Gen 2 Possible event move inaccuracies in PO (and probably showdown too)

[Jorgen]

Here's a link to the post on PO forums I made. For those that would rather not click a link, here's the full post:

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So I was browsing around looking at details for some event moves implemented on the PO GSC teambuilder. The pages I'm referencing are here and here. The two main things I found were:

A) Encore Phanpy, the basis of Encore Donphan being allowed on server, is a Japan-exclusive event Pokemon. If memory serves me correctly, the Japanese and US versions of the game are not compatible for trading or battling. I'm assuming the US version is the one being emulated for simulator purposes.

B) Even more shocking, apparently Growth Eevee was only distributed with Shiny DVs. This is huge, as this means GrowthVap and its bretheren can have, at best, 15/10/10/10/10/10 DVs.

There's probably a few other details in there, but I thought I'd bring this up here to cast light on some questionably accurate movesets currently implemented in PO. The reason this isn't a bugs/fixes post is because I'm no expert on event distributions and am therefore unsure whether somebody can debunk these as bugs using better information than just Bulbapedia.

Basically, from looking around on Bulbapedia, the best source I can find for details on event Pokemon, there's two things iffy with PO's (and possibly Showdown's) implementations of GSC event Pokemon:
1) Encore Donphan is Japan-exclusive and therefore not possible in a US cartridge (which I assume is the standard regional cartridge for these simulators). Encore Donphan is currently allowed on PO.
2) Growth Eevee and its evolutions MUST be shiny. They are currently allowed to have any DVs.

There's probably other problems to be found, too. If anybody has information to debunk these claims, please do so. I wasn't going to post these as bugs because I just don't feel comfortable enough to say "yep, definitely bugs" without independent confirmation.

 

[Bedschibaer]

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_Gotta_Catch_'Em_All_event_Pokémon#Growth_Eevee
"The Pokémon can be either Shiny or non-Shiny unless otherwise specified; these Pokémon have a 12.5% chance of being Shiny. All Pokémon except evolved Pokémon and legendary Pokémon are distributed as Eggs."
But it is kinda tricky, since some of the distribution mons are added "this pokemon can be shiny" and some don't.

 

[Xeze]

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_Gotta_Catch_'Em_All_event_Pokémon#Growth_Eevee
"The Pokémon can be either Shiny or non-Shiny unless otherwise specified; these Pokémon have a 12.5% chance of being Shiny. All Pokémon except evolved Pokémon and legendary Pokémon are distributed as Eggs."
But it is kinda tricky, since some of the distribution mons are added "this pokemon can be shiny" and some don't.

Seeing that list, Pokémon that have on the discription added "This Pokémon can be shiny" are those who have a 12,5% chance of being shiny but usually they were normal. In case of Eevee (according to that list) it was always shiny when distributed (the sprite on that list is shiny for that same reason).
I'm not entirely sure, this is just my interpretation of the event Pokémon list on Bulbapedia.

 

[Lavos]

the shiny eevee thing is 100% true, read a couple articles and it seems clear to me that it was only distributed in its shiny form and thus should not be able to have max dv's. growth vaporeon and espeon apparently have been far stronger than they should be. that's a considerable nerf we're talking about. as for the encore thing, has it been stated by a developer exactly which cartridge we're simulating, Japanese or English? i am no expert in the cartridge field myself.

imo the growth issue needs to be dealt with asap

 

[Jorgen]

Would it be possible to link those articles?

 

[Triangles]

Regarding GSC IV/gender laws, interestingly Bulbapedia lists the event Eevee as /, which would mean that if Bulbapedia were correct in saying this, non-shiny Eevee could indeed have been given away, as female Pokemon must have an Attack IV of 0 or 1, and one of the determinants for shininess in GSC is that the Attack IV is 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14, or 15. As such, either non-shiny Growth Eevee exists, or Bulbapedia are wrong.

 

[Crystal_]

Hearing about that Pokemon were given as Eggs and that there is a 12'5% chance for the Pokemon to be shiny, reminds me that this is how Odd Egg works in Pokemon Crystal. Maybe the Pokemon were given as "Odd Eggs", just that they didn't call them that way.

In Pokemon Crystal, the Pokemon contained by the Odd Egg may have two different DV distributions:
0/0/0/0: Non-shiny, about 87%
2/10/10/10: Shiny, about 13%
In both cases HP DV is 0.

 

[Lavos]

Would it be possible to link those articles?

yeah, sorry i was on my phone earlier.

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_Gotta_Catch_'Em_All_event_Pokémon#Growth_Eevee (see section 2.55)

relevant info: "These Pokémon were distributed at the New York Pokémon Center Gotta Catch 'Em All! Station. Players could obtain one Pokémon per week per visit. The Pokémon can be either Shiny or non-Shiny unless otherwise specified; these Pokémon have a 12.5% chance of being Shiny. All Pokémon except evolved Pokémon and legendary Pokémon are distributed as Eggs."

it notes below with the shiny mark in section 2.55 that eevee was always distributed in its shiny form.

interestingly, bulbapedia seems to have a different DV calculation for shinies. taken from: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Shiny_Pokémon#Generation_II

"Due to the HP IV being determined by the other four IVs, a Shiny Pokémon's HP IV can only be 0 or 8. This is because HP takes the final binary digit of the Attack, Defense, Speed, and Special IVs and places it, in that order, for its own IV. The last 3 binary digits are always 0 because those IVs have to be 10 (1010 in binary) for Shiny Pokémon. The first digit depends on whether or not the Attack IV is even (then it is 0) or odd (then it is 1). This means that the HP IV can either be 0000 (0) or 1000 (8)."

but you said the maximum DV for, as an example, growth vaporeon would be 15/10/10/10/10/10. how did you arrive at that conclusion? am i missing something? not extremely familiar with how shiny pokemon work pre-gen 3. (note that in my previous post i agreed that the shiny DVs could not be maximum, but didn't specify as to what they actually would be maximized at because i'm unsure in that area)

 

[Mr.E]

I think he just fucked up. :P

It'd be kinda sad if true, since shinymon IVs would basically make GrowthEons unusable competitively. Of course, I care for neither Vaporeon nor Espeon whereas Jolteon is squarely the third best Electric. *shrug*

 

[Joim]

Has anyone around actually been on those events to confirm? I can only take bulbapedia's information with a pinch of salt. Regarding the use of Japanese or US cartridge... I guess we use the most complete one? Is there an event that's lacking on Japanese version? If that's the case, then we must decide which version to support, but if there's a version that doesn't lack any event Pokémon, we will support that.

 

[Lavos]

Has anyone around actually been on those events to confirm? I can only take bulbapedia's information with a pinch of salt. Regarding the use of Japanese or US cartridge... I guess we use the most complete one? Is there an event that's lacking on Japanese version? If that's the case, then we must decide which version to support, but if there's a version that doesn't lack any event Pokémon, we will support that.

i'm fairly certain about the shiny eevee one, there's not much to dispute. assuming bulbapedia's information is correct (which is almost always the case), then we can safely assume that all growtheons ought to have only been used with shiny-compatible DVs.

i have never heard of an event during the gsc era that occurred in the US but not in japan (as in you could only get x thing on a US cartridge, i know about the NYPC thing). if there was one, please correct me. however, i am almost certain that there wasn't one, and thus there's no detriment to choose the japanese cartridge as the one we're definitively simulating, which would conveniently remove any problems associated with regional differences on encore donphan.

again, this is based only on prior knowledge of irl events plus the information i've obtained from bulbapedia, so if anyone thinks i'm wrong, please speak up before i manage to derail the thread.

 

[Jorgen]

Yeah I just fucked up those DVs. Didn't mean to include the hp one.

Lavos I think that triangles does throw bulbapedia's info in doubt, as they also list it as m/f even though Eevee, with its 7:1 gender ratio, is necessarily male if shiny.

As for regional events, I had figured that Japan only had those mystery eggs and that stuff like lk nidoking and growtheons were exclusive to the nypc. This was more or less just inferred from bulbapedia's layout though.

God we need a better source of gsc event details. All I know now is that there is something fishy. Where did people get those comprehensive lists of event moves for the simulator research threads?

EDIT: looking at the nypc site archive referenced by bulbapedia, it says that Eevee could be either "normal" or "rare" color. So that settles that. The ascii list of event mons they also reference seems to suggest that japan got nypc mons and more (even tho i am not even sure valentines day is even a big deal over there), thereby making the japanese version appear to be the most complete (but I dunno how much stock to put in some ASCII doc, plus the sources on the Japanese event moves page don't list most of the nypc event mons). I would like to know if Crystal's odd egg suspicion can be confirmed or refuted, too.

 

[Bedschibaer]

Can Bulbapedia even be considered a reliable source? The header says it's "community driven", but is it an open encyclopedia like Wikipedia?

 

[Joim]

The ascii list of event mons they also reference seems to suggest that japan got nypc mons and more (even tho i am not even sure valentines day is even a big deal over there),

It is, modern day Japan society has a thing for american and european stuff. Reading all this, I think we should leave growthvees as they are, seemingly available to be non shiny.

Can Bulbapedia even be considered a reliable source? The header says it's "community driven", but is it an open encyclopedia like Wikipedia?

It is and I don't trust it entirely :/

 

[Crystal_]

Still, the 12'5% chance of shininess suggests that the DV distributions of the event Eggs were manipulated, since otherwise the DVs would be all random and the chance for the Pokemon to be shiny would be 1/65535. The highest probability of an Egg having shiny DVs under legal conditions is 1/64, assuming both parents are shiny, so that's not an option either. Knowing that, the most logical thing to me would be that they coded the DVs to be a ~13% chance to be xx1xb/10/10/10 (shiny) and then coded another, non-shiny DV spread (Y/Y/Y/Y), not necessarily 15/15/15/15, with an ~87% chance to occur.

Having said that, I personally would just look the other way and don't bother about nypc DV restrictions in battle sims.

 

[Jorgen]

Yeah, until anything can be confirmed, we just kinda have to deal with a fishy smell as inertia suggests that event mons should remain implemented.

I'm super confused about what event mons were available to what carts, too, but for now I guess the working MO is to implement them all assuming that glorious NIPPON got everything.

So at the end of it all, nothing needs to be changed for now.

 

[Bedschibaer]

So at the end of it all, nothing needs to be changed for now.

Thank god everyone's precious GrowthVap can keep existing.

 

[Lavos]

my espeon team is safe ^^

 

[Sunny754569]

Great idea.