The Current VGC Format Actually Rewards Cheating.

[evilsabre]

Apologies for the huge wall of text (about 2k words in all) but i just had to talk about something that i feel does poison the top of the competitive VGC and i just want to make i very clear i'm talking about national and worlds here not casual JFlynn tourneys

Ok so before I begin I’m just going to make a quick statement so hopefully no one takes this as an attack on how they choose to play the game. I personally have no issue with the use of genning or powersaves to create legal pokemon for use in Justins tournaments or for casual battles. My entire issue with them is in regards to the top level of competitive play so nationals and worlds, where they create an uneven playing field leading up to these tournaments.

Ok now that’s said on to the main reason behind why I’m posting this, well the primary reason is hopefully to change the way some people might currently be thinking in regards to competitive play and powersaves. And in doing so hopefully improve the format as a whole, additionally if anyone from the organising bodies of VGC happen to see this then hopefully it will help them understand what they can do to help minimise the effect of cheating in future championships.

Ok so firstly what cheating am I mainly referring to being advantageous? For the most part I’m going to focus on Powersaving and genning of pokemon for competitive use particularly Powersaving. So some people might be wondering what is powersaving. Powersaving is the use of a tool to edit the save data of your pokemon game and it allows you to give yourself items, complete your pokedex and even customise your pokemon specifically its IV’s, EV’s nature etc, you can even make it shiny if you so wish. While it is possible to make illegal pokemon doing this they are easily detected and are barred from competitive play including the online ranked ladder. However legal pokemon created using this method are very difficult to detect if not impossible with current technology being used.

So what’s the problem with these legal pokemon I mean they are not anything that can’t be obtained in game so are they even illegal at VGC events? Well they are illegal as the break the team restrictions I’ve pasted the relevant part of the rules below.

2.1. Illegally Manipulated Pokémon The use of external devices, such as a mobile app, to modify or create items or Pokémon in a player’s Battle Box is expressly forbidden. Players found to have Pokémon or items that have been tampered with will be disqualified from competition, regardless of whether the Pokémon or items belong to that player or were traded for. POP recommends players only use Pokémon that they have raised themselves and items that they have received through normal gameplay. It is always the player’s responsibility to have legal Pokémon and items during the competition.
Source: Play! Pokémon VG Tournament Rules & Formats, Revised: December 4, 2014.

The key part in all this is “The use of external devices, such as a mobile app, to modify or create items or Pokémon”. This line is pretty clear in full it means that no item or pokemon in the battle box you submit to the tournament can contain a pokemon that was not obtained legitimately in the game. But do they have a notable effect on the outcome on potential trainers well in the vast majority of cases the impact is minor when compared to an established breeder who can breed a competitive pokemon in under a day (approx 2-4 hours for me from 0 iv and wrong nature given I want a 5 iv pokemon at the end). Even when compared to a novice breeder it might take them say a week at most playing 5 hours a day (so 25-30 hours more than likely a lot less than this).  However this starts to change when event and legendary pokemon (other no egg pokemon as well although I think the only pokemon not covered by legends is unkown and ditto all others have parents or baby forms that can breed) start to get involved. These pokemon can only obtained once and have at least some element of random stats and nature. This means the only way to obtain them legitimately is to soft reset until you get the perfect one and as many people will know this is often a very timely process especially when compared to powersaving to edit the pokemons stats.

ok getting too long inserting amusing picture to lighten the mood


So this still doesn’t create an unfair advantage does it I mean they are still legal in terms of stats right?

Technically yes but let me explain why these power saved mons can create an unfair advantage for cheaters over legitimate trainers. Mostly the cost is not in the tournament itself but in the time leading up to the tournament. So why is this time creating an unfair advantage, well it really stems down to practice time a professional trainer could lose months of practice time across a year simply due to soft resetting for their legendary especially for certain hidden power sets.  Since I’m soft resetting for one currently let’s take Zapdos as an example. When soft resetting for my Zapdos I use a synchroniser to get the correct nature 50% of the time I also want hp ice so I need 30 in defence and less than 31 in attack(about 50% of the attack values are fine it just cannot be selected to be 31 in the 3 guaranteed 31’s) therefore:

WARNING MATHS

(1/2)*(4/6)*(3/5)*(2/4)*(2/32)*(1/32)*(1/2) = 1/10240

In English this is:
(chance of correct nature)*(1st guaranteed iv is not att or def)* (2nd guaranteed stat)*( 3rd guaranteed stat)*(chance that remaining stat is 30/31)*(chance for 30 def)* (approx. chance for hp ice from the attack stat).

Or in shiny terms I’m going to see 2.5 shiny Zapdos before I get the one I want (without shiny charm).

Assuming 1 reset a minute, this will take on average 7.1 days straight, 14 days at 12 hours a day or 34 days at 5 hours a day.

Now this is an extreme case but you get the gist to get just a 5iv (30 or 31) its 1/1024 which is slightly more realistic but this will still take someone 17 hours on average (at 1 reset per min).

So say you want a thunderous and landerous for your team and you want hp ice on your thunderous. The result is that this will take you combined time of 187 hours on average or 7.8 days straight, about 16 days at 12 hours a day and an entire month at 6 hours a day. If you were planning on doing this after the rules came out you only have 1 month remaining before Winter regionals. So you would get half the practice of the other trainer or even less if you were planning to swap in another legend into your team. It’s pretty common knowledge that practice is very important to doing well at international events and loosing 50% of your practice time could have a significant impact on your performance.

However the most damming evidence for why Powersaves create an unfair advantage is with event pokemon such as the ice punch ttar from last year this pokemon had a random nature that could not be affected by synchronise and fully random stats. If you wanted to powersave yourself the perfect competitive one it would take less than a day. However to get a perfect nature pokemon with 5 iv’s at 30-31 would be:

(1/25)*(2/32)^5 = 1/26214400           yea that’s 1 in 26 million

Which would take using 1 reset a minute approximately 49-50 years straight or 100 years at 12 hours a day, In other words the average legit trainer would have died before getting this pokemon but the average powersaver would be free to use it at a tournament next week if they wanted to.

Sadly it’s only just been a year since the last case of confirmed hacking in competitive VGC with Ray Rizzo using a dream ball aegislash at US nationals last year, while it didn’t affect the result of the match (Ray lost and was eliminated from the tournament as a result) It does show a significant fault with Nintendo’s detection and enforcement of the rules at important events.

A reason for why powersaves on legendries can create an unhealthy meta is tied to the fact that landorous and thunderous are both huge powerhouses in the meta currently sitting at 2 and 4 on the most common picks.  (Heatran is at 6 and terrakion and crescelia have both been on the list at some point as well)This alone doesn’t create an unfair advantage or particuly encourage cheating but the due to the fact that both these pokemon put a heavy load on teambuilding and if a new trainer doesn’t have the time to reset for legends they will struggle immensely to make a team that works as the beginner friendly teams are supposed to involve a lot of soft resetting. If power saving were impossible I suspect these pokemon wouldn’t be as predominant as a lot of people would use the next best rather than soft reset, which in turn opens up to more flexible teambuilding which creates a better environment for new players rather than creating a huge temptation to powersave.
This temptation to powersave exists for all players but is especially prevalent for players new to the scene.

So what can Nintendo do about it, well to borrow the words from Gabe Newell (pasted it below if you’re interested) on piracy powersaving is a service problem.  

“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
Source: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vie...ce-Problem

What this means is that you can never get rid of it the only way to overcome it is to make the legitimate way more convienient that the illegal way or atleast comparable. In all honesty Nintendo and Gamefreak have started to do this gen 6 breeding changes, egg moves via dex nav, a better base shiny chance and legendries getting 3 31 iv’s guaranteed .  But in my opinion the only change that will really make legitimate players able to evenly match Powersavers is to ban legendries and event pokemon from tournaments which then means all competitive pokemon can be bred excluding ditto and unknown.

Hopefully I’ve shown you that the current VGC format encourages powersaving due to the centralisation around legendaries and the time cost of soft resetting disadvantages legitimate players while the mechanic gives cheaters more time to practice. I also hope that I have hopefully swayed a few towards the idea that the best option to deal with this is not to try to stop powersaved mons existing but remove the biggest offenders of the advantage gained by banning legendries and event mons in vgc 2016 and beyond.

congratulations you finished here's another amusing picture :D


TLDR: You really should read the whole thing but here’s a very brief version: powersaving is not a huge edge until you get to legendries and event pokemon, time cost of soft resetting disadvantages legit players (I did the math, you can even die before getting the mon you want in some cases), since legendries are big offenders and dominate the meta they encourage players to powersave to get them, this advantage could be dramatically reduced by banning legendries and event pokemon from vgc in the future.