Breeding in DP (Ditto glitch)

I'm obviously not just going to unban these movesets anytime soon if that's what you're worried about.

I'm just trying to stimulate a discussion here.
 
Whether or not it was unfair by your standards really doesnt matter. The illegal movesets were allowed and nobody wanted them.

If someone puts up a separate ladder with these allowed, what exactly would this be trying to prove? How would it be proven? What evidence would we need to determine whether or not some moveset is broken or not? These are things we should determine beforehand to prevent even more arguments from coming up.

Ok, so can you present me with any proof that says "nobody wanted them"? How do you even know that people didn't want them? I can't imagine that you made a poll, or asked every single person on shoddy what they think of it. No one who wanted them could have really said anything, because these movesets were seen as "illegal", and nobody wants to fight illegal stuff.

I don't really call that a test at all, and I'm allowed to have my own opinion, whether or not my standards matter or not. It's not a test when the thing you're trying to test is frowned upon so damn much that no one wants to use them, because they don't want to deal with people calling them cheaters. The rules said that they weren't allowed. Do you really expect people to just go against the rules and randomly test this stuff when they're not even supposed to be allowed to?

For your last paragraph, we'd be trying to prove if it increases diversity in the OU metagame. We'd do that by comparing old OU statistics and new OU statistics. If there's a much lower amount of OU, then it's broken. If there's a much higher amount of OU, or if it stays around the same, it's not broken. The evidence that you'd need is to just look at the old OU, and compare any pokemon who received new movesets to new OU. If a pokemon such as Azumarill, who's in the #70s right now rose to the top 10 or something because of the BellyJet set, then it's broken. If you have a better way, feel free to speak up, but this is the simplest way to do it.
 
The latest mechanics should always be the mechanics used. Egg moves are obviously a part of competitive mechanics (although I have a feeling they didn't give a damn about considering illegal egg moves and just stuck them on) so it should be controlled.

The problem with this is that *theoretically* it is possible to gain these Pokemon. I have no doubt that most of these Pokemon would be hacked - but it is still *possible*. Is there evidence that these Pokemon are already flooding GTS? Or available through trade on WiFi? I haven't seen a single one other than the ones made by bad hackers with max IVs, but yes, it's "possible".

So yes, my stance would be to allow it, just like it's theoretically possible to obtain ridiculous event Pokemon from GTS (most are hacked too!)

It'd increase variety, I can see things like Brave Bird + Hypnosis Crobat or Encore + Knock off Alakazam etc etc.

Just make sure to still ban DP Exclusive Egg moves + Emerald Tutor moves, but you probably thought of that already.
 
I'm with Bologo and Tangerine. We can allow it, but if it proves to break the game, we can just as easily ban it again.
 
I am agreeing with what Tangerine, Colin, etc say in this case, but I also agree that Belly Drum + Aqua Jet Azumarill might cause a disruption (you will start requiring answers to it as well as the already prominent threats like Gyarados, Infernape and Garchomp, causing even more difficulty when making a team). Then again, hopefully the already present methods of beating Gyarados may suffice due to Azumarill's poor speed.

Roserade was already capable of using Spikes and Grasswhistle if required, the only major changes I can think of are the Rapid Spin + Knock Off availability, Snorlax, Crobat's ability to use Hypnosis with Brave Bird or Nasty Plot, Roserade's ability to use Spikes and Sleep Powder and the already mentioned Azumarill, none of which seem too gamebreaking to me (as opposed to something like Wobbuffet or Deoxys-S, and the reasoning is probably better than that given for unbanning them [additionally the same steps as we 'could' be taking to reban them could also occur here]).

edit: If the Mimic and Transform glitches also fall under the same category then disregard this post.
 
Going by this analogy, you're saying that RBY should allow Missingno and Level 237 Pokemon.

My stance on this is that something that was not intended to be in the game should not be in the game, even if it's not broken.
 
I agree with X-Act, otherwise what basis would there be for Shoddy forcing all illegal IV combinations to be illegal?

Well, there is no glitch that allows people to get illegal IV combinations...

Anyway, upon doing more research into this, I found that the Mimic Glitch allows any Pokemon with Mimic to get any moveset they want.

To me, attempting to draw a line here would just be arbitrary - saying that we can use the glitch THIS much (Egg Moves) but not the whole thing (Mimic Pokemon have every move) - this just sounds like the AR Argument all over again.

We see that the less rules there are, the better, then why not just ban glitches as a whole? This of course includes Shaymin's status - he should be moved to extended game. Perhaps extended game is where glitches belong.

Thus, I change my stance (well, I shouldn't have made my post in the first place since I was only considering the question and not the entire "should glitches be allowed" ordeal) and say that no glitches should be allowed.
 
Anyway, upon doing more research into this, I found that the Mimic Glitch allows any Pokemon with Mimic to get any moveset they want.
me on page 1 said:
If we allow this glitch to be used, then we should allow 99% of the 3rd gen Pokemon, Chatot, Mime, Jr, to learn every move in the game, because there's a Japanese glitch that involves Mimic -> Transform -> KO = Learn whatever moves you want
lol

I agree with imperfectluck's point here. If you're going into making this simulator far enough that you'd actually put in the in game IV algorithms, then allowing something that would impact Pokemon competitive wise that is unintentional and removed in the later versions is a bit contradictory.
 
Historically glitches have never been allowed from Missingno and higher than level 100 Pokemon to a similar glitch that allows Mew to have any Sketchable move in its moveset. I for one have to agree with disallowing these glitches from being implemented into a battle simulator and I liken them to glitches found in First Person Shooters. If you glitch in a FPS you are not only frowned upon by other players, but its usually also illegal in major tournaments. Sure it might be fun to have a glitch metagame or a glitch tournament, but it has no place in everyday competitive battling.
 
My stance on this is that something that was not intended to be in the game should not be in the game, even if it's not broken.
I already responded to this sort of reasoning:

About glitches in general, I will say this: What makes something a glitch? Is it the lack of intention? Let's suppose that pokemon X can kill pokemon Y in one hit with Ice Beam. Did Nintendo intend this? Did they sit down and say "let's make the game mechanics such that pokemon X can kill pokemon Y in one hit with Ice Beam"? I doubt it. Instead, they sat down and developed a damage formula and this is merely a consequence of that. Let's consider something like this Ditto glitch. Did they sit down and say "let's make all combinations of egg moves possible"? I doubt it. But they did develop game mechanics that directly led to this being possible. In both cases what we mean by "intent" is actually indirect and irrelevant. That something is a "glitch" is a designation based purely on intuition and does not play into whether something should be banned.
Author intentionality never matters, and the very concept seems to unravel when you give it anything more than a cursory glance.

***

If this glitch is the same one as the one that allows you to get every move on these pokemon then it is clearly broken (I was originally told they were not the same glitch).
 
If this glitch is the same one as the one that allows you to get every move on these pokemon then it is clearly broken (I was originally told they were not the same glitch).

I don't believe it's the same glitch. The one here is done by having a Smeargle that knows all the moves you want to pass on, having Ditto Transform into that Smeargle (most likely in a 2v2 battle), and then allowing Ditto to faint. This results in it keeping all of those moves that it had before it fainted, and then at that point, you can breed it your desired pokemon as long as Ditto's still fainted when you put it in the daycare center (the moves disappear if you heal it at the pokemon center).

The Mimic glitch is something that's completely broken and is definitely not going to be allowed, since you might as well be hacking if a pokemon's going to have any move it wants in the entire game.
 
...and you might as well be hacking if a pokemon is going to have any egg move it wants in the entire game.

Who draws the line regarding which glitch that doesn't exist anymore is acceptable and which glitch that doesnt exist anymore is unacceptable?

Also, seconding Jibaku, IPL and Zerowing's points.
 
...and you might as well be hacking if a pokemon is going to have any egg move it wants in the entire game.

Who draws the line regarding which glitch that doesn't exist anymore is acceptable and which glitch that doesnt exist anymore is unacceptable?

Well, at least those moves would be in the pokemon's actual movepool, unlike any random move, such as Probopass having Fly or something (just an example).

With your question, I don't have an answer, because I guess that's something else that needs discussion. That's probably the thing we should be discussing in this thread before even considering anything else about the glitch.
 
We certainly can ban whatever 'glitches' we want allow others.

How do you define a glitch? Did Nintendo intend for Fire Fang to always hit through Wonder Guard? Did Nintendo intend for RBY Focus Energy to actually lower your critical hit chances? Was it intentional that you could change your move with Choice Band Pursuit in ADV if their switched out on your first attack?

The code is the final arbiter in deciding what we can potentially allow, but it doesn't define what we can ban.

The "Ditto" 'glitch' doesn't just apply to Ditto. In addition to 100% egg move compatibility, there is another effect. The following Pokemon can learn every move in the game (except Chatter and Struggle):

Abra
Aipom
Alakazam
Ambipom
Banette
Blissey
Celebi
Chansey
Clefable
Clefairy
Cleffa
Delcatty
Ditto
Drowzee
Dusclops
Dusknoir
Furret
Gengar
Geodude
Glameow
Golem
Granbull
Graveler
Happiny
Hariyama
Hitmonchan
Hitmonlee
Hypno
Illumise
Jirachi
Jynx
Kadabra
Kecleon
Ludicolo
Machamp
Machoke
Machop
Makuhita
Mankey
Medicham
Meditite
Meowth
Mew
Mewtwo
Miltank
Minun
Mr. Mime
Munchlax
Persian
Plusle
Politoed
Poliwhirl
Poliwrath
Primeape
Purugly
Sableye
Sentret
Skitty
Smeargle
Smoochum
Snorlax
Snubbull
Spinda
Teddiursa
Togekiss
Togepi
Togetic
Ursaring
Volbeat


This is because, as far was we know, Transform can be Assisted or Metronomed. If you can get Transform by any means, you can make use the Sketching 'glitch'.

Also I doubt Belly Drum + Aqua Jet Azumarill would be super overpowering. People used it a bit on early ladder and it wasn't a big deal (before I knew it was illegal and started cracking down). The reason there was an outcry is because it was seen as an illegal set, not because it was overpowering. I gave the exact same response to Belly Drum + Aqua Jet Azumarill as ThunderPunch + Poison Heal Breloom, Hypnosis + Nasty Plot Crobat, and any other "illegal set" I could recognize. People stopped using it because, even though it wasn't enforced by the program, it was still a rule of the ladder to not use illegal sets.

It would be interesting to play a no-bans glitch game, to say the least. I would rather just do sharkbats I think.
 
Ehh, Obi, don't the moves get resetted back to the original pokemon's moves once you heal the fainted Transformer at the pokemon center?

If so, then you can have those moves on the pokemon, but it'll never be alive to use them anyway.
 
Intention IS important. I'm sure the RBY programmers did not intend to have Missingno as a Pokemon in the game, even if it's legally available.
 
If so, then you can have those moves on the pokemon, but it'll never be alive to use them anyway.

Revive + Hyper Potion would make them alive and Ether could restore PP...but doesn't linking up and battling auto-heal your stuff anyway? (I don't have the cart, so I wouldn't know)

<EDIT> Apparently it does, so eh </EDIT>

I can see both sides of the coin, but with this line of logic, we should test Ditto Sketch trick Pokemon as well, and only allow those that are not broken. Aeroblast Farfetch'd is not broken, and is indeed possible through Mimic glitch. Should we allow it? Would Drill Peck Salamence be broken? Maybe. Stark could have 10 page arguments flowing out of nothing about it, just like about whether Garchomp or Darkrai are broken, so it is debatable at the very least.

The line becomes too vague. Then, there's Missingno., who is not broken either (it's not even a good Pokemon). Would we allow that? I wouldn't.
 
Author intentionality never matters, and the very concept seems to unravel when you give it anything more than a cursory glance.

You keep saying this. What you're saying implicitly is that author intentionality never matters to you, Colin. It clearly matters to a lot of us here. It seems as though you're hoping that if you state your opinion often and with enough conviction, it will become fact.

Most people seem to be concluding that if the designers take something out of the game in a later version, they either never intended to have it in the first place, or they realized their mistake and intentionally removed it.

Let's take a look at this from another point of view: the developers'. You're a developer and you're creating a competitive, multiplayer game for the Nintendo DS (in order to best reach your target audience). In the first release of the game, you overlook a glitch that causes players to be able to play the game in a way that is (you feel) significantly different than the way you meant it to be played. You feel that this is an issue because this allows the players who exploit this glitch to interfere with those people who want to play the game the way you originally intended it to be played. But because this is a cartridge-based game, you cannot easily release a patch to fix this glitch and force everybody to use it (like you could with, say, World of Warcraft). Economic constraints dictate that you cannot re-release essentially the same game at retail price. In fact, you can't even put out a recall and expect most players to respond because they'd lose their saved data. So what do you do? You suck it up, and when the game is next released (in another country), you fix the glitch both to prevent it from becoming too widespread and to indicate that it was not an intentional part of the game.

But none of this seems to matter to you. And since it doesn't matter to you and you have control over the main Shoddy server, why don't you just implement your suggested change? There's no point in us talking about it if you've already made a decision. I strongly doubt that any of us is going to convince you that this is a bad idea on the grounds of author intent.

Now I haven't forgotten that you want to talk about the possible effects of this change on the metagame, as it's possible that if enough Pokémon become 'broken', the glitch could be banned on those grounds. But unless I'm very mistaken, Theorymoning very rarely lines up with reality anyway. I don't see the point in talking about the effects of this very controversial change unless and until it actually happens and we get a little experience with the new game.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not completely against Theorymon. There are some cases in which it can be useful. However, this change has so many effects that it's very difficult to determine how many and which of them will actually become important to this specific metagame.
 
You keep saying this. What you're saying implicitly is that author intentionality never matters to you, Colin. It clearly matters to a lot of us here. It seems as though you're hoping that if you state your opinion often and with enough conviction, it will become fact.
Actually, I already developed the argument why it doesn't matter:

About glitches in general, I will say this: What makes something a glitch? Is it the lack of intention? Let's suppose that pokemon X can kill pokemon Y in one hit with Ice Beam. Did Nintendo intend this? Did they sit down and say "let's make the game mechanics such that pokemon X can kill pokemon Y in one hit with Ice Beam"? I doubt it. Instead, they sat down and developed a damage formula and this is merely a consequence of that. Let's consider something like this Ditto glitch. Did they sit down and say "let's make all combinations of egg moves possible"? I doubt it. But they did develop game mechanics that directly led to this being possible. In both cases what we mean by "intent" is actually indirect and irrelevant. That something is a "glitch" is a designation based purely on intuition and does not play into whether something should be banned.
Rather than paste this repeatedly I thought it would be simpler just to repeat the final point of it. But I'll be sure in the future to copy the text from all of my earlier posts in a topic into each new post.

But none of this seems to matter to you. And since it doesn't matter to you and you have control over the main Shoddy server, why don't you just implement your suggested change? There's no point in us talking about it if you've already made a decision. I strongly doubt that any of us is going to convince you that this is a bad idea on the grounds of author intent.
I don't intend on implementing this change anytime soon (if ever). Aldaron just brought it up in the main chat and I thought it deserved broader discussion.



Let's consider another implication of this focus on intent. Suppose that in the next version of DP ("Platinum") some learnsets are switched around, so that a pokemon can no longer learn a move it can learn in Diamond and Pearl. You could trade it over. However, since this move was removed, it was clearly unintentional and should hence be banned from all future play. Right?
 
Actually, I already developed the argument why it doesn't matter:

Let's consider another implication of this focus on intent. Suppose that in the next version of DP ("Platinum") some learnsets are switched around, so that a pokemon can no longer learn a move it can learn in Diamond and Pearl. You could trade it over. However, since this move was removed, it was clearly unintentional and should hence be banned from all future play. Right?

Youre right, that would make things complicated. Luckily this has already happened and we already know what to do! Things like this would be addressed like they were in Advance with the advent of 200 vs "Full Advance". When Fire Red/Leaf Green came out, many new moves became available (mostly, things could actually learn Sleep Talk etc). Different metagames developed because of the drastically different learnsets for pokemon. If there were any significant changes, there would be a Platinum metagame and a D/P metagame, each with their own respective moves.
 
Clearly the precedent here is that there should be two metagames then, rather than the glitch being banned.
 
Glitches and the creation of a rarely played metagame in response to sweeping moveset changes by a new version of the game are two completely different issues. Once "Full Advance" was released, 200 died into obsurity because of the changes to the game.

If Garchomp lost something like Dragon Claw + Swords Dance because of this glitch, that would mean he wasn't meant to have it. But if they release a NEW GAME where Garchomp can't have this, then there would be grounds for making separate metagames. Different versions of the same generation are new games and they operate completely separately from each other, so that analogy is not accurate. The precedent in pokemon and video games in general is that glitches are not allowed, as zerowing pointed out.
 
I think your attempts to draw a distinction here do not really overcome the problems I have described.

The precedent in pokemon and video games in general is that glitches are not allowed, as zerowing pointed out.
In pokemon, maybe (though I think it's a mistake to ban gliches per se as they aren't a real category of things, as I've shown above).

In video games in general? Certainly not. In fact glitches are a key part of many competitive games. Z-cancelling in smash64 for example.

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/intermediates-guide/how-far-should-you-go-to-win
 
From that article:

Reasonable games have built-in rules and simply do not allow illegal moves to happen in the first place. Tournaments for reasonable games sometimes have to impose extra rules, but they keep this list as clear and as short as possible. There are games that are just for “fun,” because you can’t “win” them or make reasonable tournaments out of them. These games—while interesting—are not within the scope of this book.

A player should use any tournament legal move available to him that maximizes his chances of winning the game.

Pokemon is not a reasonable game by this definition, since glitches that allow for clearly illegal movesets do occur. Sometimes we have to implement extra rules.

The player should use tournament legal moves- authorial intent "should" have an impact. If Nintendo would learn how to manage its product, they would give us a clear position on this. Since they havent yet, the only thing we have to go on is the fact that they removed the glitch so that an overwhelming majority of the players do not have access to this glitch.
 
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