After a number of gamers had been disqualified from the 2023 Pokémon Scarlet and Violet World Championships for utilizing illegally obtained ‘mons, the brand new World Champion is now additionally going through hacking allegations. Fellow VGC gamers, nevertheless, are extra involved concerning the lack of options within the recreation that would doubtlessly get rid of the necessity to use hacked Pokémon within the first place.
On Aug. 13, Shohei Kimura was topped the 2023 Pokémon Scarlet and Violet World Champion in Yokohama, Japan. One of many key members of his successful staff was Amoonguss—the best support Pokémon in the game—with its capacity to place foes to sleep, heal its allies, and redirect assaults.
Practically every week later, Kimura’s Amoonguss is now accused of being illegally obtained. This comes after loads of different gamers had been disqualified from the event for a similar motive.
In line with the accusations, Kimura’s Amoonguss was modified to have zero Assault IVs, which can sound odd to gamers who aren’t acquainted with what IVs are. IVs, or particular person values, are basically additional stat factors which might be randomly assigned to every Pokémon on a scale of zero to 31. So what precisely is the purpose of deliberately making a Pokémon have zero Assault IVs?
Typically talking, it’s higher for Pokémon to have 31 IVs, aka “excellent IVs,” in each stat. However there are exceptions for Trick Room groups or non-physical attackers like Amoonguss. Since Amoonguss normally doesn’t have a bodily assault on its transfer set, it might be ideally suited for it to have zero Assault IVs. That is to attenuate the injury it might take from confusion results or Foul Play, each of which might be calculated based mostly on Amoonguss’ personal Assault stat.
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Nonetheless, since IVs are randomly assigned, there’s solely a one-in-31 likelihood that any given Amoonguss may have precisely zero Assault IVs. This will lengthen the time it takes to assemble up the Pokémon in your staff. And whereas breeding can pace up the method with the Future Knot and energy gadgets, that also would require you to have a zero Assault IV Pokémon readily available to breed together with your Amoonguss.
To make issues extra sophisticated, you possibly can’t even breed Legendary Pokémon like Enamorus who actually advantages from having zero Pace IVs. Have enjoyable restarting your Legends: Arceus recreation to get a brand new Enamorus if yours doesn’t have the fitting IVs.
Due to the tedious course of to acquire their ideally suited Pokémon legitimately on their very own, it appears gamers typically resort to 2 alternate options—hacking/modifying their Pokémon, or buying and selling with one other participant who could or might not be supplying you with an unlawful ‘mon anyway.
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This isn’t to say hacking needs to be legalized in official Pokémon tournaments, although. Somewhat, gamers like popular content creator Patterrz are asking for brand spanking new in-game options that might basically get rid of the rationale why hacking is so widespread.
Patterrz advised Sport Freak may add a function to future video games that permit gamers to legally generate Pokémon with the precise stats and construct they need for official tournaments. This might be a really perfect resolution for gamers who like to battle and compete with out having to spend a lot time gathering up their staff.
One other different can be to introduce a brand new merchandise that may drop a Pokémon’s IVs to zero. We have already got Hyper Coaching and Bottle Caps, which max out a Pokémon’s IVs on a single stat. The 2016 World Champion, Wolfe Glick, talked about months in the past in a YouTube short that aggressive gamers would like to have an merchandise that does the other of that—a “Rusty Bottle Cap”—to assist out Amoonguss, Enamorus, and another Pokémon that may profit from zero IVs.
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Both of those options would decrease the quantity of hacked Pokémon at official VGC tournaments, after which gamers can dedicate extra time to cooking up new methods and groups. And even when we are able to’t have a brand new function that generates battle-ready Pokémon, Glick’s Rusty Bottle Cap thought may be very life like and undoubtedly price contemplating for future generations of the sport.
For now, The Pokémon Firm is counting on stricter hack checks and disqualifications as seen on the World Championships. We’ll see if this continues when the 2024 VGC season kicks off with Pittsburgh Regionals in lower than a month.
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