Pokemon Philosophy: Is abusing the RNG cheating?

[Dwarfspider]

My take on it.

AR is hacking, no question there.

RNG is considered cheating to casual players, who also most likely don't care about IVs and EVs.

If those casual players try to get a perfect pokemon without the RNG then they will understand that is is quite impossible (except for 1 in a million freak occurrences.)

Heres the thing, using rng to your favor still means that you work, you still hatch the eggs, still take the time for the right personality to hatch, you still catch the legends, you still ev train the pokemon.

Heck, using RNG means that instead of soft resting with masterballs and randomly hoping, you can actually catch that darkrai in a luxury ball.

Overall its a shortcut, and even then it could still take over an hour per pokemon. Its still a game, and games are supposed to be fun not a terrible bore and you invest the time and get results that can satisfy you morally instead of using a freakin' AR and getting a perfect pokemon in 5 minutes.

I use the RNG to my advantage, if I couldn't I wouldn't bother playing because my desire for near perfection would simply take the fun away.

 

[mattj]

I just learned to RNG (shiny gibble, near flawless gigas, near flawless TRU Dragonite), but don't see it as any different than using an AR, except that RNG'd pokemon don't have a chance of failing an "official TPCi hack check" since all their stats/nature/gender/IVs/moveset/met at page are all in order.

That's about it.

Using an AR can still take work too (it took me hours and hours to find any decent Plat codes like fast egg hatch and such).

Just my opinion.

 

[Icalasari]

I see it as a kind of cheating when used in Breeding, as it makes a mockery of those who patiently wait and breed better and better Pokemon. Even more so the more things Gamefreak gives us (In HgSs, you can give the father a power item, and the corresponding stat's IV is guaranteed to be passed). With things that are uncontrollable, however, such as Legendaries (the closest you can get is Synchronize) and Shininess, well, I don't see much of a problem. If Gamefreak starts giving us tools so that we have a better chance of influencing a Legendaries IV's, or have the ability for breeding shinies be easier if you, say, use a shiny as one of the parents (and I'm talking about in the low 500's for chance, minimum), then I would change my mind

Personally, I think this would be less of a problem if Gamefreak did a better job at an inheritance system

EDIT: Whoops, I didn't notice how long ago the last post is. Oh well, I figure that opinions can change, and with the whole power item thing, well, it could still spur up fresh debate and view points

 

[Bozo]

don't forget where all this started. Everstone bred stuff in emerald and noticed that he kept getting 31/31/23/31/31/31 and other spreads over and over. he gradually got better at it, and started to figure out patterns of inheritence.

would you consider that cheating? at this point i can hardly imagine anyone saying yes.

at some stage he figured out that it depended on the timing, and got better and better to the point that eventually most of his trade thread had pokes with the same spreads. still not cheating - merely someone who has mastered a game, and worked out how to beat it consistently (like someone who, say, realises that you can do a certain manoeuvre to get away from the ghosts in pacman).

the difference i guess comes when people look into the programming of the game and come up with lists and programs to make it all easier. but if hacking into a game in order to make it easier to do things without hacking (like knowing what seeds to hit, and how to hit them) is what makes this "cheating", then pretty much everything we know about the mechanics of the game should be considered cheating:

• IVs
• EVs
• shininess
• damage formulae

then again, i'm sure the game creators imagined people sitting around in schools naively levelling up their gentle mewtwo's.....

interesting topic though guys. and some thought provoking responses.

why no poll though? it would have been very illuminating.

 

[Tangerine]

The debate here is like an abortion debate

You're not convincing anyone because everyone has different definitions of "cheating"