive feedback on its effect on official tournament games, we've also gotten negative feedback on how its impacted the less serious games that are also played frequently on the server. In an attempt to strike a fair mid-ground we've gone with the following solution. Players can now offer /requestmodchatoff in the battle chat, which prompts a choice for their opponent to either accept or refuse the request. If it's accepted, anyone with Smogtours voice can talk in the battle again like before. This way the status quo remains for modchat to be automatically on during official tournament games, while also having the option to mess around with your friends. Thank you pre and jetou for helping me set this up!
 
While /requestmodchatoff was a step in the right direction, we've still gotten a good amount of feedback on being unable to chat in friendly games on Smogtours without having to undergo steps to turn off modchat. Rather than being able to opt out of modchat you have expressed a preference for opting in. So long as players are able to start official tournament games with modchat already turned on we were happy to explore alternatives and thanks to the amazing pre we think we can finally put this one to bed.

By entering /officialnext in the lobby before you accept your opponent's challenge you will be able to start your game with modchat set from the start. It is worth noting that both players have to set the command in order for it to work. If only one of the players enters the command, the challenge will be cancelled and both players will be prompted to either play with or without modchat turned on. This way the server can still provide tournament players with a way to avoid distraction and spammers as they start their official tournament games, while also catering to the casual players that want to chat with their friends in their games without a hassle. As a bonus the games now also get labeled as "Official Tournament" games.
 
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