Pokémon

(10-27-2010 03:50 AM)Pierrot Wrote:  I don't understand how No Dream World Abilities are allowed, yet we have a Tierless Gameplay... Garchomp with no Dream World Abilities in OU sounds silly. Drought and Drizzle could help balance Garchomp and other Sandstorm Teams so we can Tier up.

If we they don't allow Dream World Abilities, then maybe we should introduce the new guys into the Old tiers and go from there...


The concept that ''Dream World Abilities haven't been released'' and so should be banned is silly imo. When we found out about EVs/IVs because of hacking, they were used widespread. (Wasn't EV's mechanics released in Gen4 'legally'?)

The game isn't "no dream world abilities." Right now the most popular sim is Pokemon Online because Pokemon Lab (shoddy 2) cannot get its act together about Gen V. Beyond that, both sims have decided they aren't following smogon's lead but are instead having their own members and users and their admin make tiering decisions. PO's decision is to have two modes of gameplay, Dream World mode in which unreleased DW abilities and unreleased pokemon like Kerudio and Genesect are legal, and Wi-Fi mode in which only released versions are legal. It also isn't without a banlist. Mewtwo, Lugia, Ho-Oh, Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Giratina, Giratina-O, Dialga, Palkia, Reshiram and Zekrom are all banned, with Darkrai and Deoxys-A likely to get banned soon as well. I feel like it's a pretty decent compromise, creating two metagames to serve people who want both things.

I play wi-fi pretty exclusively, and honestly Garchomp's not hard to deal with without DW. The issue with Chomp in Gen IV was that there were no safe swap-ins to him since no matter what swap-in you named one of his sets beat it. Now? That's less true. Latios beats HabanChomp, YacheChomp, and EQ-locked Choice Chomp. Scarf Sanzado beats them as well (requires some prior damage on Haban chomp, but with priority running around that's no big deal). Truth is, Garchomp is just much less dangerous. Sand is centralizing but it's not hard to beat. It's just one of the best offenses. You can still have better non-sand offense and there are still plenty of ways to beat sand (not the least of which being to throw a balloon on a ground weak pokemon and let it wreak havoc as they try to KO it the first time and wind up with their guy dead instead. BalloonHeatran is a hilarious sand answer). Sand being centralizing isn't a bad thing and, in my opinion, is likely to be temporary since there are so many ways to beat it that people are discovering (Rotom-W's usage is skyrocketing, for example, whereas it used to be hardly used).

After your pokémon take some special marijuana dream smoke, they go off to the dream world, where they can find pokémon with different abilities like Flash Fire on a Charizard or somesuch.

I basically skimmed over it for two seconds at some point. Bulbapedia would probably be more informative, except for the bit where it doesn't appear to be, so maybe Serebii or I don't know any other pokémon resources.


I don't know about whether or not these are actually available yet? If not, I guess it'd be like (using a CMC analogy) arguing for the use of illegitimately obtained Beg, Borrow & Steals, as they're coded but never distributed, whereas the equivalent manipulation of IVs and EVs would maybe be deliberate "farming" of Secret cards? Maybe?

So it's like how the Pokewalker could give you a Pikachu with fly, right?

" EVs and IVs were never coded but unreleased though, they were just hidden values. "
What.

EVs/IVs were released in the Platinum Players Guide (I believe for the first time). They are 'legal', and were thought of as legal before officially released. The Metagame used them before then.

As far as I know, and no one has been able to show me otherwise and I've asked around but no one seems to know, is that in Gen I,II,III no one knew about IVs/EVs outside of learning from others who learned from others, etc. who found out by hacking.


As for Dream World abilities.
They aren't available yet in their entirety, a few of the Eeveelutions are, and Croagunk and a couple of ''random'' others are being or have been released.

But yes, that's a good way to put it (comparing it to CMC).

@Ken: Whether or not you CAN beat something was never really an issue. The reason things are shifted from one Tier to the other (Or banned all together, Arceus?) is because the game -becomes centralized- on =One= team aspect. In this case Sandstorm. People don't like ONLY playing in Sandstorm.

You're right that it could ''pass'' and people will try other things, and hopefully that is the case, but I just feel that we'd get to a ''steady'' metagame faster if things were more cohesive.

Having to cheat to use something is different from having to cheat to know about it.

In Gen II though, it would be entirely possible to at random catch an Abra with maxed Sp Atk and Speed IVs, use a bunch of Calciums and Carbos, then grind in such a way that you only ever earned Sp Atk and Speed EVs, thus maxing out those values in that way without ever knowing about those values.

It's also plausible that they could have worked out aspects of the system themselves without being informed or through illegitimate means.

It would be incredibly apparent by catching a few of the same pokémon that they don't get the same stats - to assume that this is due to some sort of randomised hidden values would probably be the most sensible assumption you could make on the matter, from a code perspective. Even without consideration for code, you could deliberately go for a pokémon with 'high' stats if resetting for a female starter, for example (I in fact did this prior to learning of IVs and EVs).

I had, prior to learning about IVs and EVs, on occasion had a pokémon level up and gain some ridiculous amounts of stats like +10 rather than the usual +3 or so. I don't believe that I ever made the connection to the fact that I was wandering around a low level area and had killed maybe some 40 of the same level 7 pokémon rather than a small handful of varied trainers, but it wouldn't be a huge stretch to imagine that some people did make that connection. Nor would it be a huge stretch to imagine that a handful of those people were inquisitive enough to investigate this and perhaps notice that grinding Magikarps increases your speed while grinding Slowpokes increases your HP.

Given all of the above, it's entirely possible to get a pokémon with maxed/good IVs and EVs either by chance or by inferring an incomplete knowledge of the mechanics.

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To contrast with this, you can't at the moment just go and accidentally catch a Dratini with Marvel Scale, or farm Mareeps until you get one with Plus. Hacking is literally the only way to obtain these.


EDIT: TL;DR, what Nacho said.

Centralization is not why Garchomp was banned. Or, rather, it's why a number of users found Garchomp to be worth banning, but it's really not the thing that actually made it get banned. The first time around the ban was because literally nothing could swap in and beat the SDYache set without dying to it. It was guaranteed one kill. While there were a few exceptions (CBWeavile, SpecsStarmie, a few others), none of them could swap in on LITERALLY ANY OTHER GARCHOMP SET because they'd all die if they tried. The second test was because Latias was OU for a while and a number of members thought that would be enough for Garchomp to be OU. The problem there was they just started using SDHaban as well. Anything that beat Yache lost to Haban, CB, or Scarf. Anything that bet Haban lost to yache, CB, or scarf. Anything that beat either of the choice sets lost to one of the SD sets or, sometimes, they even just lost to the CB Set predicting them coming in and not outraging/earthquaking but instead using stone edge or fire fang.

Centralization isn't a problem because the metagame is always going to centralize around something. Without Chomp the Meta became Salamence centric. Mence was eventually banned because after playing with it for years people realized that there was, once again, literally nothing that could swap in on both sets. It got banned. The metagame then became Heatran centric based around fire/water/grass cores. Heatran is amazingly strong. The metagame is clearly centered around him, since most teams are built around the concept of using Heatran and guys that work well with Heatran and guys that beat Heatran. The thing is, that's not a problem because Heatran is beatable. There are several things that can always swap in on him. People have centralized around Tran because it's the best at doing the things they're trying to do, so why would they use anything else? That sort of centralization is actually rather healthy.

And yeah, Masa's right. A lot of the stat formula was known prior to hackers. In fact, the great ancestors of EVs, stat EXP, were actually hinted at in both R/B/Y in-game and Pokemon Stadium 2. Never fully explained, you were told by a number of people that killing certain pokemon made certain stats better. They didn't elaborate, but that's really the jist of how EVs and stat EXP work.

The fact that Stats were different and Pokemon grew differently was known from Gen I. How this happened was not.
And it is true that it is possible to catch/breed/attain a Pokemon with Perfect IV's and Perfect EV spreads and useful nature without a cheating device; however. That is not what the community exclusively uses to determine a hacked Pokemon.
I can have a Perfect Mew, but the likelihood of it being Legit will be questioned and not many people will no like to exchange for it.

There's also the fact that RNG Abuse is widely accepted as ''cheating'' and not ''legit''. The line was drawn not at possible but probable. Just because you can set your DS at twenty years into the future, flip your journal pages the correct number of times, and talk to some guy at three seconds after 1o pm does not mean it is accepted as a 'legit' way of attaining a Pokemon. EV's were the same, while possible, not probable. The metagame turned the other way to them at the time because they added new layers to the game, ones that they believe would be released by Nintendo/Pokemon anyway-- which is where we are with Dream World Abilities. They are an aspect not yet released, but known to exist through hacking.

The question isn't one of discovery, it's one of how its acheivable. I can IV breed, EV train, and soft reset to get pokemon with the sort of stats I need all without hacking. I cannot get a drizzle Politoed without hacking. There's plenty of precedence for this in the competitive community. Shaymin, Darkrai, and Arceus were all banned from competitive play until they could be legitimately achieved without glitch abuse or hacking. Mew was available to hackers in Gen 1, but was also banned from competitive play (smogon doesn't even have a gen 1 Mew entry despite the fact that it was totally achievable in the cartridge through hacking or glitch abuse simply because it was always banned from all Nintendo events and competitive players on gen 1 sims have continued this ban, just like they ban missingno). The precedent for banning things that are not achievable in the cartridge without hacking has existed since gen 1. It never had anything to do with how those things were discovered, only with whether or not legit players could have it.

Also, you act like there's a strong community decision about RNG abuse (there isn't and there never has been), or even about whether hackers should only hack "probable" things instead of "possible" things (I'm all for hacking anything possible, because it creates the most even playing field to have everyone have max IVs. Many other competitive players agree with this justification. After all, if you're sick of losing to hackers because your IVs are bad, you can just spend 10 dollars and hack for yourself, or you could even, you know, ask and most will hack teams for you). That doesn't even count the number of newbies who hack anything they can get away with. Ever had a Weavile waterfall your Infernape on Wi-Fi? It happened to me five times, each against a different player. Shit, I even participated in a league for pokemon made with hacks that aren't at all possible in-game (mold-breaker starmie balanced out all of the volt absorbers, flash fire abusers, and other pokemon that tried to use abilities to cover type weaknesses).

I play pokemon!

Having played more competitive gen IV, I've gotta say, this is easily the most diverse gen in a long time. While some can complain about the centralizing effects of permaweather, the fact is they're not that hard to handle. There are so many totally viable threats and there are tons of viable ways to check most of them, too. While this does make the competitive environment a bit heavy for people who are trying to be seriously competitive (like me) casual competitive players will love this gen.

If you're the sort of player that likes finding new and crazy strategies, this is the gen for you. Tons of dreamworld abilities present strategies you can base whole teams on (Smeargle with inconsistent gets a random stat boost and a random stat penalty every turn and can pass them, enabling odd, inconsistent, but occasionally insanely powerful teams), and there are tons of new moves that make previously overlooked pokemon viable threats (shell break makes Gorebyss a top-tier threat, especially since it can baton pass the insane boosts). While it may create unfun moments of "what, how does that work, how did I even lose to that?" (there are so many pokemon that can totally pull a surprise "gotcha" win that are being discovered, and I doubt we'll find all of them even a few months after its American release), players who want to be able to make a team out of almost anything will be hard to disappoint. Looking at a number of previously "totally outclassed" pokemon, a number of changes have made them suddenly different enough to be totally viable without making them clearly outclass the previous standard-use pokemon (Infernape vs Blaziken is a great example of this, with Infernape having iron fist + mach punch as well as Grass knot and Nasty Plot to give you several reasons to use him, while Blaziken has speed boost making him an insanely powerful threat).

Permaweather? As in hail no longer goes away after 5 turns? Or as in there are more pokemon with the Snow Warning ability?

Permaweather is any weather brought about by an ability, since it won't end unless it's replaced by another form of weather. There are four forms of permaweather (no permafog, which makes sense, since no pokemon can bring about fog with a move, and permafog would suck a giant hairy cock), drought (Groudon, permasun), Drizzle (Kyogre, permarain), Sand stream (Tyranitar and Hippowdon, permasand) and Snow Warning (Abomasnow, permahail). Perma-sand was kind of a big deal in OU in gen IV, but mostly because Hippo and Tar are really, really good, and because sand helped Garchomp's ability (while he was legal), and got rid of leftovers recovery making it useful for offense to help beat stall and stall to help beat bulky offense. This is how things were in gen IV. In Gen V...

Drought was given to ninetales. There's now permasun in OU. Drizzle was given to politoed. There's now permarain in OU. Some pokemon were given abilities that double speed in sand, as well as abilities that increase the damage of ground, rock, and steel moves in sand. Suddenly sand as a permaweather doesn't mean something as small as "no lefties recovery" to help wear down bulky pokemon. It means "my Doryuuzu is now only killable via mach punch or aqua jet" [/exaggeration]. Hail gained no new abilities, but ice body and snow cloak were given to a bunch of new pokemon and I've heard that it increases ice-move damage and increases the defense of ice pokemon (like how sand storm increases the SpD of rock pokemon) -- I have yet to become interested enough to find out of this is true or was just an early rumor. In my opinion it doesn't help hail since hail's main problem is that you have to use ice types, and ice types are generally bad. The only real weapon hail gets is walrein, and I personally don't think any of the new ice body pokemon are better than him (some think there are a few, but they're mono-ice types, and that's a huge disadvantage since it's easily the worst typing in the game).

Still, perma-weather is kind of a big deal right now, and enables some off-the-wall strategies (shell-break mixGorebyss in rain is indeed something I've played against, and while it didn't do much to me, seeing it happen in front of me was startling).

Hacking to attain knowledge v hacking to attain a Pokemon is still Hacking.

My point is that the community is torn between what's Ok to hack and what isn't, sure a lot of people hack ''attainable'' pokemon, but that is seen as wrong by many.
Why would 'hacking' dreamwolrd abilities be any different? Yes, I understand that you CAN reset for a long time, the thing is that the game is set up to make Perfect pokemon exteremly RARE. Not common like they are because of Hacking. This makes ''good mews'' and ''good lucarios'' really difficult to find; but that isn't the case in the current game. ''Good'' IVs are standard, it 'removed' that aspect of rarity from the metagame because it wanted to. What I am saying is that dream world abilities have a legitimate place in the metagame and would help the game rather than hurt it, where now there seems to be a 'but its hacking!?!?!' craze that is going on when before for the sake of the game hacking is overlooked.


Also... Mew was attainable in Gen1... There was an event. I went to it. Why would they ban an attainable Pokemon if it was legit? (Inconsistency...)

No, there's a fairly vital difference. I hack a copy of pokémon to discover a bunch of stuff. I then play a second copy of pokémon normally. That second copy of the game has been hacked or received hacked pokémon, despite me playing with knowledge gained from hacking.

That's the state of things with regard to IVs and EVs and such - the knowledge doesn't alter the game in anyway. If I go read up on the topic on gamefaqs and then play my game, it hasn't been hacked. Everything's legit, it's just that I'm now able to min/max more effectively.

It's almost the same as looking up the % chance of moves like Hypnosis and Spore working: there's nothing in-game that says what the odds of them working or not are, so if someone hacks the game to find that out, posts it online, and someone looks it up, and decides to raise a pokémon that knows Spore, is that hacking?

Is knowing that Confuse Ray has 100% accuracy just as much of a hack as cheating to get a Drought Ninetails that is impossible to obtain otherwise?

The thing with IVs is that it depends more on luck than on skill. Worse, it depends on luck and on how long you're willing to tolerate the mindnumbing boredom of catching/breeding lots of barely distinguishable Pokemon and checking which is best.

(11-25-2010 11:01 AM)masamunemaniac Wrote:  It's almost the same as looking up the % chance of moves like Hypnosis and Spore working: there's nothing in-game that says what the odds of them working or not are, so if someone hacks the game to find that out, posts it online, and someone looks it up, and decides to raise a pokémon that knows Spore, is that hacking?

Go to the status screen for a pokemon, move to their movelist. Hit A. You can now check each of its four moves. That check tells you the move's accuracy, base power, and gives you a brief description of the move's effects. You don't have to use a guide or hack to know stone edge is a 100 base power rock move with 80 accuracy because the game tells you. You also don't need to in order to know Spore has 100 accuracy because, again, the game tells you. That said, to figure out what the numbers mean, you do need a guide.

Pierot, despite the event happening during gen 1, it is recognized as being part of gen 2. I believe this is because Gen 2 was already out in Japan before Japan had the first Mew event. I may be wrong about the reasoning, but the result is gen 1 competitive players ban Mew as being part of gen 2.

Uhh, that was a bad example (a really bad example).

Pretend I used Ember's 10% chance of burning the target instead, which isn't mentioned anywhere in-game (I think).

Or, you could use the example of the chance to hit, with all the factors included.
I assume that speed has a factor, but without actually knowing the equation involved (obtainable only via "hacking") you wouldn't know the exact equation.

This may not make sense/be factually correct.

The other thing to note is that the numbers and mechanics wouldn't have been unknown to everybody prior to the game being hacked - presumably they don't isolate the coders while they're working on each game and then summarily execute them on its release. That'd just be really expensive (and while they can probably afford to do that now, it would've been impractical back in first gen).