Competitor and Arceus

[obi]

I would like to ask a quick question to you obi.

when arceus is legally obtaibable, will you declare this water under the bridge and be fine with arceus?

Of course.

Obi, how is obtaining shaymin via a glitch any different than hacking an arceus? It's still against the intended coding of the game and is therefore just as wrong.

I don't understand that part of your arguement. Do you condone or disallow the use of Shaymin?

Shaymin does not require an AR. It is possible to get purely within the limits of the game. I neither condone nor disallow it, however, as it's possible to ban Shaymin without going beyond the bounds of the game.

And even still, why bother with giving it an accessible specific movepool and its own unique attack? Why bother giving it a height, weight, location, and Dex entry? Why bother giving it an event-only item to access it?

Are you familiar with the Chris Houlihan room in The Legend of Zelda, a Link to the Past?

Next time you play Morrowind, press ` (~) to open the console, and type one of the following:

coc "ken's test hole"
coc "toddtest"
coc "Character Stuff Wonderland"
coc ''Mark's Vampire Test Cell''

(coc = center on cell, I suppose) All of those put you into a debugging room. One of them tests vampirism (duh) and one has every quest item, for example.

There are similar rooms in Final Fantasy, Xenogears, Legend of Mana, and probably hundreds more. Of note is that all of these contain more information than Arceus and its room do.

For one, you have infinite everything. TMs, items, berries. You name it, you can use as many as you want. No matter how much you trade stuff on WiFi, you can never have an infinite amount of everything. If Shoddy really was trying to simulate the in-game experience (rather than a competitive one), surely you'd have a limit?

Why is there a limit? What non-arbitrary limit would you impose? I can guarantee you that whatever limit you say, I can always get that +1. You have functionally infinite TMs and other items. It's possible to clone entirely in the limits of the game, or you could just keep resetting your game, or you could trade with people. You can only possibly use six of one TM per team. Six is hardly an unreachable goal. As far as each battle is concerned, there are only 12 Pokemon.

All 31 IVs. On every Pokemon. Ever. Unless, of course, a Pokemon uses a Hidden Power. In which case, it will always have the maximum possible IVs in every stat that will get it that HP. Plus, the exact nature you want.

If given enough time, this is possible, however. Any combination of IVs is just as likely as the next. The point of the simulator is to simulate the battling aspect. It rewards skill, removing time as much as possible from the equation. In theory, you could get 31 all with the right nature on the very first Pokemon you catch. It's just as likely as any other combination of IVs, it's just that it seems more 'random' to people than something like 12 / 5 / 26 / 2 / 19 / 30. What system would you propose?

Plus, all your opponents have max IVs on everything they've ever "caught" as well. Spin it however you want, but that is certainly only possible in-game via AR.

You don't catch anything! You select a Pokemon that you could theoretically get, and then you can use it. The purpose of the simulator isn't to simulate the whole game, breeding and all, but only the battling aspect of it.

Clauses. The game doesn't mind if that Crobat sleeps every single Pokemon on your team. It doesn't mind if that Umbreon mean looks you, double teams six times and passes to a Garchomp. Its happy for that Crawdaunt to Guillotine you three times in a row. Some of these clauses do exist, but only within PBR. Within DP, they're impossible: Crobat's Hypnosis wont fail if you use it on a second Pokemon. On Shoddy it will.

In many tournaments, Sleep Clause is enforced by saying: "If you put multiple Pokemon to Sleep, you lose." Double Team clause is enforced by saying "You can't use Double Team." These are both enforceable entirely within the limits of the game. You're allowed to take anything out and still be playing the game, you just can't add stuff to it. However, PBR does have actual Sleep Clause and Freeze Clause built-in, to my understanding, so it is possible for them to be enforced as they are on Shoddy.

Also, expecting opponents to tell you if they're carrying a specific Pokemon before battling you not only demonstrates that you assume everyone to have the same perception of "legitimate" as you (which everyone clearly does not), but also places unfair expectations on people who may or may not know your Shoddy alias, or may not have read these threads on Smogon and are thus completely unaware of your stance.

I'm going to start using Spore Ninjask and ThunderPunch Poison Heal Breloom and Hypnosis Nasty Plot Crobat. It's up to my opponent to tell me not to use such things, because there's no way for me to know that they are against it.

 

[Shinryu]

Just imo, none of this will matter in a few years when all of these Pokemon are released anyways.

 

[Carl]

I've got to bring this up, because it seems like a huge double standard. Shoddy Battle's official server is obviously attempting to simulate the real battling system of the game as closely as possible, correct? But there's so much stuff on Shoddy, so much that is either impossible or ridiculously improbable, that it is a fallacy to say that it adhere's to the implicit rules of the game.

For one, you have infinite everything. TMs, items, berries. You name it, you can use as many as you want. No matter how much you trade stuff on WiFi, you can never have an infinite amount of everything. If Shoddy really was trying to simulate the in-game experience (rather than a competitive one), surely you'd have a limit?

All 31 IVs. On every Pokemon. Ever. Unless, of course, a Pokemon uses a Hidden Power. In which case, it will always have the maximum possible IVs in every stat that will get it that HP. Plus, the exact nature you want. Plus, all your opponents have max IVs on everything they've ever "caught" as well. Spin it however you want, but that is certainly only possible in-game via AR.

You're misconstruing possible with probable. It's not probable that a person could obtain a bunch of all 31 pokemon or a maximum amount of TMs but the possibility is there albeit a very slim one. For all you know we could be simulating a very small sample size of battlers that just happen to be extremely lucky when it comes to breeding IVs and extremely efficient at gaining TMs. On the other hand, at least Obi's argument is feasible since there is no chance (aka it's impossible) of obtaining Arceus at this point in time. I may not agree with him, but his argument is more solid.

Clauses. The game doesn't mind if that Crobat sleeps every single Pokemon on your team. It doesn't mind if that Umbreon mean looks you, double teams six times and passes to a Garchomp. Its happy for that Crawdaunt to Guillotine you three times in a row. Some of these clauses do exist, but only within PBR. Within DP, they're impossible: Crobat's Hypnosis wont fail if you use it on a second Pokemon. On Shoddy it will.

This argument is pretty weak in the sense that if Shoddy or Netbattle didn't implement these things, I'd just be forfeiting a bunch of times on people and pretending I didn't play them. It just saves me the wasted time of finding out that my opponent doesn't agree to my terms of combat. Unless I'm mistaken Shoddy doesn't force you to use those clauses we implement (which by the way were created in the first place as more of a common courtesy towards other battlers to make things more of an even playing field than anything else).

That's my argument, anyway. Arceus (the Pokemon itself) is not an illegitimate creation, and should be allowed. Especially considering the simulator we're using is creating a workable competitive environment, not simulating the restrictive in-game one. Also, expecting opponents to tell you if they're carrying a specific Pokemon before battling you not only demonstrates that you assume everyone to have the same perception of "legitimate" as you (which everyone clearly does not), but also places unfair expectations on people who may or may not know your Shoddy alias, or may not have read these threads on Smogon and are thus completely unaware of your stance.

But anyone with a Pokemon Diamond or Pearl cart should know that there's no way to obtain Arceus legitimately because it's a simple tautology at this point. Again, though I don't agree with Obi and think Arceus is fair game, you're not making a better argument for it than he is against it. It should be implied that Arceus is unobtainable at this point and really the person using something that is unobtainable has more of an obligation to OK it than the person without it.

 

[Kijin]

How can you try to justify that? Arceus is just as impossible to get ingame as, say, a Sheer Cold Machamp or a Wonder Guard Spiritomb. If you can't legitimately get it ingame, you can't use it imo.



Yeah, you can get flawless pokes ingame, it's been done before. No matter how long you slave away, though, you still can't get Arceus.

That's more or less untrue; if you slave away until nintendo has an event where the Azure Flute or Arceus is given away, you will get an Arceus. Since we're talking about nearly abysmal statistic probability, it's almost impossibly more likely that you'll be able to get Arceus through Nintendo event than hatch a 31/31/31/31/31/31.
Considering you're playing on a simulator for what is more than likely the express purpose of playtesting your guys, you'd be absolutely retarded not to test with every Pokemon possible. To do otherwise is irresponsible.

PS> this argument is a circle jerk, just wanted to put that out there.

PPS> Obi, if you have such a problem with a specific pokemon, the burden is on your head to make that restriction known before the battle. If you have a food allergy at a restaurant, but you don't tell your server before hand, it's your dumb ass's fault that you can't swallow because your tongue is closing your throat because you never asked them not to use peanuts in your pad thai.

 

[Dragontamer]

Why not Mew, Celebi, Manaphy, or Shaymin then?

Mew especially, given that it has a +2 move in each stat and Baton Pass.

Mew, Celebi, Manaphy, and Shaymin cannot change types by simply changing their equiped item.

Arceus can. Additionally, he can learn Judgement which is an exactly 100 base attack that can be any type you want. Therefore, as far as testing super-effectiveness is concerened, Arceus would be the easiest and would save development time hacking every type in the game into a PC, and then moving them around. All you'd need is 2 Arceus with Judgement to test the 289 combinations of attacks.

Arceus is also the only pure flying pokemon.

And even still, why bother with giving it an accessible specific movepool and its own unique attack? Why bother giving it a height, weight, location, and Dex entry? Why bother giving it an event-only item to access it?

Weight is necessary for grass knot and low-kick to work effectively. The others can be there for testing whether or not the pokedex actually works correctly in early stages of game development. For all we know, the internal file format is constant sized and requires data to be in there. Why not put something lively?

Event-only is the best idea yet for a pokemon that was designed never to be released. It would enable testers to be able to get the pokemon very easily in the development environment, but it would be difficult for the typical player to get it.

That's an awful lot of code for a purely debug pokemon. And again, Arceus' dex entries pretty much mean Arceus is going to be a money-maker at some point for a movie.

Or it might just be there to refer to its godliness: that is, the pokemon designed so that testers can test the program before the game even was fully made.

Debian / Linux has the name "sid" to refer to the latest unstable "test" version (Sid is the guy who blew up toys from Toy Story). The Pokemon god himself would be an interesting choice for a debug pokemon, with a name derivative of Zeus, the cheif god of the Greeks.

It's certainly a plausible theory, but I tend to lean towards pragmatic business concerns. Gamers buy games for fun. Companies make games for money.

And modern software practice demands test driven development, a pragmatical paradgm proven to reduce testing and development costs.

Of course, I can point to earlier examples of previous games. Debug mode for Sonic games was left in with a difficult combination of keys at the beginning of the game or a series of arbitrary sound-test values. Sim City 2000 left debug mode on by typing IIRC "priscilla". These are artifacts of the testing cycle of programming, designed so that typical players would never know about them, yet the programmer left enough features in the debug mode because as I noted earlier: it makes the game cheaper to develop. This is a proven fact. And developers are known to put all sorts of features into debug mode that makes Arceus look easy in comparison.

Do I know for sure? No. But there is no reason not to think so. There is no reason that shows that Arceus was ever a real pokemon, and there is no real way to know until Arceus is released.

As far as Mew, Celebi, Jirachi and Shaymin are concerned... they are the cute 100-base pokemon. They have been released every generation. I can guarentee you Nintendo wants to make money off of them. However, for Arceus, that cannot be said completely. Not yet anyway.

I'll make the same deal as the other topic. If the 493rd national dex pokemon is the 5th generation starter, then obviously, Arceus was a "fake" or a "debug pokemon". If the Arceus event comes out, or the 5th generation starter is 494 on the national dex, then I will admit this whole post is wrong. But for now, I seriously doubt there is any evidence you can give to disprove this supposition.

 

[SNX7]

I agree with 100% of that post, Dragontamer.

 

[SubVersion]

I didn't express my point clearly enough to begin with. My bad.

Everything I said about Items/IVs/Berries.

The point of those examples was to show one key difference between Shoddy and in-game: Shoddy is focused entirely on the competitive battling aspect of the game, while the game itself does not.

For instance, to get all the items you need in game, you'd have to work for them. Whether that means playing the battle tower until you've got enough points, or trading with other people, heck you even have to beat the entire game before you can get most of the good stuff. On Shoddy, it gives you a Choice Scarf just because you want one. Like you said, its for the purpose of timesaving. Shoddy essentially "simulates" the end result of you doing the work required to obtain that Choice Scarf, without you actually having to do it. Much like it simulates the end result of some fairly intense breeding, giving you perfect IVs/egg moves/natures. Etc. As you pointed out, Shoddy only simulates the battling aspect, not the whole game, so breeding/catching/item collection was obviously left out. The point that I obviously didn't make clear enough, though, is that Shoddy is a competitive battling simulator, which already doesn't limit itself to boundaries in the game (you can't tell me that altered coding to enforce sleep/feeze/DT clause etc is still "within the boundaries" of the game's original coding) and I fail to see why Arceus use should be any different. In your own post, you said Shoddy only simulates the battling in Pokemon, thus making the "catching" element to Arceus completely irrelevant.

I'm going to start using Spore Ninjask and ThunderPunch Poison Heal Breloom and Hypnosis Nasty Plot Crobat. It's up to my opponent to tell me not to use such things, because there's no way for me to know that they are against it.

I'm going to be blunt here and ask that you stop using this very weak argument. People don't use Spore Ninjask because Shoddy gives them no option to. People don't use TPunch Poison Heal Breloom or Hypnosis NP Crobat because these movesets do no exist in the game. Arceus is an option on Shoddy and he does exist within the game. Its absolutely ridiculous to not only expect everyone you battle to subscribe to your opinion of what is legit, but to also somehow know that Graviton is Obi and that Obi doesn't play against Arceus without even telling them. Its not as cut and dry as your examples, because whether Arceus use on a simulator is legit is obviously a matter of opinion and to assume your opinion is right and everyone else should know about it by some telepathic link is downright arrogant, to be honest.

 

[Jenigmat]

Look, we've had this exact discussion before. No reason to repeat it, eh? Why not just arbitrarily say that ok, if you have an Arceus tell the other person. I mean, all you have to do is be like, yo, I have a semi-legit Arceus. By contrast, if you don't want to play an Arceus, tell them, dude, I don't want to play an Arceus. This discussion doesn't even really matter in the long run, because Ubers aren't a balanced tier, and so yea. If you have an Arceus, it's hacked. We ask people who are trading things to tell you if they have semi-legit things, and there is no reason we shouldn't have people held to the same standards with Arceus.

 

[Chou Toshio]

Like I said before, here is the arguement that trumps the others in favor of allowing Arceus:

We as a community acknowledge we are not playing in game pokemon, but a game of our own creation we call online competitive battling-- for which we can set whatever rules we want. That includes allowing Arceus.

[/thread]
Well maybe not if we actually don't want him, but it sure seems to me like a majority of players want Arceus in Ubers on shoddy whether its a illegal, a debug, or whatever. If we as a community decide we want to play it-- well then we can.

At the end of the day you can put this or that logic behind it, but the fact is that logic alone makes no decisions. Human desire does-- and while we might not act as a genuine democracy here, as a community we end up deciding almost everything by general consensus.

 

[Carl]

I'm going to be blunt here and ask that you stop using this very weak argument. People don't use Spore Ninjask because Shoddy gives them no option to. People don't use TPunch Poison Heal Breloom or Hypnosis NP Crobat because these movesets do no exist in the game. Arceus is an option on Shoddy and he does exist within the game.

Last I checked, Poison Heal is an ability Breloom gets and Thunderpunch is a move Breloom learns in Advance. They're both coded in there legally. Ditto for Hypnosis and Nasty Plot on Crobat. Both moves are coded in on Crobat's learn-set. Those moves and abilities do exist in the game. The only reason people don't use those in combination is because they can't get them without cheating since they can not co-exist. But the code is there to learn both. I'm still not seeing how that's not the same scenario with Arceus. It exists within the game but how do you get it without cheating?

 

[majesty]

Carl that was very insightful. You have just won me over to your side of the arguement.

 

[Evisu]

Carl wins and Dragontamer wins the rest of you phail.

 

[Aeroblacktyl]

tbh if you all gave a shit of whats 'right' then you wouldn't be on shoddy in the first place but that's my opinon, so therefore, please don't even waste a fucking minute typing a response to this, you're not changing my opinion, but i just wanted to pushhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it out there =]

 

[SubVersion]

Last I checked, Poison Heal is an ability Breloom gets and Thunderpunch is a move Breloom learns in Advance. They're both coded in there legally. Ditto for Hypnosis and Nasty Plot on Crobat. Both moves are coded in on Crobat's learn-set. Those moves and abilities do exist in the game. The only reason people don't use those in combination is because they can't get them without cheating since they can not co-exist. But the code is there to learn both. I'm still not seeing how that's not the same scenario with Arceus. It exists within the game but how do you get it without cheating?

While the coding for both exists, the coding also prevents the two from ever existing together. Arceus is different because he's sitting right there in the game's coding waiting to be caught.

I still raise the question of why "You can't catch that Pokemon yet" applies to a simulator that only concerns itself with the battling aspect.

 

[darkie]

While the coding for both exists, the coding also prevents the two from ever existing together. Arceus is different because he's sitting right there in the game's coding waiting to be caught.

I still raise the question of why "You can't catch that Pokemon yet" applies to a simulator that only concerns itself with the battling aspect.

The coding also prevents you from being "together" with Arceus.

 

[Team Rocket Elite]

The coding preventing you from getting Hypnosis and Brave Bird Crobat is flimsier than the method of getting Arceus. You need a AR code to get Arceus, you can use an in-game glitch to get a Hypnosis and Brave Bird Crobat.

 

[majesty]

The coding preventing you from getting Hypnosis and Brave Bird Crobat is flimsier than the method of getting Arceus. You need a AR code to get Arceus, you can use an in-game glitch to get a Hypnosis and Brave Bird Crobat.

Really? I thought that Noctowl didn't learn brave bird by any means...this of course being crobats one source of hypnosis.

 

[Pneuma]

The in-game glitch he's talking about is the Japanese Ditto Breeding glitch.

 

[dende5416]

When Nintendo starts giving out All 31 Darkrai's, Mews, Celebi's, et. al I'll start caring about what is and isn't on a pokemon simulator.

Until then I believe the term for your opponent is "whiner" (unless you brought it to a non-Uber battle).

Fact is Nintendo/Gamefreak programmed it all into the game, therefore it is fair game.

What is next, shall we condemn Mod Servers for their errance from our Japanese imperial overlords?

Well, I bet in a few months we can condemn people using emulators to SR legends and breed when they get the Wifi working :0P


EDIT: Forgot to say that, while well articulated, DragonTamer's argument doesn't really hold up. With the single exceptions of Missingo0 and 'M, Nintendo has never before placed a un-used pokemon into the game. EVER. Further, it could make sense, but Nintendo went to great lengths not only making sure we could get every, single god-plate in the game for Arceus, but making sure we could get them again even if we missed them (in the mining mini-game.) saying Arceus is a tester won't hold up under tighter scrutiny. It doesn't make sense for them to leave such a "beta-tester" in the games coding for its manufactured release and if they did then its a sloppy part of coding that should have never EVER existed.

 

[merubin]

The plates thing is a good indicator, but a large amount of games leave in beta code. It's not hurting anything; it might hurt something unexpected to take it out; if the players find out about it or access it somehow oh well they found a cheat or an easter egg.

 

[Lee]

Firstly, I'd like to say I'm quite impressed that Obi stuck to his guns on this one and actually refused to fight an Arceus. Secondly, I'd like to propose a scenario:

Arceus never gets released.

Hypothetically, of course. The religious tension in this world at the moment is staggering. People are rioting over a comic strip and women are being locked up for naming a teddy bear Muhammed. Everytime I watch the news, there's some report on a holy war. Is it completely unthinkable that Nintendo would back out of releasing this "Almighty God of the universe in the form of a llama" into a game where children can beat up and torture said God?

Sure, it wouldn't be the first video-game God, but Pokemon is such a huge franchise and Nintendo has altered thing in the past to protect their prized franchise (Hi Jynx!).

If Arceus was never released, would we still consider him fair to use?

And if not, why is it okay to use him now?

 

[Mario With Lasers]

Why would Game Freak use Arceus as a debug pokémon if they already have one, since Red/Green.

And I'd try to catch it, if I knew the code.

 

[Portugeez]

Why are you saying that Obi is a whiner? Don't you mean a winner?

 

[Blue Harvest]

You know, I bet if Arseus had base 100 stats Obi wouldn't be whining.

 

[Odinwolf]

While Shoddy is a pokemon simulator, it is NOT the same thing as playing Diamond/Pearl on the cart. If it was, there would be no need for it at all. It has its own features and rules to make the experience better for everyone who wants to battle. For instance, rules like sleep clause and freeze clause can be automatically enforced. It also has built in match-making and other features that cause it to be different from actually playing on the cartridge. You aren't even required to capture, train and equip your pokemon for battle. You just put in what you want and then play. That would also be "illegal" if this was the cartridge.

So clearly, very logically, this is a different game than Pokemon Diamond/Pearl with its own rules. Otherwise it would just be a ROM we play on an emulator with networking capabilities. It has different rules than playing on the cartridge does. So what is Shoddy? It is a simulation of a completely RPG-free version of the multiplayer aspects of the game.
Thus, it doesn't necessarily require that users automatically adhere to any standard expectations of the cartridge games. It has its own rules that, while based on Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, are not the same. It gives you freedoms, like automatically creating teams and using unreleased pokemon, that the cartridge doesn't offer.

Shoddy has its own rules. In those rules, Arceus is a legal pokemon, whether you like it or not. If you have a problem with that, then either go back to playing exclusively on the cartridge, create your own online simulator without a legal Arceus included or simply discuss your expectations with your opponent before the battle. Any other response is intellectually dishonest and yes, makes you a whiner. Quitting out of a match suddenly for a violation of a "rule" that doesn't exist on Shoddy is childish and ignorant.