[labarith]

Oddly, though, I want in game cloning.

Maybe reduce the clone to level 1 w/o EVs... but it's a competitive staple, and would help you share pokemon.

The fact is that you can "glitch clone" most everything by the GTS (or at least could in G4... haven't checked G5), and it's one of the main things that (non-hacking) competitive players use game sharks/etc. for.

If I had to do an in-game cloning mechanism, I'd have the bad guys be interested in repeating the cloning experiments that lead to Mewtwo, and you'd be able to clone any non-legendary, non-event-ribbon pokemon. Your cloned pokemon would be at level 1 of the pokemon's lowest possible evolution state (thus giving you a non-breeding way to get Munchlax) and have all it's current moves it could learn at that state (IE, no Jolteons to Eevees with thunder). It would also have a "cloned" icon on it's info screen, and PERHAPS it would be in a different colorscheme (think that Mewtwo movie, or just a different non-shiny and shiny forms). This wouldn't really add much to the pokemon's data (a single data point - cloned or no). All mewtwo would be clones, while no legendary could be cloned in this way. (There's no male chansey sprite, so I don't see this as a problem to do and not do up cloned forms for Mew, and normal forms for Mewtwo).

To keep it reasonable, have cloning of pokemon be super-expensive. In-game, you'll probably be prompted to clone your eevee so you can get a different eeveeolution.

Technologywise, we can revive fricking fossils. Surely cloning a pokemon in this way wouldn't be unreasonable, technologywise, in the game. The only downside is that it'd have very little "in-game" use. Again, cloning for preevolutions and alternate evolutions is useful, but it is already doable in-game as is. However, here at smogon we know how often we clone pokemon to do up different movesets and different EV sets for competitive battling. This would let us do that w/o using a cheating device... even if it would make us completely re-ev the pokemon.

On a completely unrelated note, I think they should make a "learn by experience" mechanic such that if your pokemon can learn flamethrower at level 50, and it is in a battle where someone uses it while it's at level 5, it should have a chance to learn that move (say 10-25%?). This would also allow you to do moves that can't be learned any other way, moves that are learned at level 101 in-game, which means they can only be learned by witnessing an opponent use them in battle.