Why I play Pokemon legitimately

Here's the thing: I like having the option. I like having the ability to have any Pokemon with any stat spread from any event without having to soft reset a million times. I like not being required to have gone to the NYC Pokemon Center in December 2004 just to get a Wish Chansey, let alone having the astronomical luck for it to be flawless. It's like an OCD safety valve.

And yet I almost never use it.

I am ashamed to say that I did use it back in a couple of Gen V competitions, but I was able to rationalize it by the ubiquity of RNG abuse. In that generation, it was simply a time saver, nothing more. And I only entered those competitions to get the participation gift. With all that said, it was kind of a crappy thing to do, and I've never battled with nor traded a genned Pokemon since (or at least none that I've genned or known to be genned; if it looks bad, I'll either fix it and keep it or release it).

I think it's crappy to use genned mons in battle against people who didn't agree to allow genned mons (hypocrite, I know). However... as long as the Pokemon is 100% legal (indistinguishable from legit Pokemon), then it's hard to get too worked up about it. I'm not saying it's not cheating or that it's somehow permissible, but for most cases, the only advantage gained is time.

What I can't for the life of me understand is why people *trade* hacked Pokemon to people who don't necessarily want to deal with hacked Pokemon. Seriously, if you can hack Pokemon, then why on earth would you ever need to trade one for a legit Pokemon? Besides sociopathy? It makes absolutely no sense.

Good on you for not caring about whether others are hacking or not rather than saying why they shouldn't.

I personally play legit through the game my first run, but after I've completed the elite 4/started a new game I generally cheat here and there to add a little personal replayability.

Good to see there are still those that are clean of cheats through and through though.

@ScarletKohaku I RNG my Dittos on my Pokemon White cartridge

@Minnow but RNG is cheating...
the only difference between RNG and edit the values is wasting time...
the game was designed so you could get a shiny or values in a random way.. based on luck
if you take advantage of the pseudo random system, that is cheating...

yes, you do work to get that perfect iv\shiny ditto, but it's still cheating..

@migles true that, some people live by double standards. I know some Pokémon event collectors who have a zero tolerance for everything that smells like cheating (save file abuse, change region etc.) but at the same time they are cloning these event Pokémon using PS or other methods, which they don't consider cheating -_-

That's interesting! So is glitch exploitation cheating in your eyes? I don't mean to attack your opinion or anything, just curious ^^

@ScarletKohaku yes, glitch exploitation is cheating.. the game director (or the people who made the game) didn't designed the game to have thoose glitches. they are errors that happen, it's natural to occur and people will use the glitches, even if its just for fun...
what if nintendo eshop had a glitch and you could download every game without purchasing.. it's not exactly your fault that there was a glitch that made you able to get free games.. yes now you have all the games for free thanks to a glitch by nintendo you are free to enjoy, but at legitimacy eyes, and nintendo's you are not supposed to have them...
you intentionally or not, abused the system to bypass the concept of the game, that is cheating...

there are loads of gliches on the first pokemon games.. there is a glitch that you get a level 1 pokemon, and instant level it up to level 100, or the mew glitch..
i used the mew glitch it's the only way to get the mew, and i don't have any problem to do it.. i can even say it's some kind of feature..
but if i use that glitch to get the mew i can't say i am playing the game legitimately, because it's not on the "script"

Hmm... It's a fair opinion, I can't say I completely agree with it though. For me, if it's in the game's code, it's fair game. Cheating is the use of external modification to me, be it cheating software or save editors. I'm not even sure I'd call RNG manipulation cheating - since you're just using your understanding of how the game works to get what you want. The system itself isn't flawed in the slightest, as all it is there to do is emulate randomness - and it does that exactly as intended. I get that you're doing something the developers never thought of, but when they wrote the code for the RNG, they knew the factors it relied on and knew it wasn't entirely random - so can you really say you're doing something outside of the game's normal bounds?

Just what I think anyway :3 I respect people who play the games exactly as they're intended, but I'm somewhat in the middle with all of this ^^

@migles Except the RNG is not a glitch. The RNG functions exactly in the manner in which it was programmed. RNG abuse is the player utilizing the game mechanics in the most expert way.

I'm not necessarily saying that it isn't cheating, but what is the difference in kind between RNG abuse and keeping track of EVs by hand (before super training was a thing)? Or even knowing about EVs, IVs, and breeding mechanics? It's information from an outside source, right?

I'm being a bit obtuse on purpose. I just find the implications of RNG abuse so interesting. It seems like cheating, but it doesn't really follow the typical classifications of other forms of cheating.

It's weird because I've always felt more guilty cheating than pirating. But I agree man, cheating in games like pokemon just kinda ruins it. I don't play competitively. Even with multiplayer, I don't try to get the best team to fight my friends. I collect the pokemon I like and build teams I think are cool. If my friends wanna play then I'll use my team I made, not PokeGen a team. I don't like to boast or brag if I win, I like to have fun. So cheating makes no sense to me.

You play the game how you want to play it.