Event Moves

Previously these haven't been too controversial, but I think we might want to consider a shift of policy toward a ban on them or at the very least do a whole lot more research on them. I first had concerns after seeing this topic:

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38850

Evidently Jolly Tickle Wobbuffet has been causing trouble, but I have to wonder, is such a thing even possible? All my research into the matter has revealed that very, very few people have a Tickle Wynaut to the point that it is pretty literally impossible to get a legitimate one ingame, and the only case I could find that told about the nature was a Lonely nature (+atk, -def) which is a nature that Wobbuffet obviously cannot use on a serious set. To be clear about it for those who are uninformed, Pokemon who are not the product of breeding always have extremely limited stats (which is soon to be reflected accurately in Shoddy Battle both for unbreedable Pokemon and XD move Pokemon) so the odds of them being totally unrestricted as they are currently held to be are extremely thin.

Lyfsaho seems to be the only person in the thread who had any clue about the Wynaut legality business, and his post agreed with my concerns:

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1091557&postcount=80

Tickle Wynaut is the most recently relevant case, but this sort of problem applies to all event moves. Were the natures limited? Were all IVs possible? Was gender predetermined? Why should we even allow something that a player today has literally no opportunity to obtain? It's not reflective of how the game is at all; no one ingame can use Wish Blissey or Tickle Wobbuffet so why should we consider them legal sets for simulators?

I suggest we flat out ban these moves. On principle I'm already sketchy about allowing moves that you can only kind of get ingame, but the fact that users of these moves are pretty much guaranteed to be using illegal stats which we have no capacity to check for puts it over the top for me. At the very least they should be under Extended Game Clause with Arceus and the unobtainable berries which would make them banned from ladder play. Colin has expressed that he thinks banning them is a sound idea, but this is a more general policy question that the Pokemon community needs to weigh in on. Thoughts?

For the record, I'm not suggesting we ban the three event only Pokemon: Mew, Deoxys, and Arceus. Arceus already has the Extended Game Clause treatment, Deoxys was able to be caught wild after attending the event, and wasn't Mew able to be caught wild after an event in Japan? Either way, the worst case scenario with them is that we end up subtly condoning hacking event items which isn't a terrible crime really.

I'm inclined to agree with this... we don't know anything about event moves, and Nintendo are jackasses for not making information about them publicly available.

I definitely agree with banning event stuff if we don't have enough information about the event to reasonably know what the Pokemon actually had.

For more documented cases where trustworthy people actually have said Pokemon and can provide data for it (Wish Blissey, for example), it's a bit sketchier, although we still have the issue of not knowing what IVs are legit.

I think AA summed up the arguments quite well. I'd definitely be for an Event Move ban.

In addition, I'm very curious about changes made to Shoddy regarding unbreedable Pokémon. Can you provide any more information on that at this time? Regardless, I'm looking forward to it. Sounds like it'll balance the game a bit more.

I made a post about our stance on Event moves once, though admittedly it was only concercing "single-natured" cases. I don't really have much knowledge on IV distribution among Event Pokémon, I was under the impression that they could have any possible IVs, so 31 across the board could well be possible, even if extremely unlikely, but if that was the case having Event Pokémon with 31/31/31/31/31/31 on Shoddy would be fair. I'm more inclined to find out a lot more on such matters before we straight out ban them, but I can see the reasons as to why they should. Everyone's "used" to using said Event moves in standards, but you can make the same arguments as to why we shouldn't use them. We have no clue about the legitemacy, so it's probably best not to have them on Shoddy until we know more, rather than to have them only to find out their illegit at a later date.

I'll bring up a few scenario's in which Event Pokémon have certain Natures:

Charmander (2007 Birthday Memories) [Always Male]
Pokémon Center Tokyo
Special Moves - Howl & Quick Attack
Nature - Must be Mild

Numerous versions of the "Surfing Pikachu" that have to use certain Natures. Namely the Hardy version from the TCG Event or Pokémon Battle Revolution. (Must be Female?)

I'm sure there are a few more, but off the top of my head this is all. Though I think I recall Mew having Teleport or Aura Sphere having to be Quirky Natured. Not sure though.

Anyway, it's evident that in Diamond & Pearl, a Surf Pikachu must be of the Hardy Nature, no? Yet we've enforced nothing to stop players having any Nature of their choosing. Why? It's obvious we shouldn't be allowed, so I'm completely for this being enforced as long as the IV distribution is resolved.

I know that Surfing Pikachu and Howl + Quick Attack Charmander (lol) aren't amazing Pokémon, nor would they see much real competitive use. But there's still the fact that we need to be 100% sure on how legit these things are before we think of including them on a simulator. The same can be said for every Pokémon's IV distribution. But the fact of the matter is, for Event-Only Pokémon, we actually might not be able to get the IV distribution spot on, so what would we do then? Ban all Event-Only Pokémon from standard play? Even if they have no Special Moves? Celebi is the main "worry".

I might be able to help towards proceedings, as I have up-teen 10ANNIV Pokémon from the Event (nmerous copies of each, all different), and around 16~ different versions of the Aura Mew from the UK as well. If you want me to jot down all the IVs incase they will help with gathering more information, then I'll be glad to. But do we even know if these Event Pokémon follow the same IV distribution as their in-game friends?

Anyway, I've waffled on long enough now. I agree with Amazing Ampharos completely to be honest, if we don't know of something's legitemacy 100%, or don't know if the 31/31/31/31/31/31 IVs are possible, they obviously shouldn'tbe allowed until proven otherwise. I give this my full support because I believe the simulator should simulate the game as much as possible. If I can think of anything more to add, I will do.

Actually, I'm not 100% sure on banning XD moves (if you were including those)... Just find out the possible IVs for the Pokémon IMO.

XD moves won't be banned. Neither will moves from Pokemon Box or Pokemon Battle Revolution. We would also assume all Jirachi came from the Colosseum Bonus Disc or PAL Pokemon Channel and that all Celebi came from the Japanese Bonus Disc (based on current knowledge, we're treating both as ordinary legendaries for the purposes of IV/nature restrictions since there's no indication that they are generated differently from standard wild Pokemon statistically).

Basically, here's the short version. You'll have to ask X-Act about the long version. When a Pokemon is created by the game, it generates some PIDs that are basically random numbers. These are used to create all the internal values of the Pokemon such as shininess, gender, nature, trait (if multiple), Unown letter, Spinda spot pattern, Wurmple evolution path, IVs, and nature. I believe the game also handles Shellos and Gastrodon color with these values, forcing particular outcomes depending on location, but I'm not sure nor is it important. There are fewer combinations of PIDs than there are possible combinations of IVs and nature alone; that means some combinations are impossible. In fact, only 2-6 natures are possible for any arbitrary IV combination. Before you get concerned about it affecting all Pokemon, you have to remember how breeding works. The "inheritance" of IVs from parents happens after the PIDs are run so some IVs can be overwritten which ends up making every combination possible (incidentally, the reason XD moves were mentioned alongside unbreedables is that Pokemon with XD moves are subject to the same nature/IV restrictions as unbreedables - Pokemon Box moves should be the same way). As per how Shoddy Battle will mimic this, I'll just say everyone will be able to see for themselves shortly.

The problem with event Pokemon is that it's known they frequently have restricted PID ranges in order to force certain natures, genders, shininess, etc (that's not completely accurate; we know they have variable IVs with limited natures so restricted PID ranges is the most plausible explanation). We would either need a clue in from the people at Nintendo at how it works or a very large sample size of event Pokemon to examine. Even if we found 20 different people with every event we may not be able to crack the algorithms, and that's ridiculously optimistic anyway. For most events, we will probably only be able to find 1 or 2 legitimate cases. It's even worse insofar as the event moves could be hacked to produce a seemingly legitimate Pokemon who just happens to have event illegal PIDs (but ingame legal PIDs) which would muddy the water further. As of right now, we're assuming that Pikachu and Raichu's forced Hardy, female, and non-shiny nature don't affect IVs though more thorough research into the matter is needed since that is probably not true. At least it's possible to research that as the sample size is infinite and it's not impossible for someone to hack Pokemon Battle Revolution to discover the exact mechanics in the future. Likewise, traits and genders for XD and Box Pokemon probably are involved in the limited combinations so some research into that mechanic would be needed for us to fully accurately simulate it. Luckily, none of the unbreedables have multiple traits or genders.

The other side of the argument for events is that they're external to the game even if official so they shouldn't be allowed. The more I think about it, the more this argument also makes sense to me, but I don't think it even needs to be considered given the fact that it seems literally impossible to determine a legal stat set for event Pokemon.

As an aside for the overly curious, RSE and DP follow essentially the same methods with DP adding some extra rules to its randomization that don't end up limiting possible combinations but do make it easier to detect hacks. I have absolutely no idea how RBY and GSC work, but given the smaller set of Pokemon data within them (notably no natures or traits), I would assume all IV combinations are possible (remembering that the HP IV is dependent on the others). It's probably the same basic principle though, knowing Gamefreak. Some Unown letter/IV combinations are probably impossible in GSC too, but I don't think anyone actually cares about that.

Amazing Ampharos said:

As an aside for the overly curious, RSE and DP follow essentially the same methods with DP adding some extra rules to its randomization that don't end up limiting possible combinations but do make it easier to detect hacks. I have absolutely no idea how RBY and GSC work, but given the smaller set of Pokemon data within them (notably no natures or traits), I would assume all IV combinations are possible (remembering that the HP IV is dependent on the others). It's probably the same basic principle though, knowing Gamefreak. Some Unown letter/IV combinations are probably impossible in GSC too, but I don't think anyone actually cares about that.

Click to expand...

Actually, ADV allows more possible natures than DP, especially Emerald with its spurious calls to the RNG.

Until we know everything and we can agree that the moves are accessible enough, I am agreeing with a blanket ban.

If we are calling for a blanket ban for event moves that we don't have enough information about, why were they incorporated into Netbattle and such? It seems that this is mostly an issue because of the increased use of Jolly Tickle Wobbuffet, which in turn was a catalysis for this concern. How would X-Act or other people find out the possible IVs anyway? Would they be any different than a Darkari event or something else not hatched in a egg? I'm not necessarilty against a ban like this, but I think these questions are important enough to consider before such a ban is established.

After flipping through my event moves topic on Stark, I noticed that someone posted a pretty interesting question:

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41432

Sudo said:

Reading through the thread, I wondered if Smogon will adopt ShoddyBattle's stance on event moves for the OU/UU metagame. Are event moves still included in the standard battle clauses we use here?

Click to expand...

This could have some impact on tournaments, especially if the matches are performed on a server other than the Official Server. Is Smogon going to take an official stance against event moves as well? This will be especially relevant if the Smogon Shoddy server is to be put up.

rest assured that is one of the first of a dozen or so orders of business

maddog said:

If we are calling for a blanket ban for event moves that we don't have enough information about, why were they incorporated into Netbattle and such?

Click to expand...

How is an appeal to Netbattle relevant? Netbattle also had things like Trick Mew and Substitute blocking Rapid Spin.