Arceus?

[gengod]

The argument isn't "Who cares, it's just ubers?" Its"Who cares if it hasn't been officially released yet". Things like Wonder Guard Spiritomb and Sheer Cold, No Guard Deoxys-S are irrelevant here as they not programmed to be obtainable within the games coding.

Arceus has a slew of items dedicated to it in the Plates, as well as an item which allows you to fight and capture it (doesn't matter if it hasn't been released yet). We have all the information we need on Arceus to start playing with it, if Nintendo releases it and it varies somehow then we can change it accordingly but this argument towards keeping it banned seems somewhat pedantic really.

 

[Mekkah]

As for the illegal Aerodactyl sets, well that would be broken. It's banned for entirely different reasons.

Huh? So this impossible moveset is banned because it would be broken? Does that mean you'd allow something like Flare Blitz Flareon? Because it isn't broken, but it's every bit as illegal as Aerodactyl.

 

[Syberia]

Just imagine all the possibilities we'd have to evaluate on a case-by-case basis :(

 

[jrrrrrrr]

Arceus is in the game's code (I think?), its just battling with it that is currently impossible.

Obi, you really misrepresented the argument for allowing it. Maniac is right, just because Nintendo hasnt let us leave the sky pillar to battle with Arceus, we have to arbitrarily ban a pokemon that we know literally everything about? I don't really see the jump. It's not at all like wonder guard sheer cold deoxys-s, that is a blatantly false comparison. Sure, they both can't legally be used in battles, but it is for entirely different reasons.

I think this Arceus ban is just a big deal over nothing.

 

[Jumpman16]

I agree entirely with Obi on this, as I have stated before, and I am honestly wondering what everyone's rush is with wanting to use this "pokemon". The argument that "We have all the information we need on Arceus to start playing with it" should immediately remind us that pretty much all of the information that we or Serebii have learned about the game has come from hacking the game to get the information. This has largely been a good thing, as it has given us the information about things like base stats and movepools very early in the process, which has enabled Smogon to come up with Analyses and even start on and complete the Smogondex earlier than may have been possible otherwise. But we must remember that access to this information through ROM hacking is a questionable entitlement at its core. Are we really entitled to know everything about Arceus, even if we do or think we do? I say no. And besides, there is one thing we do not know about Arceus, and that is if and when it will ever be released. That's a pretty big "if". Good luck finding that out through rom hacking or whatever.

I will forever oppose the use of Arceus until Nintendo actually acknowledges it as a pokemon and decides to have an event for it or some other method of confirming its intent on actually recognizing Arceus as a pokemon. I seriously don't see why pretty much everyone but Obi, Hip and myself is so borderline impatient about using this thing. I could turn the whole "who cares" argument around right there—what is the big deal? What is the rush? Can you guys seriously not wait until Nintendo decides to release an event for it, if they even do? Will the world come to an end if an "Arceus event" indeed never takes place? I want an honest answer to this question from everyone who is so set on using "what we know" about Arceus to program into Shoddy.

 

[makiri]

I'll just summarize what I told Mekkah on irc.

It might exist in the Pokemon Universe, being referenced by the Plates, similar to how Mew in RBY was referenced on Cinnabar Island, and it was in the games programming, but could not be obtained through "legal" means. It has a back story and all that, but outside of hacking there was no method to obtain one until it was released at an event.

 

[Lee]

We've gone to great lengths to make sure that Shoddy replicates in-game as much as possible, even going as far as to place the IV limitations on legendary Pokemon. It just seems a little counterintuitive to say "Yeah, we'll replicate the game when it comes to [this], but we don't really care what the game says when it comes to [that]" which is basically what we'll be saying if we allow Arceus.

It should also be noted that there's no guarantee that Arceus will ever be officially released. There's a certain amount of controversy surrounding the idea of a "God" character that can be captured and controlled and Pokemon has already had it's fill of criticism from religious fanatics. Nintendo still has the option to just pull a u-turn and scrap the whole idea of Arseus...then we'd be stuck using little more than a fakemon.

I'm of the opinion that the reasons to allow him now are outweighed by the reasons to wait it out.

 

[X-Act]

I must ask the same question as Jump and wonder why do people suddenly want to use Arceus in ubers.

 

[CardsOfTheHeart]

We're trying to simulate link battles.
Arceus can't be used legally in link battles.
Therefore, Arceus can't be used in the simulation.

That's the basic idea and I agree with it.

I must ask the same question as Jump and wonder why do people suddenly want to use Arceus in ubers.

Ditto.

 

[Havak]

CardsOfTheHeart took the words right out of my mouth.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

Well I personally want to see it there because DPP Ubers is the most broken metagame in the history of pokemon, broken to the point where pretty much nobody plays it anymore. I haven't played on the ubers ladder for a week and ive actually gone up a few rankings. Arceus would shake things up and might actually encourage people to play on the Ubers Ladder, and since there really isn't any reason to ban it (nintendo doesnt let us use it yet....so how does that impact us again?) I figured that this might be a good start. That's just my reason for agreeing with this thread, I am personally not very adamant about it since there are so many other things that need to get fixed with the tiers right now its not even funny. I can see the arguments against keeping it banned, but I really don't think they are as big a deal as people are making them out to be. If I wanted to wait months or even years to use Arceus, I would buy a DS and a cart and not use ShoddyBattle.

As far as I know, this isn't a "rush this through" thread even though it should be, its more of a "why the heck are we doing this" like the OP in my NFEs thread.

Also, I'm not sure why a sudden interest matters whatsoever, or if the interest was even sudden- I've been wondering why this ban existed since it started. In RBY, Mew could only be gotten through a glitch...but didn't we still allow it in Ubers play? What is the difference here? It's not like Arceus is fake, we know it is supposed to be in the games, we know exactly which moves it has, its ability, its stats, its sprite and pokedex entry, etc.

We've gone to great lengths to make sure that Shoddy replicates in-game as much as possible, even going as far as to place the IV limitations on legendary Pokemon. It just seems a little counterintuitive to say "Yeah, we'll replicate the game when it comes to [this], but we don't really care what the game says when it comes to [that]" which is basically what we'll be saying if we allow Arceus.

We already do this in many areas. We ban evasion, we ban Lati@s, we've invented our own metagames based off our own tiers, I don't see how allowing a pokemon that is obviously in the game at the present time is too far of a jump here.

 

[Lemmiwinks MkII]

We're trying to simulate link battles.
Arceus can't be used legally in link battles.
Therefore, Arceus can't be used in the simulation.

We're trying to simulate link battles.
OHKO/Evasion Clause can't be enforced in link battles.
Therefore, OHKO/Evasion Clause can't be enforced in the simulation.

Needless to say that the simulation argument holds no credibility here.

In all honesty I'm not too bothered if Arceus ends up being allowed or not, but it is clear that there is a divide in subjective opinion as to where the threshold should be. Either just allow anything that is physically possible with the cartridges, or extend that to include everything in the game's coding. I just happen to agree with the latter. It should also be noted that the current system conforms to neither case, so there are already issues with consistency and pedanticity to be resolved here.

On a slightly unrelated note, aren't there a couple of unobtainable berries that currently have the same status as Arceus, i.e. Extended Game Clause only? If so then it only seems appropriate that they are to be discussed simultaneously.

 

[Syberia]

We're trying to simulate link battles.
OHKO/Evasion Clause can't be enforced in link battles.
Therefore, OHKO/Evasion Clause can't be enforced in the simulation.

Needless to say that the simulation argument holds no credibility here.

We also cannot enforce Sleep Clause the way we do unless we play on PBR, in which case Hypnosis is still 70% accuracy and Skymin/Rotoms/Giratina-O cannot be used. So yeah, it's not a 100% exact simulation.

 

[CardsOfTheHeart]

The OHKO, Evasion, and Sleep clauses are a means of competitive balance--at least that's how I look at them. (Sleep Clause was "grandfathered in," so to speak, from Stadium IIRC, but it still helps.) Pokemon, in its purest form, is not optimized for the competitive environment IMO so we set all these rules to make it a competitive game. We can stray from the simulation for the sake of fair competition.

That's basically my perception of why the competitive environment is set up the way it is. Please let me know if I'm totally off-base as I am still pretty much a newbie to competitive battling and have not been around long enough to personally see how many of these rules came about.

 

[Syberia]

Well you can get around the Evasion clause and OHKO clause arguments by saying they're not changing the game, but rather banning moves before the game even starts. Sleep Clause, however, in its present form, actually alters a game mechanic in a way it cannot be altered in any pokemon game at present (PBR comes close, but PBR bans the new Platinum forms). So, if we're open to altering game mechanics in this regard, then the "true to the game" argument that some in this thread are trying to make holds no weight.

 

[SwinubToupée]

Banning Arceus is not unlike banning Aqua Jet/Belly Drum Azumarill. Looking at the game's data a hacker would find both of those moves in Azumarill's family tree and see no problem with using them. Playing the game itself, on the other hand, prevents the combination from occuring.

We can't know whether such an Azumarill will remain impossible to legitimately obtain. Nintendo could distribute a solution to the conflict at any time. We can only be certain that this particular Pokémon is not legal at the moment. Arceus is in the same boat and it is banned as reasonably as any other unobtainable character or item.

 

[McGrrr]

Posting to say that if Arceus were to be unbanned, now would be an ideal time to do it what with the recent Platinum additions. That way its incorporation causes the least disturbance because the uber metagame would need to settle naturally again anyway.

I disagree with the comparison between Arceus and stuff like Aqua Jet/Belly Drum Azumarill. The former will be legal sooner or later during this generation and the latter will not. Banning something on such a trivial technicality seems unnecessarily pedantic to me.

 

[CardsOfTheHeart]

I find the comparison between Arceus and stuff like Aqua Jet/Belly Drum Azumarill ludicrous. The former will be legal sooner or later during this generation and the latter will not.

I agree with this, but this is only an assumption. We assume that Arceus will become obtainable legitimately. We assume that there won't be a legitimate way to get Belly Drum and Aqua Jet on the same Azumarill any time soon. We don't actually KNOW for sure. (unless I missed something???)

We "could" use this assumption to justify allowing Arceus in Ubers, but I wouldn't necessarily agree with such a decision. Then again, I'm not going to throw a fit if it gets done, either...

 

[SwinubToupée]

I find the comparison between Arceus and stuff like Aqua Jet/Belly Drum Azumarill ludicrous. The former will be legal sooner or later during this generation and the latter will not.

That's not necessarily true. Nintendo could release something as simple as a Belly Drum Psyduck and eliminate the illegality of Aqua Jet/Belly Drum Azumarill. There's no guarantee that Arceus will be legal earlier or later than any other currently unobtainable Pokémon.

 

[Lemmiwinks MkII]

Banning Arceus is not unlike banning Aqua Jet/Belly Drum Azumarill. Looking at the game's data a hacker would find both of those moves in Azumarill's family tree and see no problem with using them. Playing the game itself, on the other hand, prevents the combination from occuring.

But surely the game's code distinguishes between level-up moves and Egg moves, just like how it specifies the breeding group(s) of each Pokemon. Then all the components could be analyzed together to assess exactly which combinations of Egg-only moves are illegal due to only being obtainable from two or more different parents.

I've never actually hacked the game and examined the code myself so forgive me for my ignorance if this is not the case.

 

[obi]

We're trying to simulate link battles.
OHKO/Evasion Clause can't be enforced in link battles.
Therefore, OHKO/Evasion Clause can't be enforced in the simulation.

If you use a OHKO, Double Team, or Minimize, you are considered to have lost the match. That is the method of DT / OHKO clause that I support (I disagree with the Shoddy implementation of having the move fail).

As there is no way to enforce the current set of mechanics of Sleep Clause, I'd really like a "Stadium Sleep Clause" option, which enforces Stadium (and its clones in other generations) rules, which would be a Sleep Clause like what we have now, and a Sleep Clause along the lines of "If you cause multiple Pokemon to be put to sleep, you lose.". Of course, this has the difficulty of things like Encore, but I think we can work out the specifics of it.

The argument isn't "Who cares, it's just ubers?" Its"Who cares if it hasn't been officially released yet". Things like Wonder Guard Spiritomb and Sheer Cold, No Guard Deoxys-S are irrelevant here as they not programmed to be obtainable within the games coding.

Neither is Arceus? I honestly do not see the difference.

In RBY, Mew could only be gotten through a glitch...but didn't we still allow it in Ubers play? What is the difference here? It's not like Arceus is fake, we know it is supposed to be in the games, we know exactly which moves it has, its ability, its stats, its sprite and pokedex entry, etc.

As soon as someone finds a method by which you can obtain Arceus, I will drop this argument.

We already do this in many areas. We ban evasion, we ban Lati@s, we've invented our own metagames based off our own tiers, I don't see how allowing a pokemon that is obviously in the game at the present time is too far of a jump here.

You can always ban Pokemon within the confines of the game ("If you use these Pokemon, you lose."). You can always create clauses like OHKO clause. Allowing Arceus would be on the level of altering the length of sleep or giving Kyogre Run Away. As soon as you allow altering the confines of the game, you cease to play Pokemon. I'm not necessarily opposed to that, but if we are going to be basically creating a new game, I'd want to do just that: create a new game. There are so many things that I'd want to change about Pokemon that by the time I'm done, it wouldn't be Pokemon any more (and we'd have a new game that defines new things as "within the confines of the game").

 

[Caelum]

I could write a well thought out argument, but it would essentially just be rehashing what Obi, Jump, and others have said.

All I have to say though, if Arceus is allowed I'm not sure how we can prohibit any glitch Pokemon that exist as they are just as illegitimate in my eyes.

 

[Syberia]

The same way we allowed Shaymin, but not Arceus?

 

[Jumpman16]

Also, I'm not sure why a sudden interest matters whatsoever, or if the interest was even sudden- I've been wondering why this ban existed since it started. In RBY, Mew could only be gotten through a glitch...but didn't we still allow it in Ubers play? What is the difference here?

A couple things here—"Ubers play" in RBY would have had a grand total of two pokemon separating it from normal play. There was no such thing as an uber metagame in 1999-2000 on PBS, which was pretty much the only battle simulator at the time.

Second, I don't know exactly when the first Mew event was, but I really don't care and nor should anyone else as far as today is concerned. As I said on IRC, it's not as if whatever "precedent" that may have been set by prematurely allowing Mew to be used on battle simulators was necessarily the right one. It's 2008. The real precedent that I and others have tried to set, by the very creation and existence of this forum, is that competitive pokemon should be regulated with the utmost fairness, legitimacy and respect to the inherent betterment of competitive pokemon. Which means stuff like:

We're trying to simulate link battles.
OHKO/Evasion Clause can't be enforced in link battles.
Therefore, OHKO/Evasion Clause can't be enforced in the simulation.

doesn't hold any water because link battles don't ban Groudon or Kyogre, or more to the point, Garchomp and Wobbuffet, the latter pair being one whose banishment this forum and its efforts has seen through in spite of both pokemon not being "uber" by whatever standard the game has set.

Banning Arceus is not unlike banning Aqua Jet/Belly Drum Azumarill. Looking at the game's data a hacker would find both of those moves in Azumarill's family tree and see no problem with using them. Playing the game itself, on the other hand, prevents the combination from occuring.

I was under the impression that using Japanese DP with the Ditto/Mimic trick or whatever actually made this possible. Regardless this opens a whole different can of worms about "authorial intent" that Colin has already sounded off on—I actually agree with him that "authorial intent" doesn't mean shit as far as what is actually possible in the confines of the game itself, but the practical and realistic solution has everything to do with an Extended Game Clause that allows all that Belly Drum Azumarill shit but takes up the time of DougJustDoug and...no. There are other priorities right now, which is the main reason I made the Order of Operations thread many months ago—it's not that other things like the UU tiers and Species Clause aren't important, but we have to be realistic in what it takes to actually address them fairly, from both a time and resources perspective.

 

[Syberia]

doesn't hold any water because link battles don't ban Groudon or Kyogre, or more to the point, Garchomp and Wobbuffet, the latter pair being one whose banishment this forum and its efforts has seen through in spite of both pokemon not being "uber" by whatever standard the game has set.

See Sleep Clause argument. Changes a game mechanic in a way not possible without banning Skymin/Rotom forms/Giratina-O.

I was under the impression that using Japanese DP with the Ditto/Mimic trick or whatever actually made this possible.

Technically, it allows any pokemon with Mimic in its movepool to learn any move in the game.