Pokemon Legends - Arceus - 28th Jan 2022 *Official Content Only*

A way I can see this being good for (or at least considerate of) people who play with transfer moves on cart is in the case of changing move functionality, and by move functionality I mean "does this move literally function at all in this game" since moves that were "cut" still exist in the game, it's just that you can't use them and their description recommends that you replace it with something else.

The thing is, move functionality isn't set in stone. We've already seen this happen this gen with Flash. It can't be used in Sword and Shield, but it can be used in BDSP.

Imagine, for a second, that Wish gets "cut" from Scarlet and Violet. Now imagine you've got a legit Wish Chansey. You transfer your Chansey into Scarlet and Violet, and forget Wish because it's literally useless. Gen 12 comes along (yup, three generations later), and whoops, looks like Wish is usable again. Fuck you for wanting to use your Pokemon at any point in the nine years between Gens 9 and 12.
 
A way I can see this being good for (or at least considerate of) people who play with transfer moves on cart is in the case of changing move functionality, and by move functionality I mean "does this move literally function at all in this game" since moves that were "cut" still exist in the game, it's just that you can't use them and their description recommends that you replace it with something else.

The thing is, move functionality isn't set in stone. We've already seen this happen this gen with Flash. It can't be used in Sword and Shield, but it can be used in BDSP.

Imagine, for a second, that Wish gets "cut" from Scarlet and Violet. Now imagine you've got a legit Wish Chansey. You transfer your Chansey into Scarlet and Violet, and forget Wish because it's literally useless. Gen 12 comes along (yup, three generations later), and whoops, looks like Wish is usable again. Fuck you for wanting to use your Pokemon at any point in the nine years between Gens 9 and 12.
hell wish isnt even in legends arceus. the prophecy is arriving as we speak!
 
A way I can see this being good for (or at least considerate of) people who play with transfer moves on cart is in the case of changing move functionality, and by move functionality I mean "does this move literally function at all in this game" since moves that were "cut" still exist in the game, it's just that you can't use them and their description recommends that you replace it with something else.

The thing is, move functionality isn't set in stone. We've already seen this happen this gen with Flash. It can't be used in Sword and Shield, but it can be used in BDSP.

Imagine, for a second, that Wish gets "cut" from Scarlet and Violet. Now imagine you've got a legit Wish Chansey. You transfer your Chansey into Scarlet and Violet, and forget Wish because it's literally useless. Gen 12 comes along (yup, three generations later), and whoops, looks like Wish is usable again. Fuck you for wanting to use your Pokemon at any point in the nine years between Gens 9 and 12.
But it is not considerate at all. Your moves are set to level up movesets. So this wish chansey still wouldn't have wish under this system went sent to whatever game wish is added to unless wish is literally added to the pokemon's moveset.

So no, it is still fuck your Wish Chansey.
 
But it is not considerate at all. Your moves are set to level up movesets. So this wish chansey still wouldn't have wish under this system went sent to whatever game wish is added to unless wish is literally added to the pokemon's moveset.

So no, it is still fuck your Wish Chansey.
The point is that if moves being set to level up moves is the new policy going forward, you'd never need to worry about deleting a useless legacy move only to later get told "jk the move's not useless anymore, go get another one somehow".

Basically, because all transfer moves are worthless, you don't have to stress out about any of them. You can just use the Pokemon.
 
I like that we've all uniformly gathered around Wish Chansey, the move that in reality probably like some thousands of people might have had because it was a 2 week event exclusively at the New York Pokemon Center where you got one of 6 random eggs

There's still plenty of moves relevant for this conversation (see: the cross section of moves in SWSH as TM or TR but cannot be taught to Pokemon who get them the generation prior such as Toxic or Knock Off), just thought it was funny.
 
The point is that if moves being set to level up moves is the new policy going forward, you'd never need to worry about deleting a useless legacy move only to later get told "jk the move's not useless anymore, go get another one somehow".

Basically, because all transfer moves are worthless, you don't have to stress out about any of them. You can just use the Pokemon.
That still isn't considerate at all. It is just you that thing you loved an adored about this series. We are taking that part away too, and for no good reason either.

I much rather have a mon be useless for a game, then outright lose it forever.

R_N that is probs because people are still salty that someone else has something they can't have. lel

Naw, it is just the most well know example. I am personally more annoyed at Toxic/T-port/andmyselfdestructwhale
 
Nintendo clearly does some balancing for singles metas, or at least tries to, hence the existence of HDB. They also know that Smogon typically allows all transfer moves regardless of pentagons etc. I strongly suspect making the moves illegal to use on Showdown (or perhaps more relevantly impossible to use in online friendly matches) is the entire point here: ultimately, much as Nintendo probably wishes otherwise, competitive singles play *is* a big part of this game and legacy moves *are* a massive accessibility barrier to playing on cart with the ruleset that basically everyone uses. I can see why Nintendo are trying to actively adjust that meta, and this is the only tool they really have to usefully do that.

It's heavy-handed, but I don't especially mind it; the real issue with a lot of mons is that the removed moves are basically required to make them viable (particularly defensive mons which lost recovery moves), and I don't think using legacy moves as balance patches for those mons is a great solution.

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this, but another consideration is the imminent discontinuation of Pokemon Bank for people who don't already have it. Given the IMO fairly high likelihood that the app will actually be shut down during gen 9's lifecycle, I can see why Nintendo might choose this moment to perform a hard purge of legacy moves given that the number of such moves that will be discontinued is about to massively increase.
 

Theorymon

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Nintendo clearly does some balancing for singles metas, or at least tries to, hence the existence of HDB. They also know that Smogon typically allows all transfer moves regardless of pentagons etc. I strongly suspect making the moves illegal to use on Showdown (or perhaps more relevantly impossible to use in online friendly matches) is the entire point here: ultimately, much as Nintendo probably wishes otherwise, competitive singles play *is* a big part of this game and legacy moves *are* a massive accessibility barrier to playing on cart with the ruleset that basically everyone uses. I can see why Nintendo are trying to actively adjust that meta, and this is the only tool they really have to usefully do that.

It's heavy-handed, but I don't especially mind it; the real issue with a lot of mons is that the removed moves are basically required to make them viable (particularly defensive mons which lost recovery moves), and I don't think using legacy moves as balance patches for those mons is a great solution.

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this, but another consideration is the imminent discontinuation of Pokemon Bank for people who don't already have it. Given the IMO fairly high likelihood that the app will actually be shut down during gen 9's lifecycle, I can see why Nintendo might choose this moment to perform a hard purge of legacy moves given that the number of such moves that will be discontinued is about to massively increase.
The Pokebank shutdown is a good point. I get why folks will be upset if it impacts stuff on Pokemon Showdown, but in the end Gamefreak is gonna focus on people who buy their games. Pokebank might be up for a while, but at some point they'll shut those servers off, and legacy stuff is gonna get that much harder to obtain.

And the event stuff goes even further. For example, Wish Blissey? Those came in eggs from an obscure event that happened in New York City. Getting a "legal one" might as well be chasing a unicorn. There is a gen 3 save file that supposedly has "legit events" on them that's been around the internet for a while, but who knows if they're actually real or not. Maybe some sort of super expert on this stuff like Kaphoptics idk.

To be clear: I sympathize with folks that don't like such a dramatic movepool shake up, a lot of Pokemon are gonna get nerfed that way. But point is, I can see why Gamefreak could view it as a problem even beyond their metagames. Inaccessible moves really suck for friendly matches!
 
Of course, the other option is "Stop making so many event-exclusive moves". If their concern is "It's impossible to get a legit Wish Chansey but people use hacked ones" maybe just make Wish a Happiny Egg Move and stop worrying about it. "Blue Flare Victini is strictly better than Fire Blast Victini", maybe the only way to get that shouldn't be a 1-month event from 3 locations 10 years ago. If people gen too many mons, stop making genning the only reasonable way to get something.
 

KaenSoul

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Of course, the other option is "Stop making so many event-exclusive moves". If their concern is "It's impossible to get a legit Wish Chansey but people use hacked ones" maybe just make Wish a Happiny Egg Move and stop worrying about it. "Blue Flare Victini is strictly better than Fire Blast Victini", maybe the only way to get that shouldn't be a 1-month event from 3 locations 10 years ago. If people gen too many mons, stop making genning the only reasonable way to get something.
Maybe their problem is Blissey/Chansey having access to Wish at all, for balance reasons, or Victini using moves mean to be for Reshiram/Zekrom for flavour/lore reasons.
I think they never expected a lot of those special moves to ever become part of competitive, but every gen people discover how to cheat and generate any mon they want, only 5 people should be able to use Wish Chansey not 5 million, thats what they think, and now to punish a community that got used to cheat they make sure everyone pay.
 
Maybe their problem is Blissey/Chansey having access to Wish at all, for balance reasons, or Victini using moves mean to be for Reshiram/Zekrom for flavour/lore reasons.
I think they never expected a lot of those special moves to ever become part of competitive, but every gen people discover how to cheat and generate any mon they want, only 5 people should be able to use Wish Chansey not 5 million, thats what they think, and now to punish a community that got used to cheat they make sure everyone pay.
Then don't make the mons in the first place. If Wish Chansey is broken, it's broken, so don't distribute it at all. "Only a handful of people will get to abuse this" is the worst possible option when making something broken, because it means that the handful of people who got it originally are OP and everyone else gets to suck. They made the bed, let them lie in it.
 
Then don't make the mons in the first place. If Wish Chansey is broken, it's broken, so don't distribute it at all. "Only a handful of people will get to abuse this" is the worst possible option when making something broken, because it means that the handful of people who got it originally are OP and everyone else gets to suck. They made the bed, let them lie in it.
But what if Wish Chansey was distributed early in Gen 3, when competitive Pokemon barely existed, and it was only discovered to be broken years later?
 
But what if Wish Chansey was distributed early in Gen 3, when competitive Pokemon barely existed, and it was only discovered to be broken years later?
Silly you, it's smogon, we like to blame things happened many years ago before the problem even existed :psysly:

Which is funny because indeed they have stopped releasing event exclusive moves since a while, while also adding a lot of formerly event exclusive moves to the actual pokemon in gen 8 (except eruption Heatran sadge)
They even went as far in gen 8 as letting you change legendaries HA on demand to remove the issue of exclusivity for these as well.
 
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But what if Wish Chansey was distributed early in Gen 3, when competitive Pokemon barely existed, and it was only discovered to be broken years later?
It's also important to consider that Wish would heal a flat 50% to incoming switch-ins instead of scaling based on the user's HP like it does now. In other words, a mechanics change made this option much stronger currently.
Silly you, it's smogon, we like to blame things happened many years ago before the problem even existed :psysly:

Which is funny because indeed they have stopped releasing event exclusive moves since a while, while also adding a lot of formerly event exclusive moves to the actual pokemon in gen 8 (except eruption Heatran sadge)
They even went as far in gen 8 as letting you change legendaries HA on demand to remove the issue of exclusivity for these as well.
There are a fair few event moves that are still basically impossible to get though. The main one that comes to mind is Bolt Strike and Blue Flare Victini. And unlike V-Create, I have a feeling that these moves won't be made readily accessible any time soon.
 
There are a fair few event moves that are still basically impossible to get though. The main one that comes to mind is Bolt Strike and Blue Flare Victini. And unlike V-Create, I have a feeling that these moves won't be made readily accessible any time soon.
I think they may just have realized it was a mistake to give them in first place. In case of Victini probably because they are meant to be signature moves of the gen 5 legendaryes (and in reverse, Rayquaza having V-create so taking over otherwise Victini's signature move).

It's not even a "balancing" reason (Victini isn't even usable), just GameFreaks really likes their mythicals and legendaries to have a signature move that only they have (even if sometimes it's just a clone of another move), so it's understandable they don't want to give them again and would rather forget them as just a past mistake (like most of other event moves).
Several others that they deemed ok were added to their standard movepool in gen 8 after all, so the choice to not add some of them was deliberate.

But I'll still be salty about Eruption Heatran.
 

KaenSoul

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I genuinely doubt there's that much malice going into this decision, to position it as "PUNISH a community
I guess that wasn't the best choice of words.
Then don't make the mons in the first place. If Wish Chansey is broken, it's broken, so don't distribute it at all. "Only a handful of people will get to abuse this" is the worst possible option when making something broken, because it means that the handful of people who got it originally are OP and everyone else gets to suck. They made the bed, let them lie in it.
It's been a while since the last time we had a relevant event move, they have been really careful with that kind of stuff this Gen, and being more careful with movepool is a sign they care a lot more about balance than back in the day, even if they still aren't that good at it.
 
I guess that wasn't the best choice of words.

It's been a while since the last time we had a relevant event move, they have been really careful with that kind of stuff this Gen, and being more careful with movepool is a sign they care a lot more about balance than back in the day, even if they still aren't that good at it.
Gen VI was really when they started cutting back on wacky event moves. While there are expceptions, most event moves since X and Y are usually among the 4 moves designed to solely be event moves(Celebrate, Hold Hands, Happy Hour, and Hold Back). Granted, three of those had an amazing omni-boost Z-move version but in 2 out of 3 gens since their introduction they've been useless (Splash Clone, Splash Clone that fails outside of Double/Triple Battles, a move that doubles money earned after battle, and a clone of False Swipe)
 
I think a big part of this is less to do with taking on any direct problem (though certainly it does clear up a bit of a mess wrt some event moves), but more that it allows them to be very flexible in the future with a Pokémon's movepool. In the same way 'dexit' means they can now pick and choose which Pokémon exist rather than having to keep around every single one and account for every variable there, this allows them to reset a Pokémon's movepool from scratch each game so that it can fit each game's direction. A much harder version of Legends Arceus' movepool changes, in other words -- it gives them a blank slate for each game that comes out.
 
Gen VI was really when they started cutting back on wacky event moves. While there are expceptions, most event moves since X and Y are usually among the 4 moves designed to solely be event moves(Celebrate, Hold Hands, Happy Hour, and Hold Back). Granted, three of those had an amazing omni-boost Z-move version but in 2 out of 3 gens since their introduction they've been useless (Splash Clone, Splash Clone that fails outside of Double/Triple Battles, a move that doubles money earned after battle, and a clone of False Swipe)
Incidentally I believe gen 6 was also when they introduced the "battle ready" clause, since they realized that in the past they released limited moves and/or no longer obtainable moves due to TM/tutor changes that would punish people not owning the old games or old events.

Overally, I get that smogoners won't be happy of it, and neither will some of the facility players (i get you bois), but it's better for the (potential) balance that every game has its own clean slate.

Ultimately, they want the competitive scene to be "accessible" to anyone, and wouldn't require to obtain older pokemon. While this can seem like anti-synergic (if you force people to buy older games, that means you get more money), in practice you get more mileage by making people know that "if i want to play this competitively, all I need is this game", rather than discourage and potentially lose players if they think that the entry barrier is too big.

GameFreaks (or to be fair, I think this is TPCI/Nintendo actually) is slowly but surely trying to push Pokemon (both TCG and VGC) toward actual E-sports level. And while they still have a long way to go before they can even remotely compete with actual e-sports, it's small things like these that are necessary for that transition.
 
Incidentally I believe gen 6 was also when they introduced the "battle ready" clause, since they realized that in the past they released limited moves and/or no longer obtainable moves due to TM/tutor changes that would punish people not owning the old games or old events.

Overally, I get that smogoners won't be happy of it, and neither will some of the facility players (i get you bois), but it's better for the (potential) balance that every game has its own clean slate.

Ultimately, they want the competitive scene to be "accessible" to anyone, and wouldn't require to obtain older pokemon. While this can seem like anti-synergic (if you force people to buy older games, that means you get more money), in practice you get more mileage by making people know that "if i want to play this competitively, all I need is this game", rather than discourage and potentially lose players if they think that the entry barrier is too big.

GameFreaks (or to be fair, I think this is TPCI/Nintendo actually) is slowly but surely trying to push Pokemon (both TCG and VGC) toward actual E-sports level. And while they still have a long way to go before they can even remotely compete with actual e-sports, it's small things like these that are necessary for that transition.
It is something I'm mixed on, but honestly, in terms of cartridge play, I think the change is for the better.

Getting many of the event moves released in prior generations is just too big of a hassle. I didn't pick up Zeraora back when it was being distributed in USUM, so the only way I can get something like Knock Off + Toxic on it is to just pray one of those Wonder Traders like MitsukiTV or whoever just randomly trades me one on Gen 7 wonder trade. Soft-Boiled Clefable might be the "optimal" but practically getting one is a MASSIVE hassle that would require to invest quite a bit of money. I can't ever have an optimal Pikachu because I don't have access to the Extremespeed event that was given out years ago unless I delve into a cheating process that is still quite confusing and probably would require me to mod my 3ds, invest money into an action replay, or do something else that I frankly don't care to do.

I'm not sure if others feel the same way, but I do think that simulator play did start to diverge a lot more in Sword and Shield than in previous generations, I think in large part due to Toxic and Knock Off not being as accessible as they were before. While I don't like that Pokemon like Zapdos lost a lot of options they previously had in BDSP, I do like that the simulator and game are mostly 1-1 in that most of the stuff I'm regularly using on a game-to-game basis on Showdown isn't too difficult to get for myself on the actual catridge if I wanted to.
 

Theorymon

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oh man my boxes are a total fucking mess, I gotta organize them tomorrow so I can finally get the shiny charm in Brilliant Diamond and SR for a Shiny Arceus lmao

On the bright side though my Legends transfers are mostly ready. I went full netflix stupid while away from home and bred a bunch of 0 Atk and 0 Spe stuff like Rufflets and Stantlers. I even bred a 0 SpA 0 SpeIV Teddiursa (in a Safari Ball, thanks Pokemon Emerald!) JUST in case Gamefreak gives us Special Foul play in Scarlet and Violet LOL
 

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