Yes, it's cheating, even if you don't intend to trade it. Of course, there's not much of a problem if you don't intend to trade it (it's your game, after all), but if you do it makes the GTS extraordinarily abusable. This is why I plan to complete my Platinum dex without using the GTS once (even for event legends).
-
Welcome to The Cave of Dragonflies forums, where the smallest bugs live alongside the strongest dragons.
Guests are not able to post messages or even read certain areas of the forums. Now, that's boring, don't you think? Registration, on the other hand, is simple, completely free of charge, and does not require you to give out any personal information at all. As soon as you register, you can take part in some of the happy fun things at the forums such as posting messages, voting in polls, sending private messages to people and being told that this is where we drink tea and eat cod.
Of course I'm not forcing you to do anything if you don't want to, but seriously, what have you got to lose? Five seconds of your life?
R/S/E Is cloning in Emerald cheating?
- Thread starter Flygon1
- Start date
1. Luftballon
Banned
- Pronoun
- it
But what leads you to believe that all of life isn't just one big sadistic game?
Not Meowth
Cat, are you drilling?
I don't entirely see why that matters- yes, you're giving up your shiny Rayquaza you worked hard on, but you're getting what you want for it in return; an Arceus. Sure, its worth is undermined if the OT clones a hundred of them and goes around spending them like water, but you're not to know that.
Cloning is cheating in my opinion, since it's playing the game in a way that wasn't legitimately intended, but so what? As long as you don't mass-clone them so there are millions of what should be very exclusive Pokémon knocking around, it can't hurt anyone. And frankly I think as much blame lies with n00bs asking for a lv100 shiny Deoxys in exchange for a lv1 Bidoof for encouraging it.
1. Luftballon
Banned
- Pronoun
- it
- Pronoun
- she/her
Currently this is a bit of a debate about the definition of words, which never fails to annoy me.
The point is is not whether it falls under any possible definition of "cheating"; the point is whether it's wrong. And in my opinion, cheating is only wrong if it actually hurts somebody - if, say, you cheat in a game against somebody else and therefore win when you shouldn't have. What other harm cheating can do is take away from your own enjoyment of the game by taking shortcuts past things that could potentially be far more fun and rewarding.
Does cloning hurt anybody? No, not really. Any given person trading on the GTS does not know or need to know whether the Pokémon they're receiving is cloned. They don't need to even wonder. It's a Pokémon and they can do exactly the same things with it whether the other person happens to still have an identical one or not. If that makes you not want it, that's your idiosyncrasy, not a rule to impose on everyone; you have the right to ask that the Pokémon you personally receive not be cloned, and the right for that request to be respected, but people also have the right to not want to give a valuable Pokémon to you permanently without getting to keep one for themselves - if nobody wants to trade you their legit shiny Arceus and let you keep it, don't be surprised.
And if you don't feel right about cloning your own Pokémon, it's pointless to sit there shaking your fist at those who do. If you don't want to trade it away to somebody who isn't giving anything away, then don't trade it to them. Even when you trade something to somebody who doesn't clone, you technically don't know that; they could just as well have cloned it first without your knowledge and you would never know. The only thing that changes is your perception.
The point is is not whether it falls under any possible definition of "cheating"; the point is whether it's wrong. And in my opinion, cheating is only wrong if it actually hurts somebody - if, say, you cheat in a game against somebody else and therefore win when you shouldn't have. What other harm cheating can do is take away from your own enjoyment of the game by taking shortcuts past things that could potentially be far more fun and rewarding.
Does cloning hurt anybody? No, not really. Any given person trading on the GTS does not know or need to know whether the Pokémon they're receiving is cloned. They don't need to even wonder. It's a Pokémon and they can do exactly the same things with it whether the other person happens to still have an identical one or not. If that makes you not want it, that's your idiosyncrasy, not a rule to impose on everyone; you have the right to ask that the Pokémon you personally receive not be cloned, and the right for that request to be respected, but people also have the right to not want to give a valuable Pokémon to you permanently without getting to keep one for themselves - if nobody wants to trade you their legit shiny Arceus and let you keep it, don't be surprised.
And if you don't feel right about cloning your own Pokémon, it's pointless to sit there shaking your fist at those who do. If you don't want to trade it away to somebody who isn't giving anything away, then don't trade it to them. Even when you trade something to somebody who doesn't clone, you technically don't know that; they could just as well have cloned it first without your knowledge and you would never know. The only thing that changes is your perception.
1. Luftballon
Banned
- Pronoun
- it
shiny jiggly
okay, I lied. I'm not active.
- Pronoun
- they
Back when I had Silver, I did the cloning glitch on that game. One minute I had one Meganium and the next I had two. Since I didn't have access to an older link cable and a trading partner, I never was able to trade off my second Meganium. The farthest that you ever really had to go in that game to clone was like, once you got more than one pokemon in your team. This is fairly early in the game and thus, pretty much everyone can reach the point within the game where they can activate this glitch.
Flash forward to Emerald. I knew a friend who emerald cloned (he moved to Kentucky... T~T) and he traded me all sorts of cool stuff like a Groudon called YEAH!!! and a level 70-something Rayquaza. I also got a nice handful of master balls from him. The amount of progress that you must make on Emerald to get to the cloning glitch is staggering compared to the minuscule amount that you needed in G/S/C. I still haven't gotten to that point in Emerald (stupid lack of good places to grind before the Elite 4...). But the beauty of the Emerald cloning glitch is that it only works in Pokemon Emerald (sure there is a way to clone using the GTS, but it is complicated and most likely removed by now). That means that the 3rd generation has something that it will be remembered by. Not to mention, more people will buy Emerald just to get to the point where you can clone... (and probably give up after being kicked in the face by the elite 4 eleventy billion times.)
Nonetheless, this is my point: It takes effort to get to the battle frontier and not everyone will be able to get there. So just the fact that a person CAN activate the glitch shows that they have skills in Pokemon training and that they care enough about their pokemon to want to give them away while still keeping them. This is similar to mass breeding a rare pokemon (but not exactly!).
Warning: I'm feeling ranty after this point (I do my best work at 9-something pm)
Also, about the "would you clone a child that you raised" argument, Pokemon and children are two totally different things with different needs. Children need food/shelter/water/attention/etc while pokemon don't necessarily need these; especially if you're playing a 3rd generation pokemon game. We aren't dealing with Mewtwo here. Currently, Pokemon do not have feelings programmed into them to an extent where they can any sort of actual thought processes that don't have to do with the battle system or the contest system.
This may not be that related directly, but it's still worth considering: The growth of a pokemon is not stunted when you give it to somebody else. You could argue that you don't get as many EV's due to boosted exp but this can always be combated with exp shares and fighting lower level pokemon. But if you trade a human child, you will mentally scar them for life. Pokemon do not get a status affliction called "scarred for life from separation" when you trade them; therefore, the child clone and trade argument is irrelevant due to how differently the two groups act when traded off.
Flash forward to Emerald. I knew a friend who emerald cloned (he moved to Kentucky... T~T) and he traded me all sorts of cool stuff like a Groudon called YEAH!!! and a level 70-something Rayquaza. I also got a nice handful of master balls from him. The amount of progress that you must make on Emerald to get to the cloning glitch is staggering compared to the minuscule amount that you needed in G/S/C. I still haven't gotten to that point in Emerald (stupid lack of good places to grind before the Elite 4...). But the beauty of the Emerald cloning glitch is that it only works in Pokemon Emerald (sure there is a way to clone using the GTS, but it is complicated and most likely removed by now). That means that the 3rd generation has something that it will be remembered by. Not to mention, more people will buy Emerald just to get to the point where you can clone... (and probably give up after being kicked in the face by the elite 4 eleventy billion times.)
Nonetheless, this is my point: It takes effort to get to the battle frontier and not everyone will be able to get there. So just the fact that a person CAN activate the glitch shows that they have skills in Pokemon training and that they care enough about their pokemon to want to give them away while still keeping them. This is similar to mass breeding a rare pokemon (but not exactly!).
Warning: I'm feeling ranty after this point (I do my best work at 9-something pm)
Also, about the "would you clone a child that you raised" argument, Pokemon and children are two totally different things with different needs. Children need food/shelter/water/attention/etc while pokemon don't necessarily need these; especially if you're playing a 3rd generation pokemon game. We aren't dealing with Mewtwo here. Currently, Pokemon do not have feelings programmed into them to an extent where they can any sort of actual thought processes that don't have to do with the battle system or the contest system.
This may not be that related directly, but it's still worth considering: The growth of a pokemon is not stunted when you give it to somebody else. You could argue that you don't get as many EV's due to boosted exp but this can always be combated with exp shares and fighting lower level pokemon. But if you trade a human child, you will mentally scar them for life. Pokemon do not get a status affliction called "scarred for life from separation" when you trade them; therefore, the child clone and trade argument is irrelevant due to how differently the two groups act when traded off.
ClockworkJB
Aspiring Spacenoid
The real issue here doesn't seem to be the cloning glitch at all, or even the game it originates from. Rather, the issue for most seems to be its implications for trading, online or otherwise. Well let's step back a moment and look at the worst offenders here.
The GTS is an inherently flawed system. It provides little to no information about the Pokemon up for offer or the trainer offering it. The offers are for the most part, totally unreasonable, which is made even worse by the fact that only 4-6 offers are displayed at any one time. Worse still, a fair portion of pokemon on offer are hacked, whether by cheat device, flash card, exploit or otherwise. These pokemon may have impossible movesets or stats, obvious fake IDs or locations, unobtainable ribbons or any of a number of undesirable qualities that just scream "hacked".
Now enter cloned pokemon. Sure, they aren't obtained in the usual way, and they come at no cost or effort to the one offering them up, but (as has been so astutely pointed out again and again in this thread) as far as the one on the receiving end is concerned, they are "legitimate".
By now you can probably see where I'm going with this. People are still going to hack and cheat, regardless of whether this bug exists or not. Therefore, any injection of legitimate pokemon into the pool, no matter how small, can only be a good thing.
This obviously applies to local and FC trades as well, as they are still part of the greater "pool" of pokemon being circulated.
The GTS is an inherently flawed system. It provides little to no information about the Pokemon up for offer or the trainer offering it. The offers are for the most part, totally unreasonable, which is made even worse by the fact that only 4-6 offers are displayed at any one time. Worse still, a fair portion of pokemon on offer are hacked, whether by cheat device, flash card, exploit or otherwise. These pokemon may have impossible movesets or stats, obvious fake IDs or locations, unobtainable ribbons or any of a number of undesirable qualities that just scream "hacked".
Now enter cloned pokemon. Sure, they aren't obtained in the usual way, and they come at no cost or effort to the one offering them up, but (as has been so astutely pointed out again and again in this thread) as far as the one on the receiving end is concerned, they are "legitimate".
By now you can probably see where I'm going with this. People are still going to hack and cheat, regardless of whether this bug exists or not. Therefore, any injection of legitimate pokemon into the pool, no matter how small, can only be a good thing.
This obviously applies to local and FC trades as well, as they are still part of the greater "pool" of pokemon being circulated.
Patar
あなたが追求&#
The cloning glitch is just that: a glitch. If even Game Freak didn't know about it, yet made little to no effort to recall or fix it, then it isn't cheating. I myself have used the glitch several times, and there are certainly several reasons to do so. Why not have identical copies of the same Pokemon, one to keep for yourself and a second to transfer to D/P/P/HG/SS via Pal Park? Why not trade an identical-down-to-the-last-snippet-of-code Pokemon via GTS, when the recipient will not even know whether or not it's cloned? They may have their suspicions raised when said cloned-then-traded Pokemon is that lvl. 1 Event Giratina, but does that mean they're any less happy to recieve such an exclusive Pokemon? Of course not.
There's really no right or wrong when cloning. It's futile to compare it to human or animal cloning, seeing as there's a thick, boldfaced line between a 70x70 sprite and a living, breathing being. Cloning said being would most certainly be labeled wrong, for there's no way everything could be copied exactly. On the other hand, a Pokemon; a stream of data, can be easily copied down to the last 0 and 1. I have firmly decided to not say whether or not it's right or wrong, because there's no way such a widespread debate could be solved. There will be those who agree, as well as those who disagree. I have only decided to put in my two cents and state what I feel is reasonable, just not which one I support.
A third facet on the gem (My invented metaphor, don't take it unless you let me know) is the aspect of using an external device such as a GameShark or Action Replay (or the lesser-known Codebreaker; the name itself is discouraging to me) to replicate items or even Pokemon themselves. These items clone Pokemon as easily and as efficiently as the Emerald or G/S/C cloning glitch, but these items were designed with cheating. In fact, the makers themselves say so on just about every surface of the box. Using these items is definitely wrong (and I'm not afraid to say so about that) because not only do they illegally replicate the data (as opposed to a glitch, which is an unintentional programming error and exploiting such is perfectly alright, as it has been programmed (if unintentionally; it's a loophole in the data) into the game and is really too late to be reversed as of now) but they can - and I've seen it firsthand in two games - permanently damage the coding. It's a complete modification and therefore illegal in a licensed product.
Lastly, (a fourth facet on the gem, if you will) I'll also take a stab at the aspect of comparison to trading off a human being as opposed to a Pokemon. (Oh look, my post has turned into a rant. :) A little piece of data is not a brain. It cannot feel emotion or even inherently think. It's just AI. AI doesn't think; it's just based upon some coded algorithms. Like shiny jiggly said, we aren't dealing with Mewtwo here. (Or any Pokemon from the anime, really, who actually demand food when they get hungry o.O) Especially Snorlax, whose FR/LG dex entry states that it must eat 880 pounds of food a day. I know darn well none of you fed yours anything outside of the occasional berry, Rare Candy, or stat booster), due to the lack of even being able to. Pokemon's got such amazing Fridge Logic. ;) Thus, Pokemon are not even remotely human. We can develop an attachment to them, which is why we feel reluctant to trade a level 100 Pokemon we worked hard to raise. That's what makes the cloning glitch such a wonderful and yet terrible thing at the same time. Thus, this debate will probably never end, just like the debate for human or animal cloning will never end.
You've reached the end of my rant. :)
There's really no right or wrong when cloning. It's futile to compare it to human or animal cloning, seeing as there's a thick, boldfaced line between a 70x70 sprite and a living, breathing being. Cloning said being would most certainly be labeled wrong, for there's no way everything could be copied exactly. On the other hand, a Pokemon; a stream of data, can be easily copied down to the last 0 and 1. I have firmly decided to not say whether or not it's right or wrong, because there's no way such a widespread debate could be solved. There will be those who agree, as well as those who disagree. I have only decided to put in my two cents and state what I feel is reasonable, just not which one I support.
A third facet on the gem (My invented metaphor, don't take it unless you let me know) is the aspect of using an external device such as a GameShark or Action Replay (or the lesser-known Codebreaker; the name itself is discouraging to me) to replicate items or even Pokemon themselves. These items clone Pokemon as easily and as efficiently as the Emerald or G/S/C cloning glitch, but these items were designed with cheating. In fact, the makers themselves say so on just about every surface of the box. Using these items is definitely wrong (and I'm not afraid to say so about that) because not only do they illegally replicate the data (as opposed to a glitch, which is an unintentional programming error and exploiting such is perfectly alright, as it has been programmed (if unintentionally; it's a loophole in the data) into the game and is really too late to be reversed as of now) but they can - and I've seen it firsthand in two games - permanently damage the coding. It's a complete modification and therefore illegal in a licensed product.
Lastly, (a fourth facet on the gem, if you will) I'll also take a stab at the aspect of comparison to trading off a human being as opposed to a Pokemon. (Oh look, my post has turned into a rant. :) A little piece of data is not a brain. It cannot feel emotion or even inherently think. It's just AI. AI doesn't think; it's just based upon some coded algorithms. Like shiny jiggly said, we aren't dealing with Mewtwo here. (Or any Pokemon from the anime, really, who actually demand food when they get hungry o.O) Especially Snorlax, whose FR/LG dex entry states that it must eat 880 pounds of food a day. I know darn well none of you fed yours anything outside of the occasional berry, Rare Candy, or stat booster), due to the lack of even being able to. Pokemon's got such amazing Fridge Logic. ;) Thus, Pokemon are not even remotely human. We can develop an attachment to them, which is why we feel reluctant to trade a level 100 Pokemon we worked hard to raise. That's what makes the cloning glitch such a wonderful and yet terrible thing at the same time. Thus, this debate will probably never end, just like the debate for human or animal cloning will never end.
You've reached the end of my rant. :)
