Cheating In the Games (Controversial Topic!)

[EmpoleonProd]

I've been on YouTube for a few hours now watching videos that are either pro-Powersaves or against Powersaves and it got me wondering what everyone here thinks of "cheating" in the games. I wanted to get a feel for what the consensus is around here on it. It is an extremely controversial topic and I already have my own personal view on it.

Now here's my view on it. Now obviously the main source of criticism and controversy is going to be competitive battling. I personally have nothing against it in a way. This is where I'd say there's a few different kinds of cheating. If you're cheating to get 6IV Pokemon and your ideal EV spread and maybe a shiny and your movesets, possibly egg moves, I say you're essentially doing nothing wrong, you may have taken devious methods to obtain the Pokemon in question, but it is perfectly legitimate in the eyes of the game as far as what that Pokemon can legitimately obtain or not. As long as people aren't sticking illegal moves, abilities, egg move combinations, and surpassing the max values for EVs and IVs, all these people are doing is taking shortcuts to get right to battling quicker.

Now let's be blunt for a second, a lot of people do it, most competitive battlers do it. They take shortcuts to make what is a legitimately possible Pokemon, but they're simply shaving a few hours off of the non-cheating process. I have a friend who completely generated his six Pokemon for the Primal Battle from awhile back, it didn't give him an unfair advantage, but it helped him participate in the first place. One main argument to defend cheating devices/methods is that a lot of people simply do not have the free time on their hands after school, work, relationships, and other obligations to breed and train for hours.

There really isn't a feasible argument against this way of cheating that I've seen. The best people have given me is that it's in bad competitive spirit and you're inherently gaining an advantage but cutting corners that others choose not to, but my counter-argument to that is that you're CHOOSING to not cut that corner, which means you're giving yourself a disadvantage, not that the other is giving themselves an advantage.

So I'm slightly on the pro-cheating side myself, but only for the purposes of creating or modifying a Pokemon to where it is still legitimate. I have no problem with people doing it. I still want to know the popular opinion around here just out of curiosity. I still think there's a limit to what's acceptable. Trying to get away with minor illegal changes that some have been caught doing in the past years is a big no-no. I'm still for legitimate competition, I'm just also for taking shortcuts to do it when presented with the opportunity.

And yes, I know it is still against the rules and getting caught in the act can lead to disqualifications and such, don't come here to tell me that. I know that much. I want to hear what personal opinions people have on the justification for why many people will cheat to cut corners and if they really think it harms anything.

 

[Lone_Garurumon]

In my personal opinion, cheating is OK, IF the Pokemon you're creating is legitimately possible. I can totally see why someone doesn't want to spend 2 weeks breeding for their perfect Pokemon. They're going to get it eventually, so why not shave a few weeks off your time.

However, if the Pokemon you're creating CAN'T legitimately exist, then we have a problem. Even something as simple as an illegal egg move combo, or going one or two points above the normal limit or IVs or EVs. The second that something normally impossible occurs, you have crossed the line. And are a horrible person.

It should go without saying what I think of stuff like a Sturdy Shedinja.

 

[EmpoleonProd]

In my personal opinion, cheating is OK, IF the Pokemon you're creating is legitimately possible. I can totally see why someone doesn't want to spend 2 weeks breeding for their perfect Pokemon. They're going to get it eventually, so why not shave a few weeks off your time.

However, if the Pokemon you're creating CAN'T legitimately exist, then we have a problem. Even something as simple as an illegal egg move combo, or going one or two points above the normal limit or IVs or EVs. The second that something normally impossible occurs, you have crossed the line. And are a horrible person.

It should go without saying what I think of stuff like a Sturdy Shedinja.

Maybe a moderator should just put this as the OP since you basically... shaved... off about 3/4 of my OP.

But seriously, I share the same viewpoint as you do. Pokemon that can pass a legitimacy test I'm okay with. Cheating in Pokemon will always be one of those grey areas of the community. Is it ok or is it not? And if it is, to what extent? I doubt we'll all ever come to an agreement on that, but that's ok. A lot of the Powersavers keep to themselves, a lot of the people who will read/post on this thread will be cheaters but never say it out loud. My friend who is a much more skilled competitive battler than I am (the same one I mentioned as generating his entire team for the Primal Battle, and for privacy reasons I won't post his exact rank but he was in the top-150 for that tournament), assured me that the majority of competitive battlers cheat somehow, even if it's to get a 6IV Ditto to breed their teams legitimately, that's still technically cheating, even if the hatched Pokemon is legitimately a 5/6IV Pokemon. He just flat out generated Pokemon that could pass a legitimacy test but instead of spending weeks, maybe months (he used a Cresselia and Landorus, so getting those perfect alone would take a lot of time soft-resetting), he was able to get his team within an hour or two and get right to testing them out in Battle Spot.

 

[Proxima Centauri B]

If its something that could be legitimately possibly for me. maybe. I will honestly say though that I really hate hacking a lot. If you can get something legitmately, I still believe in going the legit route. I think working for it gives you the satisfaction that using a cheat device never will. I never use cheat devices. I have no use for them, if I was gonna battle Id go get the Pokemon legitimately same with shinies. Even unobtainable shinies I refuse to hack, I just accept the fact they are unavailable. Hacking takes whats speacial about them away completely, they lose their value that way.

I absolutely hate when people hack for Pokemon and put them on Wonder Trade and the GTS because essentially you're kind of forcing the hacks on people who very likely dont want them. In normal trades, they should only be traded if the person knows beforehand. As for friendly battles, I think the other person should know too.

 

[Esserise]

If the Pokémon that they have made *can* be obtained legitimately (and I mean that down to the last detail; the difference between the hacked Pokémon and a real one has to be imperceptible), then I don't mind it as much. I would consider it to be more of a misdemeanor than an actual offense.

As for me personally, I never hack my games. I really enjoy the sense of purity that comes with an unhacked game, as well as the satisfaction that I get from earning things legitimately.

 

[Peachy]

If you're just playing around with your own game it's not a problem, actually it's kind of fun making Pokemon that shouldn't exist.

In the competitive scene as long as possible for them to exist normally its fine. Besides, actually being good at battling is way more important than how you obtained the Pokémon you're battling with. And while it is kind of fun to breed a viable Pokémon, it takes so long sometimes. And people just want to battle.

 

[UB-01 Kenobi]

If one is to play on cart in any serious capacity then cheating is essentially necessary due to the speed at which the metagame shifts and the inherent volatility that comes when a new Pokemon is introduced (hoopa-U, Volcanion, the new ORAS Megas) or banned (such as when Medicham, her across, and Gardevoir became popular upon banning Aegislash).

If a person attempted to legitimately breed a Salamence for when ORAS came out, it may have been banned by the time they got their perfect IV egg, whereas a quick Sav would have allowed you to use it in battles. Additionally, there are a number of Pokemon that you literally can't breed - if you wanted that Salamence to have Refresh for the bulky DD Return Roost Refresh set, then you would have needed to catch it in XD Gale of Darkness (with perfect IVs) and then transfer it all the way to ORAS. Ignoring the vast improbability that you will catch a perfect IV, Bold (or was it careful? I don't remember) Shadow Salamence in XD, some people literally don't have the hardware necessary for that process (a GameCube/Wii, a GameCube to gameboy link cable, a gameboy adv or sp, a DS or DS Lite, a 3DS, Pokemon XD, a 3rd gen game, a 4th gen game, a 5th gen game, Pokebank, and ORAS)

 

[Gengarzilla]

I'll admit to cheating a lot in Diamond, long before I got into competitive battling of any kind. It was simply a way for me to experiment, dabble, and find my footing since I hadn't played a core series game for the best part of a decade and missed both Generations II and III as a result.
Those days are over and I now have my own, hand crafted, 100% legitimate, 6IV Timid Gengar in Omega Ruby as a way to show how far I've come.

 

[EmpoleonProd]

I'm not gonna lie, a lot of these replies surprised me, I expected a much more negative view on this but it seems we've solidified what that line is that shouldn't be crossed and that's bringing impossible Pokemon into the game. The replies I was expecting were based on some comments I got on YouTube, where Verlisify called me "scum" for supporting generating/modifying Pokemon to its legal limits, and then another commenter told me to kill myself right after. I was like damn, I guess people take this game too seriously.

But yeah, I basically agree with everything everyone has said here, including not hacking unobtainable shinies because they're unobtainable, giving Pokemon illegal moves or stats, trading away generated or modified Pokemon without the one receiving it knowing, and yeah, I think that about covers it so far.

 

[Esserise]

I'm not gonna lie, a lot of these replies surprised me, I expected a much more negative view on this but it seems we've solidified what that line is that shouldn't be crossed and that's bringing impossible Pokemon into the game. The replies I was expecting were based on some comments I got on YouTube, where Verlisify called me "scum" for supporting generating/modifying Pokemon to its legal limits, and then another commenter told me to kill myself right after. I was like damn, I guess people take this game too seriously.

But yeah, I basically agree with everything everyone has said here, including not hacking unobtainable shinies because they're unobtainable, giving Pokemon illegal moves or stats, trading away generated or modified Pokemon without the one receiving it knowing, and yeah, I think that about covers it so far.

Yeah well that's YouTube for you. I'd like to think we're more civilized than them, but that's not exactly a hard standard to beat.

I'm surprised that the peripheral topic of hacking events that you missed/couldn't access hasn't come up.

I don't really mind those, I guess. Especially if you live in, say, a rural area without easy access to Wi-Fi. I can understand the desire to hack in missed events then. But as for people who can access events in their country but not other ones... well, I think that's a bit trickier. Because it wouldn't be impossible for them to access events from Japan, for example - they would just have to shell out the cash for a Japanese 3DS. However, that is a high price tag. Does the reward of Japan-exclusive events justify such a high price, or can we sympathize with those who access those events with a hacking device?

This is a case where I find myself sort of in the middle. If you can afford a foreign 3DS, then I think you should probably buy one and get those event Pokémon legitimately. But I know what it's like to be low on money. I wouldn't think it would be the worst thing in the world to buy a hacking device instead.

 

[EmpoleonProd]

Yeah well that's YouTube for you. I'd like to think we're more civilized than them, but that's not exactly a hard standard to beat.

I'm surprised that the peripheral topic of hacking events that you missed/couldn't access hasn't come up.

I don't really mind those, I guess. Especially if you live in, say, a rural area without easy access to Wi-Fi. I can understand the desire to hack in missed events then. But as for people who can access events in their country but not other ones... well, I think that's a bit trickier. Because it wouldn't be impossible for them to access events from Japan, for example - they would just have to shell out the cash for a Japanese 3DS. However, that is a high price tag. Does the reward of Japan-exclusive events justify such a high price, or can we sympathize with those who access those events with a hacking device?

This is a case where I find myself sort of in the middle. If you can afford a foreign 3DS, then I think you should probably buy one and get those event Pokémon legitimately. But I know what it's like to be low on money. I wouldn't think it would be the worst thing in the world to buy a hacking device instead.

I personally don't see a problem with this, but I guess I'd have to judge it on a case-by-case basis, a lot of people don't use event Pokemon competitively and just like having them to say we have all of the event Pokemon, for example, I missed Mew-Jirachi this year as I wasn't into Pokemon for the first bit of this year, maybe I'll hack to get them so I can have the whole year's worth of event legendaries, but I don't intend to use any competitively so it's just for myself.

I haven't actually hacked on Gen VI yet but I had an AR for Gen VI/V and I went to town with cheats on those to make my Pokemon instantly competitive, one thing I personally always refrained from doing was hacking shinies. I personally value the rarity of shinies and will only use/get a shiny if it's legitimate. Unfortunately the only three shinies I've ever encountered were a Spinarak in Emerald that I lost due to a corrupt save file from using the Tower clone glitch a few hundred too many times, a Zigzagoon in Sapphire which became a shiny HM slave, and a Roggenrola in a horde that I didn't notice before running from the horde and as the message pops up saying I ran away, I see that one is shiny, I'm like "really game?"

 

[ocelotlrama jaguar]

I don't care if you cheat playing your game on your own time. It's your money. I personally never purchased a gameshark, AR, anything of the like unless I am exploiting something that's already in game (the Old Man glitch). Hell, I don't even mind when people cheat when playing online. It's all in good fun.

However, I do take issue with people cheating for perfect IVs, Natures, Hidden Powers, and Hidden Abilities while competing in Play! events. I am against cheating in those events because there are real prizes involved, and those are not run-of-the-mill prizes, either. Yeah, it's really unfair when Jack/Jill purchases an Action Replay, hacks the perfect team to their hearts content in less than an hour and being savvy enough to trick the cheat detectors, all while John/Jane put in hours of breeding for the perfect Pokemon and putting actual effort into making their teams. It really shouldn't even be topic of controversy in regards to official tournaments as even the Play! Pokemon rules state that the use of a game altering device is illegal, but it's impossible to detect with, again, those savvy hackers who know what they're doing (not going over 31 IVs, not going over 510 EVs, showing a Pokemon was caught in a location they can only be caught at, etc). All in all, it frigging stinks when people do that for official tournaments and yes, I am against that.

 

[Lone_Garurumon]

I don't care if you cheat playing your game on your own time. It's your money. I personally never purchased a gameshark, AR, anything of the like unless I am exploiting something that's already in game (the Old Man glitch). Hell, I don't even mind when people cheat when playing online. It's all in good fun.

However, I do take issue with people cheating for perfect IVs, Natures, Hidden Powers, and Hidden Abilities while competing in Play! events. I am against cheating in those events because there are real prizes involved, and those are not run-of-the-mill prizes, either. Yeah, it's really unfair when Jack/Jill purchases an Action Replay, hacks the perfect team to their hearts content in less than an hour and being savvy enough to trick the cheat detectors, all while John/Jane put in hours of breeding for the perfect Pokemon and putting actual effort into making their teams. It really shouldn't even be topic of controversy in regards to official tournaments as even the Play! Pokemon rules state that the use of a game altering device is illegal, but it's impossible to detect with, again, those savvy hackers who know what they're doing (not going over 31 IVs, not going over 510 EVs, showing a Pokemon was caught in a location they can only be caught at, etc). All in all, it frigging stinks when people do that for official tournaments and yes, I am against that.

While I can see where you're coming from here, no matter how they got them, in the end, both Jack/Jill and John/Jane have a team of perfect Pokemon, neither player is technically more advantaged than the other in their Pokemon's viability. In the end, the only thing that really matters is which Pokemon they chose, and their relative skill level to make the correct choices in the battle. Jack/Jill's hacked Pokemon could be completely and utterly devastated by John/Jane's legitimate Pokemon, purely due to the difference in skill level. Both players got their perfect Pokemon in the end, one just took a quicker method of obtaining them

 

[raekuul]

The extent of my cheated pokémon as of X/Y is a shiny Yamask egg. The Yamask is not leaving that save file via Bank (even if it could), I don't battle online, and the Yamask is shiny specifically so that I remember to not trade it. I have more interest in sending new combinations of teams through Kalos anyway, and since I have limited means and time at my disposal I need to be creative about it.

(I was bringing egg pokémon over from old saves via bank previously, but I formatted my system memory recently and lost all my mons. Once I get re-established... no, I'm still going to have one save-locked hacked-in egg per run, I'll just have more freedom as to what egg I can have.)

 

[EmpoleonProd]

While I can see where you're coming from here, no matter how they got them, in the end, both Jack/Jill and John/Jane have a team of perfect Pokemon, neither player is technically more advantaged than the other in their Pokemon's viability. In the end, the only thing that really matters is which Pokemon they chose, and their relative skill level to make the correct choices in the battle. Jack/Jill's hacked Pokemon could be completely and utterly devastated by John/Jane's legitimate Pokemon, purely due to the difference in skill level. Both players got their perfect Pokemon in the end, one just took a quicker method of obtaining them

This is precisely how I feel about the issue. The means to get the Pokemon may be different, but the outcome is the same. I think it comes down to how you personally feel about the methods. Some people value the purity of not cheating, whereas others don't care for the grind and want to get straight to battling, and I respect both sides, but I don't think they should knock each other down over their personal preferences.

 

[Hellpest]

I'll admit to cheating a lot in Diamond, long before I got into competitive battling of any kind. It was simply a way for me to experiment, dabble, and find my footing since I hadn't played a core series game for the best part of a decade and missed both Generations II and III as a result.
Those days are over and I now have my own, hand crafted, 100% legitimate, 6IV Timid Gengar in Omega Ruby as a way to show how far I've come.

I'm pretty much the exact same, except with HG instead of diamond. And a 6IV shiny timid Gengar.

 

[Gengarzilla]

I'm pretty much the exact same, except with HG instead of diamond. And a 6IV shiny timid Gengar.

Yeah, I'd have tried to get it shiny too if I didn't mind the shiny Mega. I'm just not a fan of Gengar being white.

The replies I was expecting were based on some comments I got on YouTube, where Verlisify called me "scum" for supporting generating/modifying Pokemon to its legal limits, and then another commenter told me to kill myself right after.

That's why he's not getting my sub. Waaaay too hard-line on that topic for my personal taste.

 

[Hellpest]

Yeah, I'd have tried to get it shiny too if I didn't mind the shiny Mega. I'm just not a fan of Gengar being white.

Whaaa? Shiny mega Gengar is the best!

 

[Gengarzilla]

Whaaa? Shiny mega Gengar is the best!

Ehhh, I'm not a fan of the classic ghostly white. It's probably just me...

 

[conqueror]

I don't agree with cheating at all. It ruins all the excitement of the game mechanics like breeding and training your pokemon. I can't respect cheaters in any way.