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[Pokemon VGC] 15 of top 50 (Worlds benchmark) Japan Cup players DQed for cheats

During the first weekend of May, Japan had an online tournament called the Japan Cup. The top 50 qualified for Day 1 at the World Championships. However, TPC put up a notice stating that people who were caught using edited save data and shit like that were DQed.

The kind folks at NB did some checking and found out how many people lost their Day 1 Worlds invite:
D6dRuJc.png


What's shocking isn't how many people cheated in some form or another. It's that TPC/Game Freak actually did something for once. Holy shit.

Update:
As an FYI, there was a follow up from a Japanese player that the 15 disqualified were using hacks that were detected. There were those who were using save file manipulation to repeatedly lose to other game cards by queuing up at the same time on multiple 3DSes to try and hit themselves that are still in the rankings.

https://twitter.com/ShinonVGC/status/733532300021895169

Japan's qualification system is fully under the jurisdiction of The Pokémon Company (Japan head branch) so it differs from other regions which are under the jurisdiction of The Pokémon Company International. Unfortunately Japan has used this awful online ladder-based qualification method since 2012 and this is the type of crap it leads for.

For those unfamiliar, the top 50 get a Day 1 invite to the Pokémon World Championships. Top 32 get an invitation to the Japan National Championships. To do this, they had one weekend to play a maximum of 40 (maybe 30) battles on a special in-game ladder and hope their Elo would be in the Top 32/50. The rest of the world plays in an offline circuit like the Capcom Pro Tour or any card game circuit..
 

yami4ct

Member
Anyone who has an unbreedable on their team has cheated it on there. It's pretty much a guarantee. These 15 must've done something really stupid to get DQed. I wonder what exactly they were caught for?

As long as there are tournament legal unbreedables, there's going to be a cheating problem.

Is there a way to avoid getting caught?

If you hack pokemon with legal values and you aren't completely stupid about it, there's almost no way to catch you.
 

Sandfox

Member
I'm surprised this happened.

Is there a way to avoid getting caught?
Cheat better basically.

Damn, didn't know cheating was that rampant. I thought they had countermeasures against it. o.o

It's possibly for people to hack Pokemon that look 100% legit making it impossible to tell whether they are hacked or not. Of course there are still people who don't bother to do that and now TPC seems to be cracking down on them.
 

Sandfox

Member
Anyone who has an unbreedable on their team has cheated it on there. It's pretty much a guarantee. These 15 must've done something really stupid to get DQed. I wonder what exactly they were caught for?

As long as there are tournament legal unbreedables, there's going to be a cheating problem.



If you hack pokemon with legal values and you aren't completely stupid about it, there's almost no way to catch you.

As long as hacking takes like five minutes people will cheat.
 

patapuf

Member
Were these pokemons better than raised pokemons then?

Otherwise i wonder how they detect edited pokemon values from unedited ones.
 

yami4ct

Member
Good, no place for hacks in Championship level play.

If none of your hacks break the rules of the game, I kind of have no problem with it. Who cares if you didn't reset 10 billion times to get that perfect Zapdos? This is a tournament about strategy and team building, not about patience. The problem is, with the way IVs are handled with unbreedables is only going to encourage hacking.
 
Almost anyone "cheats" in VGC, I even remembered one of the top player of VGC 2015 that got caught on stream having a Pokemon with an incompatible ball (Aegislash in a Dreamball I think) and... nobody cared.

Getting caught is almost stupid since everyone knows a Pokemon with incompatible values / stats would get found immediately
 

Firestorm

Member
As an FYI, there was a follow up from a Japanese player that the 15 disqualified were using hacks that were detected. There were those who were using save file manipulation to repeatedly lose to other game cards by queuing up at the same time on multiple 3DSes to try and hit themselves that are still in the rankings.

https://twitter.com/ShinonVGC/status/733532300021895169

Japan's qualification system is fully under the jurisdiction of The Pokémon Company (Japan head branch) so it differs from other regions which are under the jurisdiction of The Pokémon Company International. Unfortunately Japan has used this awful online ladder-based qualification method since 2012 and this is the type of crap it leads for.

For those unfamiliar, the top 50 get a Day 1 invite to the Pokémon World Championships. Top 32 get an invitation to the Japan National Championships. To do this, they had one weekend to play a maximum of 40 (maybe 30) battles on a special in-game ladder and hope their Elo would be in the Top 32/50. The rest of the world plays in an offline circuit like the Capcom Pro Tour or any card game circuit..
 

Sixfortyfive

He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
Players must've gotten really sloppy in the 5 years since I last went to one of these events if that many of them got DQ'd for it this time around.
 

yami4ct

Member
As an FYI, there was a follow up from a Japanese player that the 15 disqualified were using hacks that were detected. There were those who were using save file manipulation to repeatedly lose to other game cards by queuing up at the same time on multiple 3DSes to try and hit themselves that are still in the rankings.

https://twitter.com/ShinonVGC/status/733532300021895169

Japan's qualification system is fully under the jurisdiction of The Pokémon Company (Japan head branch) so it differs from other regions which are under the jurisdiction of The Pokémon Company International. Unfortunately Japan has used this awful online ladder-based qualification method since 2012 and this is the type of crap it leads for.

For those unfamiliar, the top 50 get a Day 1 invite to the Pokémon World Championships. Top 32 get an invitation to the Japan National Championships. To do this, they had one weekend to play a maximum of 40 (maybe 30) battles on a special in-game ladder and hope their Elo would be in the Top 32/50. The rest of the world plays in an offline circuit like the Capcom Pro Tour or any card game circuit..

Ok, that makes a lot of sense. Also complete bullshit worth getting DQed for.
 

JoeM86

Member
There was a hilarious instance at UK Nationals this past week where someone got caught out because they had a friend hack their Kyogre, but they accidentally gave it Water Sport, a relatively useless move, as opposed to the standard Water Spout

Almost anyone "cheats" in VGC, I even remembered one of the top player of VGC 2015 that got caught on stream having a Pokemon with an incompatible ball (Aegislash in a Dreamball I think) and... nobody cared.

Getting caught is almost stupid since everyone knows a Pokemon with incompatible values / stats would get found immediately

Yeah. TPCi really needs to step up their hack checks and punishments for it. It's ridiculous. If they want to be taken seriously as an eSport, and I know they do, they need to sort it out.
 
As long as the combination works within the intended legal limits of the game, I think it's alright. But if they just exceeded the values to cheat, that's utter crap and they totally deserved it.
 

Dr. Buni

Member
Don't cheat
It takes forever to breed all the mons you need to have variety for teams. I have roughly 5 boxes of perfect mon (after I lost my saves a few months ago) and I spent over 200 hours on that, but a lot of people don't have that dedication. So I see no problem with hacking mons, as long as they don't have moves they can't naturally learn (same goes for natures and stuff)
 

Firestorm

Member
There was a hilarious instance at UK Nationals this past week where someone got caught out because they had a friend hack their Kyogre, but they accidentally gave it Water Sport, a relatively useless move, as opposed to the standard Water Spout

Yeah. TPCi really needs to step up their hack checks and punishments for it. It's ridiculous. If they want to be taken seriously as an eSport, and I know they do, they need to sort it out.
To be fair, that's been an amazing case of awful hacking for several years now. I remember people doing that at GameStop tournaments for Battle Revolution too.

And if they want it taken seriously as an esport they're gonna need to take a page out of what MMOs are doing and fix some of the grinding elements more than hacking (though to be fair, it would eliminate the hacking), but that ball is in Game Freak's court.
 

GamerJM

Banned
Almost anyone "cheats" in VGC, I even remembered one of the top player of VGC 2015 that got caught on stream having a Pokemon with an incompatible ball (Aegislash in a Dreamball I think) and... nobody cared.

Getting caught is almost stupid since everyone knows a Pokemon with incompatible values / stats would get found immediately

I wish there was an official battle simulation game where you could just autogenerate Pokemon with any theoretically possible stats and movesets. It seems ridiculous to me that there's a competitive community where basically everyone implicitly cheats and no one really cares, yet it's still technically against the rules.
 

JoeM86

Member
To be fair, that's been an amazing case of awful hacking for several years now. I remember people doing that at GameStop tournaments for Battle Revolution too.

And if they want it taken seriously as an esport they're gonna need to take a page out of what MMOs are doing and fix some of the grinding elements more than hacking (though to be fair, it would eliminate the hacking), but that ball is in Game Freak's court.

They did with Gen VI. By your own admission, it is so easy to get decent IV'd Pokémon now. I can breed what I want in like half an hour now I have decent Pokémon in each egg group.

People are just lazy.

I wish there was an official battle simulation game where you could just autogenerate Pokemon with any theoretically possible stats and movesets. It seems ridiculous to me that there's a competitive community where basically everyone implicitly cheats and no one really cares, yet it's still technically against the rules.

I have long put forth the idea of "Hologram Battles" which do that, but that wouldn't be eligible for proper formats. It'd just be for testing

It takes forever to breed all the mons you need to have variety for teams. I have roughly 5 boxes of perfect mon (after I lost my saves a few months ago) and I spent over 200 hours on that, but a lot of people don't have that dedication. So I see no problem with hacking mons, as long as they don't have moves they can't naturally learn (same goes for natures and stuff)

It really doesn't take forever anymore.

I am against all forms of hacking, so.
 

yami4ct

Member
It takes forever to breed all the mons you need to have variety for teams. I have roughly 5 boxes of perfect mon (after I lost my saves a few months ago) and I spent over 200 hours on that, but a lot of people don't have that dedication. So I see no problem with hacking mons, as long as they don't have moves they can't naturally learn (same goes for natures and stuff)

I think the situation is actually pretty fine for breedable pokemon. As long as you only need 5/6 perfect stats (and the vast majority of mons do have a stat they can sacrifice), you can breed what you need fairly easily and quickly once you have all your tools.

It's the unbreedables that are the huge problem. Either give them all 6/6 IVs up front, turn all pokemon IVs perfect for tournament play or ban unbreedables. I kinda can't see a way to keep that system fair in a way that won't keep encouraging hackers.
 

Firestorm

Member
They did with Gen VI. By your own admission, it is so easy to get decent IV'd Pokémon now. I can breed what I want in like half an hour now I have decent Pokémon in each egg group.

People are just lazy.
Restarting my game and finishing the story again to change my Groudon build isn't easy nor does it take half an hour. Neither was doing so for a Thundurus or Landorus. Personally I think half an hour is also a bit too much to tweak a build I want to test unless they only want people who don't have any other responsibilities playing competitively (not at the top tournament level, but even mid-level).
 
And if they want it taken seriously as an esport they're gonna need to take a page out of what MMOs are doing and fix some of the grinding elements more than hacking (though to be fair, it would eliminate the hacking), but that ball is in Game Freak's court.

Seriously, Competitive pokemon is like one of the greatest multiplayers I've had the pleasure of enjoying. The only problem is the stupid barrier to entry, if gamefreak knocks the barrier completely down (just give a hologram in game excuse or something), it will almost assuredly become a potential Esport worth paying attention to.
 

Toxi

Banned
It's kinda hilarious with all the blatantly hacked unbreedable Pokemon appearing in championships, it's this that finally gets people disqualified.

"Guys, my shiny Landorus and Thundurus with perfect IVs and nature are totally legit."
 

Sandfox

Member
I wish there was an official battle simulation game where you could just autogenerate Pokemon with any theoretically possible stats and movesets. It seems ridiculous to me that there's a competitive community where basically everyone implicitly cheats and no one really cares, yet it's still technically against the rules.

I think they would rather deal with the hacking than just have everyone playing on simulators.

It's kinda hilarious with all the blatantly hacked unbreedable Pokemon appearing in championships, it's this that finally gets people disqualified.

I wouldn't really call them blatant to where TPC can just ban people since there's no way to actually tell unless the hacker is dumb.
 

JoeM86

Member
Restarting my game and finishing the story again to change my Groudon build isn't easy nor does it take half an hour. Neither was doing so for a Thundurus or Landorus. Personally I think half an hour is also a bit too much to tweak a build I want to test unless they only want people who don't have any other responsibilities playing competitively (not at the top tournament level, but even mid-level).

Well I think legendaries being in the format is a bad idea anyway :p I do see your point, I spent quite a while soft resetting my Yveltal recently.

However, that in no way means hacking is right, especially when it's against the bloody rules.
 

Redd

Member
Breeding is crazy easy and fast now. I guess it's understandable for unbreedable pokemon though. Resetting for good IVs takes hours if you're lucky.
 

Aters

Member
I think any Pokemon build that is "theoretically achievable" will not be banned. Those cheaters must have done something really stupid. Also, they might just get those Pokemons from someone else and they didn't know those are hacked.
 

Sixfortyfive

He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
Now I'm reminiscing over all the hoops I had to jump through in Gen IV to min/max shit legitimately.


These programs didn't actually alter anything on the game itself. They basically just instructed you about exactly what you needed to do and exactly when you need to do it in order to get the exact stats you wanted. I even went the extra mile and made sure to stick with sensible date/time combinations instead of flipping things ~1000 years into the future.

Good times. (Then I dropped Pokemon for fighting games the following year.)

This has always and probably will always be an issue for this game. A single-player campaign with hundreds of hours of content and grinding is somewhat at odds with extremely customizable PvP competition. Although I haven't really kept up with the specifics at all for the newer games, so I'm out of the loop.
 

Azuran

Banned
LMAO

All you need to do is change a couple of values with a powersave. No need to get fancy with the cheating.
 

GamerJM

Banned
I think they would rather deal with the hacking than just have everyone playing on simulators.

I mean, if it's an official release I don't see why not. It could even just be something like a new Pokemon Stadium game for the Wii U or NX that takes the concept of "rental Pokemon," to an extreme.
 

Sandfox

Member
]Well I think legendaries being in the format is a bad idea [/B]anyway :p I do see your point, I spent quite a while soft resetting my Yveltal recently.

However, that in no way means hacking is right, especially when it's against the bloody rules.

You sure changed your tune on that one lol.

I mean, if it's an official release I don't see why not. It could even just be something like a new Pokemon Stadium game for the Wii U or NX that takes the concept of "rental Pokemon," to an extreme.
I'm sure they would rather you buy the mainline games and spend time on that rather than locking competitive play behind a spinoff.
 

udivision

Member
For Tournament level play, they probably should have a mode where you can just choose the Pokemon/Moves/EVs/IVs etc. like a battle simulator.

Competitive play is completely divorced from the main campaign anyway, so it really doesn't need to be held back by it.
 
This has always and probably will always be an issue for this game. A single-player campaign with hundreds of hours of content and grinding is somewhat at odds with extremely customizable PvP competition. Although I haven't really kept up with the specifics at all for the newer games, so I'm out of the loop.

They've definitely been trying to make it more accessible but it's just not enough yet. They need to outright give access to every combination possible, but make it something like a hologram to keep the teams from use in the main game. That way they can have their cake and eat it too.
 

JoeM86

Member
VGC 2016 does that to people.

Too bloody right haha.

To be fair, if it wasn't for the Primals, it'd be a fun format. Primals have really over centralised it.

They've definitely been trying to make it more accessible but it's just not enough yet. They need to outright give access to every combination possible, but make it something like a hologram to keep the teams from use in the main game. That way they can have their cake and eat it too.

If they were to do something like that, it'd be for testing. They'd still make it so that you have to do your own team for official competitions/rankings.
 

wmlk

Member
It's kinda hilarious with all the blatantly hacked unbreedable Pokemon appearing in championships, it's this that finally gets people disqualified.

"Guys, my shiny Landorus and Thundurus with perfect IVs and nature are totally legit."

And this is why I question what constitutes as cheating. Can they tell when it's been hacked? Because there's still the absurdly small chance that someone has found a Pokémon with crazy IVs.
 
I enjoy that you're posting an image from February the week after a Mandibuzz + Ditto team top four'd the largest tournament of the year to date.

I'm interested, is there a video of a match with that team ?

How are they allowed two megas?

Also how did so many people get perfect Xerneas, Groudon, Rayquaza etc? If I tried that it would take me at least a year.

You can have more than one mega in a team but you can't make them mega-evolve on the same match, so most of the time, they pick only one of the two mega during a match (since a VGC format is max 4 pokémon in a battle)
 
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