Pokemon Bank

[Stratelier]

I still highly doubt they would care about hacks at this point. They got through, so putting up more hack checks is like setting up a quarantine on your borders when the disease already got in.

So far the hacks that have gotten through are rather minor - but they point to deeper issues. For example, should the pentagon marking be used to identify XY tournament eligibility, the fact that you can falsify this marking onto non-Kalos Pokemon (with tutor moves that can't be bred on Kalos natives, e.g. Bug Bite Scizor) and Poke Transporter won't detect it is a massive fail. It effectively means you can have Pokemon with an illegal move.

 

[Almonds]

Considering that some people are disappointed that even legitimate RNGed mons don't get banned by hack checks, I think some people are just beyond pleasing.

Besides the unreleased Hidden Abilities, I haven't seen evidence that blatantly illegal mons, such as WonderTomb, can make it through. Someone even posted ITT that his Hall of Origin Arceus wasn't able to make it through.

How's this possibility:

The Bank gets patched so that every single possible modification is banned. How they would possibly do that? I don't know - I'm not an expert in that area. But if they want to please their consumers, the best solution would be to patch the Bank with extremely strong filters that would recognize even the slightest modification. Any pokemon that is not programmed by GF to be caught in the wild or given by an official NPC - all shall be banned. Not even a single modification will be tolerated. No cloning as well.

There - clean and simple. No hacks, no RNGs, nothing. Just the player and the game and Bank - as it was always meant to be in the first place. Everyone should be happy then.

Keeping my fingers crossed for a new and improved super-patched extra-sensitive-filtering PokeTransporter and Bank.

 

[YamiiDenryuu]

I doubt they'll ever get their filtering to work that well, but I do expect they're using this time to patch up some of the more blatant problems, like the whole thing with faking the Kalos mark. Of course, if it was just that it probably wouldn't be taking this long...

 

[lugia61617]

If they do indeed care enough to patch it, I agree that it will probably only be a minor refinement. I will admit the falsifying of a Kalos Marker does bug me slightly.

 

[randomspot555]

Considering that some people are disappointed that even legitimate RNGed mons don't get banned by hack checks, I think some people are just beyond pleasing.

Besides the unreleased Hidden Abilities, I haven't seen evidence that blatantly illegal mons, such as WonderTomb, can make it through. Someone even posted ITT that his Hall of Origin Arceus wasn't able to make it through.

I'm starting to wish I'd kept that Master Ball Sinnoh Turtwig. It wasn't a gamebreaker but it was still blatant.

While that is a hack, you can get a Turtwig inside a Master Ball via the English Global Link distribution that was done during Gen 5. At select Wal-Marts, some BW2 copies came with a code to be redeemed via the Global Link. They also came with their Hidden Ability and were male.

From what I've observed, a lot of people screaming "hacks!!!!!!" don't actually know enough about what Pokemon are actually available.

Considering that some people are disappointed that even legitimate RNGed mons don't get banned by hack checks, I think some people are just beyond pleasing.

Besides the unreleased Hidden Abilities, I haven't seen evidence that blatantly illegal mons, such as WonderTomb, can make it through. Someone even posted ITT that his Hall of Origin Arceus wasn't able to make it through.

How's this possibility:

The Bank gets patched so that every single possible modification is banned. How they would possibly do that? I don't know - I'm not an expert in that area. But if they want to please their consumers, the best solution would be to patch the Bank with extremely strong filters that would recognize even the slightest modification. Any pokemon that is not programmed by GF to be caught in the wild or given by an official NPC - all shall be banned. Not even a single modification will be tolerated. No cloning as well.

There - clean and simple. No hacks, no RNGs, nothing. Just the player and the game and Bank - as it was always meant to be in the first place. Everyone should be happy then.

Keeping my fingers crossed for a new and improved super-patched extra-sensitive-filtering PokeTransporter and Bank.

If it was "always meant to be", then you've eliminated several avenues of obtaining Pokemon such as...you know, breeding and evolution and events. So filtering out anything that isn't an event or an NPC trade or gift means you've easily eliminated a hundred or so Pokemon from ever being obtainable, and that Torchic we all downloaded is now illegal too.

Like it or not, hacks have been around since Gen I. If that "ruins" the gaming experience for you , then I respect that. But the burden should be on you to take your own precautions rather than massively eliminating hundreds of people's legit Pokemon from years of collections just because they bred their Pokemons or attended a past event rather than caught it in the wild.

 

[Soulweaver]

Considering that some people are disappointed that even legitimate RNGed mons don't get banned by hack checks, I think some people are just beyond pleasing.

Besides the unreleased Hidden Abilities, I haven't seen evidence that blatantly illegal mons, such as WonderTomb, can make it through. Someone even posted ITT that his Hall of Origin Arceus wasn't able to make it through.

How's this possibility:

The Bank gets patched so that every single possible modification is banned. How they would possibly do that? I don't know - I'm not an expert in that area. But if they want to please their consumers, the best solution would be to patch the Bank with extremely strong filters that would recognize even the slightest modification. Any pokemon that is not programmed by GF to be caught in the wild or given by an official NPC - all shall be banned. Not even a single modification will be tolerated. No cloning as well.

There - clean and simple. No hacks, no RNGs, nothing. Just the player and the game and Bank - as it was always meant to be in the first place. Everyone should be happy then.

Keeping my fingers crossed for a new and improved super-patched extra-sensitive-filtering PokeTransporter and Bank.

It's very thoughtless to even suggest a block on RNG abuse or cloning because there is absolutely nothing to distinguish those from Pokémon obtained with no tricks, not including unintentionally or intentionally not 1:1 cloning such as Pokécheck's added event ribbon. Not a single bit. Same goes with carefully done hacking. Clones could be checked for in the sense that whether the exactly same copy already exists in someone's box in the Bank, but that throws in silly problems such as that exactly one of that Pokémon would be let through, either the original or one of the clones - and the original owner wouldn't necessarily be the one to be able to do so.

 

[Drakenred]

my thoughts on this...

(1) why cant Wondertrading and that other trading list just be used to pull out some of the more obvious hacks and clones. with the Wonder trader just pick up the illegal mon, spawn a "legal" mon randomly (apart from whats suposed to be the ultra rares and event mons), then just swap out the "illegal" mon and delete it.

(2) simular with the Global trade thing but simply flag a mon as "illegal" and simply hide it from being able to be traded.

(3) as hacks come up just add them to the hack database then when anyone uploads or downloads the hacked mon they get a choice of deleting it or letting the program "make it legal" by replaceing it with a level 1 generic version of the mon.

 

[Silverwynde]

I'm still not sure why GF thought releasing PokeBank on Christmas was a good idea. They tried to release a highly anticipated app that every Pokemon fan has been waiting for on the same day that hundreds of thousands of people get their brand new 3DSes and/or Nintendo gift cards. Did it not occur to anyone at Nintendo/Game Freak for even a second that that colossal amount of traffic might break the servers?

My husband said outright that this was a stupid idea, releasing anything on Christmas. As he put it, they were asking for a lot of trouble and he was right.

Seriously? Can't people just wait? It's not the end of the world, just wait for it like everybody else, i rather wait for like a month for Pokemon Bank and it comes with no issues than coming tomorrow with tons of issues.

My problem is this: I have no room on Black 2. I can't continue my Elekid shiny hunt at all. There are practically no slots in my PC. The few that are left are open spaces for shinies that I'm pulling down via Gen V's GTS. I've been waiting since October to get some of my best Pokemon over to Kalos and I'm still waiting. Bank was supposed to help alleviate this and right now I'm kinda stuck, twiddling my thumbs. And don't get me started on the GTS; there's no slagging way I'll ever get an Yveltal at this point. Everyone wants an Arceus or a Deoxys or a Mew. Which I have...stuck in Unova. It's the same thing with shiny anything as well. >_<

Has anybody noticed that they took down the demo video for Bank on the eShop?

I noticed that yesterday. Also, you can't find the info for Bank with X and Y. I had to find it on my Wish List. Make of that as you will.

I kinda wish they allowed berries to be transferred over. I've got so many valuable berries in my Black2 game, and they're all going to waste...

If there's a new patched Bank/Mover coming out, hopefully they allow berries to be transferred over.

I'm with you. I have way too many rare Berries in Unova and it irritates me that they'll do the same thing as in Sinnoh: sit on a cart and rot. All I need is one, that's it. Let me send over one and I can take care of the rest. Please Nintendo, I'm begging you.

 

[SobriquetP]

my thoughts on this...

(1) why cant Wondertrading and that other trading list just be used to pull out some of the more obvious hacks and clones. with the Wonder trader just pick up the illegal mon, spawn a "legal" mon randomly (apart from whats suposed to be the ultra rares and event mons), then just swap out the "illegal" mon and delete it.

(2) simular with the Global trade thing but simply flag a mon as "illegal" and simply hide it from being able to be traded.

(3) as hacks come up just add them to the hack database then when anyone uploads or downloads the hacked mon they get a choice of deleting it or letting the program "make it legal" by replaceing it with a level 1 generic version of the mon.

1. I am not entirely sure, but do you mean when they Wondertrade? Wondertrade Is completely optional and I don't think that hacked wondertrades are a problem yet. *shudder* At least I hope not. D=
Then again, watching someone's hacked lvl 100 Shiny Genesect become a lvl 1 bidoof nicknamed N0 H4X would be quite funny in bank though. XD

2. Could possibly happen, although it might only be able to catch the blatantly hacked mons. They would probably have to match it against a database that knows all moves it can possibly know and the highest possible stat combinations that the mon could ever get. The again, those are the facepalm hacks that they did not even try to hide. XD

3. I like, but then people who intentionally hacked (lets say a Meloetta for example) could get a legal Meloetta and it would devalue the ones that people got legitimately since anyone could get a "legal" one by hacking. =(

I'm sorry though, I LOVE the thought of bank replacing Hacked Pokemon with fodder Pokemon when it catches an obviously hacked one. XD You just gave me something hilarious to imagine while waiting for the banks release.

 

[bluestarfish]

I think it'd be pretty easy to check for illegal moves (and the kalos marking) at least, the list would have to be kept up to date something they would probably have a permanent staff member or team for.

I mean, it can probably be more elegantly done than what I'm thinking (cause I've got minimal coding experience under my belt) but it could be as simple as a bunch of Boolean logic ex: If Scizor is Kalos Native and it knows Move Tutor Moves, then ban that pokemon from bank/trade/battle.

I'm not really sure where people who already have a hacked pokemon comes in as obstructing such an effort. If they can't be traded, or used in official battles, than no one would have to care or worry about them, because the monsters can't be used anywhere outside of the game itself.

I wouldn't bother with "replacing" pokemon though, that's an extra layer of coding that would be better off doing something like deleting said pokemon, or blocking it entirely.

 

[DoctorWhy]

This is really trying my patience. I mean all I want now are my best breeding Dittos and the event legends. That's all. Because it's taken so long I now have almost no need for the bank itself!

Think about what you said for a minute. Due to the delay, you have almost no need for the bank. The bank was having problems based on the massive volume. As each day goes on, we GTS and wonder trade a whole lot of pokemon, even if only to kill time.

While I'm not happy about the bank's release... If I'm right, they actually came up with a pretty clever solution to reduce the volume.

Except it also kills any reason people would pay for continued service. Especially one that is now this unreliable.

I'm a bit concerned about the safety of Pokemon stored in Bank... Especially during things like crashes and such. Makes me kinda not want to use it much...

Then you're free to not use it. But data recovery is one of the easiest and most basic things and just because a computer crashes does not mean the data is lost. The several references to it being cloud storage means that it is also backed up several times over and considering the small size of a Pokemon as a file, that's incredibly easy to do. Also worth noting that, as of this time , Bank's servers have not crashed. Nintendo's E-Shop and NNID servers, however, did.

So the paranoid are free to not use it, but that's really a choice based on ignorance. It is an extremely safe service. Note that during the initial launch of the JP DW in Gen 5, it went down to do a hurricane/earthquake and not a single Pokemon that was "Tucked in" was reported to be compromised, despite it being shut down for several days.

Well if my Pokemon are secure and won't be lost, then okay. I'll be using it all the time at that point. It'll probably be my primary storage.

 

[Johnny Boy]

So do any of you think that the Bank being pulled from the eShop completely (unless you put it on your wish list) could be a sign that it could come out shortly?

 

[Bolt Strike]

So do any of you think that the Bank being pulled from the eShop completely (unless you put it on your wish list) could be a sign that it could come out shortly?

No, I think it could mean exactly the opposite. Usually they have eShop listings for games before they're released.

 

[Dialgarules]

So do any of you think that the Bank being pulled from the eShop completely (unless you put it on your wish list) could be a sign that it could come out shortly?

No, if anything it's a bad sign. But I think it probably doesn't mean anything. Nintendo refuses to share any information, and if they wanted to, they wouldn't do it as some coded message on the eShop.

You have done the key of the matter: Nintendo could use the servers as a excuse to not release Bank yet when the problem was only an issue on Christmas. Specially now that the staff are working in full. Which means that there's a possible reason B as a cause of the delay. A economic reason could be a cause of reason B to delay the Bank: 80/90% of Bank user are expected to only transfer their pokes and not use anymore; imagine Bank like a game with 1.000.000 of downloads but only 150.000 pay the service. Imagine that all the games, cost 5$ (for simply), they got 750.000 $, total where taxes are included.

This could definitely be part of it. If Nintendo doesn't expect to make a significant amount of money from this, and all it does is stress their network anyway, they're likely to ditch the idea. We can hope that they'll allow us to transfer Pokémon through an offline mechanism (like Poké Transfer for Gen IV-->V) such as an update to X and Y or another app. Since we expected a lot of people to just transfer everything during the 30 days and get a free ride from Bank (because way fewer people care about the cloud storage feature), they could conceivably charge us $5 for the offline app and make more money while avoiding server issues. On this thread, I don't see a lot of people saying "I can't wait for Bank to come out so I can have 3000 storage spaces;" they're saying "I want to transfer my Pokémon." The storage idea is clearly far less popular and could be discarded with little impact on sales. They're stuck because they've already promised Bank for everyone and, now, it just seems like a shitty idea on their end. They're also dealing with terrible Wii U sales and a general decline in the console market. So profits are big and they don't have room for mistakes.

 

[Almonds]

Considering that some people are disappointed that even legitimate RNGed mons don't get banned by hack checks, I think some people are just beyond pleasing.

Besides the unreleased Hidden Abilities, I haven't seen evidence that blatantly illegal mons, such as WonderTomb, can make it through. Someone even posted ITT that his Hall of Origin Arceus wasn't able to make it through.

How's this possibility:

The Bank gets patched so that every single possible modification is banned. How they would possibly do that? I don't know - I'm not an expert in that area. But if they want to please their consumers, the best solution would be to patch the Bank with extremely strong filters that would recognize even the slightest modification. Any pokemon that is not programmed by GF to be caught in the wild or given by an official NPC - all shall be banned. Not even a single modification will be tolerated. No cloning as well.

There - clean and simple. No hacks, no RNGs, nothing. Just the player and the game and Bank - as it was always meant to be in the first place. Everyone should be happy then.

Keeping my fingers crossed for a new and improved super-patched extra-sensitive-filtering PokeTransporter and Bank.

If it was "always meant to be", then you've eliminated several avenues of obtaining Pokemon such as...you know, breeding and evolution and events. So filtering out anything that isn't an event or an NPC trade or gift means you've easily eliminated a hundred or so Pokemon from ever being obtainable, and that Torchic we all downloaded is now illegal too.

Like it or not, hacks have been around since Gen I. If that "ruins" the gaming experience for you , then I respect that. But the burden should be on you to take your own precautions rather than massively eliminating hundreds of people's legit Pokemon from years of collections just because they bred their Pokemons or attended a past event rather than caught it in the wild.

When I said 'pokemon caught in the wild or given by an NPC', I didn't mean 'ONLY pokemon caught in the wild or given by an NPC' should be able to transferred over (that was not to be taken 'word-by-word'). Event pokemon are obviously okay because they are officially distributed and recognized by GF. Bred pokemon are okay because they are the offsprings of pokemons that were 'caught in the wild or given by an NPC'. Evolved pokemon are okay because they are evolved forms of pokemons that were 'caught in the wild or given by an NPC'. The Torchic is given out by GF and is most certainly legal and of course it is accepted. And before you mention Celebi from Bank - yes, legal and perfectly acceptable.

Any modifications done to the pokemons that is not done/recognized by GF/Nintendo (on an individual, personal level and obviously unofficial )should be banned and unable to get transferred over - is what I meant. Some of the earlier posts say that there is no way to detect a pokemon as long as it is cleverly generated, but I don't know - is it really, utterly, impossible? 100% impossible for professional game developers to create a method to detect cleverly generated hacks?

 

[Drakenred]

the problem is that currently I dont think that there is way to spot a properly coded hack from creating a file that looks EXACTLY LIKE a game generated file unless they go with something like a "three key" encription system just for the RNG seeds that spawned them. and even that would be cripingling for the current generation of systems just from the file size of each mon especialy if you have to keep track of parents-grandparents-greatgrandparetns and so on all the way back.

This could definitely be part of it. If Nintendo doesn't expect to make a significant amount of money from this, and all it does is stress their network anyway, they're likely to ditch the idea. We can hope that they'll allow us to transfer Pokémon through an offline mechanism (like Poké Transfer for Gen IV-->V) such as an update to X and Y or another app. Since we expected a lot of people to just transfer everything during the 30 days and get a free ride from Bank (because way fewer people care about the cloud storage feature), they could conceivably charge us $5 for the offline app and make more money while avoiding server issues. On this thread, I don't see a lot of people saying "I can't wait for Bank to come out so I can have 3000 storage spaces;" they're saying "I want to transfer my Pokémon." The storage idea is clearly far less popular and could be discarded with little impact on sales. They're stuck because they've already promised Bank for everyone and, now, it just seems like a shitty idea on their end. They're also dealing with terrible Wii U sales and a general decline in the console market. So profits are big and they don't have room for mistakes.

Actualy the impresion I have is that profits on games overall have not been that great.

Honestly if they decided hey were going to bundle a App that includes a 3000 slot bank and a transporter, and you just need space on your SD card for it and charged 5.00 for it I would be fine with that because hey storage space is storage space.

 

[randomspot555]

No, if anything it's a bad sign. But I think it probably doesn't mean anything. Nintendo refuses to share any information, and if they wanted to, they wouldn't do it as some coded message on the eShop.

You have done the key of the matter: Nintendo could use the servers as a excuse to not release Bank yet when the problem was only an issue on Christmas. Specially now that the staff are working in full. Which means that there's a possible reason B as a cause of the delay. A economic reason could be a cause of reason B to delay the Bank: 80/90% of Bank user are expected to only transfer their pokes and not use anymore; imagine Bank like a game with 1.000.000 of downloads but only 150.000 pay the service. Imagine that all the games, cost 5$ (for simply), they got 750.000 $, total where taxes are included.

This could definitely be part of it. If Nintendo doesn't expect to make a significant amount of money from this, and all it does is stress their network anyway, they're likely to ditch the idea. We can hope that they'll allow us to transfer Pokémon through an offline mechanism (like Poké Transfer for Gen IV-->V) such as an update to X and Y or another app. Since we expected a lot of people to just transfer everything during the 30 days and get a free ride from Bank (because way fewer people care about the cloud storage feature), they could conceivably charge us $5 for the offline app and make more money while avoiding server issues. On this thread, I don't see a lot of people saying "I can't wait for Bank to come out so I can have 3000 storage spaces;" they're saying "I want to transfer my Pokémon." The storage idea is clearly far less popular and could be discarded with little impact on sales. They're stuck because they've already promised Bank for everyone and, now, it just seems like a shitty idea on their end. They're also dealing with terrible Wii U sales and a general decline in the console market. So profits are big and they don't have room for mistakes.

...that's a whole lot of unsupported conspiracy right there.

Wii U sales are terrible. Has nothing to do with the massive success that is the 3DS or Pokemon.

Yes, the 3DS right now is not as successful as the DS was in its lifespan. Then again, the DS is the most popular portable gaming console of all time with a huge library of games. It is akin to the PS2 for home consoles which had such a long reign and huge gamers still comment about how there's games they still haven't really played on the PS2.

That the 3DS isn't as massively successful as the DS is right now isn't indicative of an overall decline or that the portable console market is dying. It is changing, but it is not dying and in this one area, Nintendo still reigns supreme despite some very well financed opposition from Sony and a looming, but so far unsupported, threat from Microsoft or Apple entering the market.

Considering that some people are disappointed that even legitimate RNGed mons don't get banned by hack checks, I think some people are just beyond pleasing.

Besides the unreleased Hidden Abilities, I haven't seen evidence that blatantly illegal mons, such as WonderTomb, can make it through. Someone even posted ITT that his Hall of Origin Arceus wasn't able to make it through.

How's this possibility:

The Bank gets patched so that every single possible modification is banned. How they would possibly do that? I don't know - I'm not an expert in that area. But if they want to please their consumers, the best solution would be to patch the Bank with extremely strong filters that would recognize even the slightest modification. Any pokemon that is not programmed by GF to be caught in the wild or given by an official NPC - all shall be banned. Not even a single modification will be tolerated. No cloning as well.

There - clean and simple. No hacks, no RNGs, nothing. Just the player and the game and Bank - as it was always meant to be in the first place. Everyone should be happy then.

Keeping my fingers crossed for a new and improved super-patched extra-sensitive-filtering PokeTransporter and Bank.

If it was "always meant to be", then you've eliminated several avenues of obtaining Pokemon such as...you know, breeding and evolution and events. So filtering out anything that isn't an event or an NPC trade or gift means you've easily eliminated a hundred or so Pokemon from ever being obtainable, and that Torchic we all downloaded is now illegal too.

Like it or not, hacks have been around since Gen I. If that "ruins" the gaming experience for you , then I respect that. But the burden should be on you to take your own precautions rather than massively eliminating hundreds of people's legit Pokemon from years of collections just because they bred their Pokemons or attended a past event rather than caught it in the wild.

When I said 'pokemon caught in the wild or given by an NPC', I didn't mean 'ONLY pokemon caught in the wild or given by an NPC' should be able to transferred over (that was not to be taken 'word-by-word'). Event pokemon are obviously okay because they are officially distributed and recognized by GF. Bred pokemon are okay because they are the offsprings of pokemons that were 'caught in the wild or given by an NPC'. Evolved pokemon are okay because they are evolved forms of pokemons that were 'caught in the wild or given by an NPC'. The Torchic is given out by GF and is most certainly legal and of course it is accepted. And before you mention Celebi from Bank - yes, legal and perfectly acceptable.

Any modifications done to the pokemons that is not done/recognized by GF/Nintendo (on an individual, personal level and obviously unofficial )should be banned and unable to get transferred over - is what I meant. Some of the earlier posts say that there is no way to detect a pokemon as long as it is cleverly generated, but I don't know - is it really, utterly, impossible? 100% impossible for professional game developers to create a method to detect cleverly generated hacks?

I know it is a fine distinction, but it is still a distinction. A Pokemon is just data at its, core, 1s and 0s or code or whatever. The source of that code is irrelevant as long as it meets the legal parameters of the game. A Pokemon generated form an external program can be just as legal as the Pokemon you just caught on Route 2 as long as it is produced and it falls within the legal boundaries of the game. This is why I've always referred to Bank's hack check as a legality check, because that's what it checks. If a Pokemon is legal, not if its hacked.

 

[Almonds]

I know it is a fine distinction, but it is still a distinction. A Pokemon is just data at its, core, 1s and 0s or code or whatever. The source of that code is irrelevant as long as it meets the legal parameters of the game. A Pokemon generated form an external program can be just as legal as the Pokemon you just caught on Route 2 as long as it is produced and it falls within the legal boundaries of the game. This is why I've always referred to Bank's hack check as a legality check, because that's what it checks. If a Pokemon is legal, not if its hacked.

Still, I do hope GF will find a way to filter any unofficial mons.

 

[SobriquetP]

On this thread, I don't see a lot of people saying "I can't wait for Bank to come out so I can have 3000 storage spaces;" they're saying "I want to transfer my Pokémon." The storage idea is clearly far less popular and could be discarded with little impact on sales. They're stuck because they've already promised Bank for everyone and, now, it just seems like a shitty idea on their end. They're also dealing with terrible Wii U sales and a general decline in the console market. So profits are big and they don't have room for mistakes.

Its not a "terrible" idea per say. I mean, the minute it comes out I am starting a new game with unique starters.
It is a neat idea... whenever we actually get it.

Sadly I this might be one of the few subscriptions that I actually keep all the way through uni since I can actually afford it. XD
Let's just hope Pokemon does not sabotage my quest for higher knowledge.

 

[Johnny Boy]

So Nintendo finally tweeted something related to the bank today and said that more will be announced about it in the "future". Gee, I wonder how far away "the future" is.