RNG Abuse: Ethical?

[EvilCrazyMonkey]

I recently found this article on Smogon, which explains how to crack the pseudo-random number generator of the Pokémon games, so that you can easily catch/hatch shiny pokémon or perfect/near perfect IV spreads. Now, a huge collection of RNG-abused shiny pokémon isn't nearly as cool as a huge collection of shiny pokémon found out of the blue, but it still is something. Also, if you're going for a nice IV spread, it does save some time, but again, it's taking shortcuts that Nintendo/GameFreak didn't exactly intend for players. So what are your opinions? Totally legit or completely unethical?

 

[Superbird]

I think it's perfectly ethical, but if you put in all the effort then it makes you feel better about yourself than if you did that.

 

[Vipera Magnifica]

I think it's more of a nuisance to the people whose dedication to shiny hunting has been undermined by such practices. It's sure to depreciate the value of shiny Pokemon now that they are easier to get through RNG hacking.

 

[Butterfree]

The value of shiny Pokémon lies in how difficult it was to obtain, not how difficult shinies are to obtain in general.

RNG abuse is just a lengthier, more painstaking version of sharking. It's perfectly ethical to do whatever you want on your own game, but calling your RNG-abused Pokémon "legit" is really stretching the definition. With RNG abuse, as with sharking, you can obtain a set of Pokémon that a player should naturally be so unlikely to get that it is basically impossible, and that confers an unnatural advantage when it comes to competitive battling or the like.

But the theory behind RNG abuse is a fun novelty and I celebrate all research of internal Pokémon game mechanics.

 

[yiran]

I find it quite inaccurate that you have used the word "ethical". It's just a game, and from my experiences ethical means something on a much larger scale. "Legit"'s fine, though.

Anyway, it really depends on how much you value shiny Pokémon and how you view RNG hacking.

 

[ultraviolet]

I find it quite inaccurate that you have used the word "ethical". It's just a game, and from my experiences ethical means something on a much larger scale. "Legit"'s fine, though.

is cheating not viewed as an unethical thing? I mean, by saying something's 'legitimate', you're basically saying the same thing in this context anyway.

As someone who doesn't generally trade with other people or battle competitively, I don't really care how people get their shiny pokemon. I probably wouldn't cheat to get shinies myself, because that's boring, but I don't really see how it changes much. I'm more concerned with how a shiny pokemon looks (ew lucario what are you doing) rather than where someone got it.

 

[yiran]

You might interpret words differently, but "ethical" for me mostly applies to things of great magnitude like torture or animal testing or cannibalism. I've never heard the word ethical being used in the context of cheating in a game.

 

[Spatz]

You might interpret words differently, but "ethical" for me mostly applies to things of great magnitude like torture or animal testing or cannibalism. I've never heard the word ethical being used in the context of cheating in a game.

You may want to look at this...

 

[glitchedgamer]

I think it sucks the fun out of the game, but I don't see anything unethical about it. I just think the people who use it miss the point of Pokemon.

 

[surskitty]

I don't get why rng-fiddling is acceptable where pokésav or sharking isn't. :/

 

[Crazy Linoone]

I say it's one the same scale of ethical/legit-ness as sharking or pokesav. Pokesav also allows for people to create pokemon the game views as legal. You can use pokesav to generate a shiny whose data is indiscernible from that of a non-hacked shiny, but that still doesn't make it ethical to use pokesav to generate shinies to trade for other people's non-pokesav'd pokemon unless it's agreed to beforehand. RNG manipulation is the same thing, just more complicated than pokesav.

Meanwhile, this article is fascinating. It makes me want to try it just to see it work...

 

[Frostagin]

This kinda reminds me of abusing the RNG to get rare item drops in Golden Sun. Of course, the advantage to that is having a strong item, not just bragging rights. Unlike shinies.

I am personally going to keep on with regular shiny hunting, as it just doesn't feel right to gain a shiny in an easy way and brag about it. Like bragging about the Red Gyarados to somebody who doesn't know about the auto-shiny.

 

[shy ♡]

Honestly I don't care what people do in a game. I'd prefer if they were honest about the methods they used but all in all, it's not gonna affect anything much in the end. Also, bragging about shinies just seems really silly to me. All it takes to get them is luck; getting them through rng abuse honestly seems more impressive and more brag-worthy. :\ (still not something I'd condone bragging about though, honestly. ... I wouldn't condone bragging about anything, really, bragging is pretty terrible.)

 

[Cerberus87]

To play competitively you're required to do that kind of stuff because no one will spend a huge amount of time just to get a perfect Pokémon. They'd rather take shortcuts.

And shinies are overrated. Sure, I value the ones I have, but most of the shinies you find in the wild are competitively useless so they end up being just trophies.

 

[Bellsprout]

I agree that RNG manipulation has definitely deflated the value of shiny pokémon in general, and it has become a sadly essential tool in competitive battling because everyone who knows how seems to be using it to get near-perfect IV spreads.

From the standpoint of shiny Pokémon, I always viewed the matter as an aesthetic preference, so hacked shinies never really bothered me because, as pathos said, it's simply about luck anyway. But, as far as the battling aspect is concerned, I'm against anything that goes outside the boundaries of the game itself. It devalues the efforts of those who put a legitimate amount of time and energy into breeding for IV's, natures, abilities and move sets to get the exact pokémon they want. And really...when you know what you're doing, it doesn't even take that long unless you are looking for a literally perfect IV spread, a feat that I believe Game Freak meant to be nigh impossible without implementing some sort of cheating device. The odds of getting such a spread, after all, are 1 in over a billion.

 

[1. Luftballon]

I've never quite understood the need to drag in ethics for things like this. any products of rng manipulation must necessarily be legal, so it's not as if any sort of mechanical imbalance results -- it just becomes that ideal starting conditions becomes reliably producible, which in fact makes for a fairer game.

devaluation of effort is silly, since the amount of effort is dictated by the whims of the prng anyway. removing that as a factor seems an improvement.

mind, I also fail to see the appeal of mindless tedious repetition; that's computer work and I'm not a computer. if one thinks of it that way, rng manipulation is just offloading the business of hatching all the eggs to decide which to take onto a computer.

(nvl;dr ethics where game mechanics are concerned is a foreign to a res idea)

 

[Michi]

I think that cheating to obtain a shiny pokemon takes away that amazing feeling you get when you're just walking along and see a shiny, or hatching eggs and finally find a shiny pokemon.

 

[Aisling]

I used to do this in Platinum before it got stupidly difficult/time-consuming to do in every game afterwards (like phoning Professor Elm over and over or getting the timing down to the second at the very beginning). I liked it- for me it's a nice balance of time and effort. It's actually reasonable in the amount of time it takes to do, without compromising the legitimacy of the results too much- unlike sharking, which just fucks things up and leaves a mess in the wake of altering something that was already one way before you made it something else. I only ever did it for breeding, though (nature, gender, ability, and if I had a lot of time that day, maybe shininess), I never bothered trying to figure out how to get it to work for legendaries, though my opinion on that is still the same.

I don't see why it would devalue shinies either- just tack on "oh, and I found this in the wild and didn't RNG it" and viola, everybody knows once more that you're a lucky bastard/have way too much time on your hands to bike parties of eggs up and down the bridge. You just have to specify it now instead of it just being an assumed thing.

 

[Bellsprout]

Alraune, what is assumed nowadays is that a vast majority of shinies are found by some process of simplification. Look on any GTS and you'll find dozens upon dozens of shinies for any species of pokémon you search for. Look on almost any battling video on Youtube. At least a few out of every 10 or 15 are going to have shinies on a team, a statistic that is way too high considering the chances of encountering a shiny are less than 0.013% in a completely natural state. The unfortunate truth is that, because of RNG, Sharking and Pokesaving, shinies aren't worth squat, and the reward for the entire ordeal of searching for them generally gets you called a liar or no one simply cares at all because they're so commonplace.

 

[1. Luftballon]

is not as if shinies mattered in the first place. in gen 2, shininess indicated slightly above average but definitely not optimal, I guess, but.

never mind that the rarity is simply due to randomness and waiting for random events ... is not really effort, more luck and possibly an exercise in patience.