Secrecy of the War Room

[Deleted User]

So, I've been asked if it'd make more sense to have each nations war room more open than I originally intended. I'm not going to bore you with long walls of text so here is what each option will present.

Open Door Policy

• War Rooms are visible, and anyone can join, from other nations included.
• Any users who are asked to leave should do so.

Hidden Room

• Rooms will not be made visible and they won't be predictable, ensuring more secrecy and privacy
• All users of a particular nation will be given their nations room name so that they can join.

In both cases the Nation's appointed leader will be given Room Owner Status. All of the auth will know the respective nations' War Room names, yes including the ones participating, you can trust that none of us will use this to gain an upper hand in matters. 4 server auth are participating and a handful of forum auth too, I'll be spreading them out as much as I can so that moderation can be dealt with appropriately. I'll reserve my own judgment until I've heard your opinions on this.

[Red_Chaos]

I dont trust you guys so hidden is a must

[Samalet]

Hidden, because I want it to feel authentic!

Like a ninja or something :>

[Exalted]

yeah no hidden i dont want to take any risks

[Ojama Yellow]

what goes on in a nations room is of no concern to anyone not part of that nation (bar committee) so hidden

[YinYang9705]

I don't trust myself to not spy on other people, so hidden

[Tacos]

Hidden most definitely. No way I'm letting people peek at my strategy.

[Sparky]

Hidden, hands down. We don't need any form of cheating with an Open Door.

[Ironbound]

Discretion is supposed to be the better part of valour.

[Ice Cream Sand Witch]

Hidden. Open door would be very easy for other nations to take advantage of.

[AuthorReborn]

Yeah, while I do have a fair amount of trust for most people on this site, there are those who would definitely abuse an Open Door policy and there's simply nothing worse than you putting together a strong, efficient team and then it turns out that your foes were paying close attention to your every mentioned strategy and run laps around you as a result. The war room should be a place of counseling with your nation mates about what mons have nice matchups against the opposing nation of the week or discussing interesting counter-strategies. This cannot happen if you are fearful of espionage or survailence by your foes.

[TRHStatement]

It's really not worth dealing with people who shouldn't be in the room in the first place, so why even give the option?

Let's just avoid that trouble from the start.

[pbood2]

Okay time for my rationale and why open door is just fine.

Open Door Policy

• War Rooms are visible, and anyone can join, from other nations included.
• Any users who are asked to leave should do so.

The first part seems fine and I understand the spying potential that above posters have mentioned BUT

the second part where if asked to leave, you do prevents the spying because if the leader or members of the nation someone is talking with starts talking strategy, they can just ask the person to leave and they would and if they don't then they can be penalized or something or kicked from the chat room.

I like chatting with people and getting to know them so having the ability to talk but leave if asked is reasonable in my opinion.

Be honest, you are not going to be strategizing all hours of the week so why not allow hours of socializing too. Sigh... oh well I guess.

[NickCrash]

Okay time for my rationale and why open door is just fine.

Open Door Policy

• War Rooms are visible, and anyone can join, from other nations included.
• Any users who are asked to leave should do so.

The first part seems fine and I understand the spying potential that above posters have mentioned BUT

the second part where if asked to leave, you do prevents the spying because if the leader or members of the nation someone is talking with starts talking strategy, they can just ask the person to leave and they would and if they don't then they can be penalized or something or kicked from the chat room.

I like chatting with people and getting to know them so having the ability to talk but leave if asked is reasonable in my opinion.

Be honest, you are not going to be strategizing all hours of the week so why not allow hours of socializing too. Sigh... oh well I guess.

The following arguments may be condensed to a "better safe than sorry".

This won't be the place to socialize. There are other rooms to do so. These rooms will be for strategy.

Allowing everyone to join will just force people to search for other private conversations, like... Skype.

A person that has seen things and is asked to leave, is more dangerous than a person who knows nothing.

Penalization is not always possible and information won't stop spreading just because the person is banned.

[Deleted User]

I'm not sure if it matters at this point, but I was planning on there being a PokeNations Battlefield room as well where you can all talk about things collectively.

[pbood2]

The following arguments may be condensed to a "better safe than sorry".

This won't be the place to socialize. There are other rooms to do so. These rooms will be for strategy.

Allowing everyone to join will just force people to search for other private conversations, like... Skype.

A person that has seen things and is asked to leave, is more dangerous than a person who knows nothing.

Penalization is not always possible and information won't stop spreading just because the person is banned.

You bring up good points with 1, 3 and 4.

Some people like me don't go on Showdown all the time though so why not just use Skype because a lot of people most likely have that and it's easily accessible to anyone who needs it.

Just my thoughts on this though.

It most likely will be private based on the poll so that's fine.

EDIT: Great idea Jericho. It's appreciated if that's done though.

Edited May 13, 2016 by pbood2

[Commander]

The following arguments may be condensed to a "better safe than sorry".

This won't be the place to socialize. There are other rooms to do so. These rooms will be for strategy.

Allowing everyone to join will just force people to search for other private conversations, like... Skype.

A person that has seen things and is asked to leave, is more dangerous than a person who knows nothing.

Penalization is not always possible and information won't stop spreading just because the person is banned.

Due to the old PO server, quite a few nations (such as my nation Apophyll), used Skype as a means to keep certain info from leaking out. Most of the battles and testing took place in our Room, but it was always about strategy there since it was the meeting place for everybody. I do know a couple cases where information did leak out due to discussions especially in the forums where anyone could read anything there. So of course I said keep them private. Worse comes to worse someone forgets the name and they have to have a member PM it to them.

As for the battle rooms, there aren't meant to be a social gathering. We often discussed what were the best possible Pokemon choices to go up against the opponent along with figuring out how well prepared each participant was (even to the point of battle testing them). The huge advantage with Showdown is that everyone is required to use it vs skype where some users prefer not skyping...leading into problems.

[Chim]

The first part seems fine and I understand the spying potential that above posters have mentioned BUT

the second part where if asked to leave, you do prevents the spying because if the leader or members of the nation someone is talking with starts talking strategy, they can just ask the person to leave and they would and if they don't then they can be penalized or something or kicked from the chat room.

Not necessarily. People can easily 'spy' as guests or pretend to be afk. Not to mention you can always read back to a certain point.

And there's also no stopping from other people to join when you are actually talking about strategy.

[Lord Bagel]

I need the rooms hidden so I can sneak into them, otherwise...what's the fun?

[mde2001]

I'm definitely for hidden. I think that it will add to the sense of community if every nation has their own private space that is just for them and it will also ensure no cheating.

[Sheep]

Let me speak out in favor of open rooms. Last time nations was run we (the mythic nation) had what is basically an open door policy. Everyone else had locks on their rooms and we didn't. We also won so it clearly didn't negatively affect our performance any. In fact I'd argue that it improved our performance quite significantly. Because we had an open door policy people from other nations would quite frequently drop by to chat, and that was fine, we enjoyed the company. When it came time to talk strategy we'd ask them to leave and they would, simple as that. But the biggest factor in deciding who won nations was member commitment and participation, and we outshone the others by far, in part at least I think due to the friendly and inclusive nature of our nation. To me this demonstrates that while you may think you're avoiding a risk by locking your doors, what you're actually doing is inviting a bigger one.

[ReploidZero]

Gonna agree with just about everyone and say that the war rooms should definitely be Private/Hidden. Makes the whole thing a lot more fun, when you don't know what your up against.