Controversy Arises at U.S. Pokémon Nationals With Regards to Cheating

Meh, it's just an aesthetic change, so I don't really care.

That said, didn't GameFreak try and implement that little pentagon-thingy to check if Pokemon are legit or not?

First world problems...

Wow. Never noticed this, but I don't think beyond a warning this should receive punishment honestly. It's worth noting cheating also played a role in TGC where the 2nd place of Seniors made two moves that were obviously not allowed in the finals, granted he was stopped and penalized.

@GuardianKing the pentagon only checks to see if the Pokemon was born in Kalos. The Aegislash was probably created from Powersave in order to save time from breeding. On the other hand he could have bred from a powersaved Aegislash which would technically make it a legit Pokemon. Anyway, the pentagon really doesn't mean much.

Hahahahah oh Rizzo. I think you knew exactly what you was doing. You got caught, man. It sucks but you got caught.

It's so easy to be legit now... I can't stand hackers.

@Blast Nah, he prolly just got it in a trade from somebody and used it, its stats where normal so it didn't even affect anything.

Wonder if it's illegal ancestor had altered stats? So complicated.

Pokemon just so dang confusing to understand...

I have no problem with illegal Pokemon in competitive play why spend forever slaving away to get a decent Pokemon when you would just get one in a instant? Not like at least 75% of the entire competitive scene already uses them, and even at that a good strategy can take down any hacker

I don't think this is even worth talking about IMO. It's just a visual change and he got the Pokemon from trading. Not a big deal IMO.

Hes not cheating so whats the big deal?

The mother could have been a dream world ditto from gen V. The dream ball could be legitimate.

If it's not pocessing an unreleased or illegal move/ability combo and it's stats are perfectly normal and it's item is legal.. then who cares. Hacked shinies and hacked pokeballs don't make a difference in gameplay whatsoever other than looks..

Lol, I just finished breeding an adaptability dragagle I got off powersave and this is the first thing I see after.. as a side note powersave cannot make pokemon like you think.. its not pokegen. You still have to breed those pokemon competitive reguardless. The only thing you can do is shinify, and change gender/pokeballs.. nothing else that touches IVs or stats.

It's possible to get unreleased HA through the wondercard modifer though which makes any pokemon with a random possible ability.

Plus.. just about every player is guilty of hacking somehow.. infact some pokemon used to be impossible, by any means as no event was ever released to be obtained.. yeah super fair I couldn't get an arceus myself just because I never traveled across the planet to get the event. You do relize that 99% of all players who have event pokemon.. wouldn't because event pokemon would never be something you'd easily give up for trade if there's only a few hundred in the world.. so yeah, no matter how legit you claim you are.. if you have an event pokemon.. it's hacked more than likely.

Hackers don't do anything that hurts the game.. other than maybe get an earily unreleased item or event.. oh deal with it, facing them now only prepares you for them later.

next time allow people to change balls later or is that bad?

Cheaters sicken me.

The question people should be asking is Are the stats legit? are the moves legit? In which case, it's fine. If Aegislash really is in a Dream Ball then it's hacked. If everything else is legit then people have nothing to really complain about. I question if this is real... I say that because that seems like such a careless mistake. How could reps miss something that obvious? Or maybe they concluded that it's not a big deal and said screw it. Either way, like the article says : the Dream Ball (Or any Poke Ball for that matter.) posed no effect on the outcome of battles. Chill out people.

I also doubt the reps would kick out the US champion over something this frivolous. Just saying.

Wait, Aigislash can't breed with Dream World Pokemon? Eh, well...I dunno, not my problem. goes back to his Pokemon, lol

@torotoid64 "I have no problem with illegal Pokemon in competitive play why spend forever slaving away to get a decent Pokemon when you would just get one in a instant?"

Because it devalues the hard work of the people who actually did it the right way. Breeding an awesome monster in these games takes forever. Like, hours and hours. If you put in that much time and dedication, then you deserve those perfect stats. And yeah, I know. Insert "ain't nobody got time for that" meme here. And if you don't have the time for it, that's okay. It's a crazy undertaking. That still doesn't mean you can reap the benefits of something you didn't do.

I'm not really referring to you when I say "you," by the way. The rant above isn't directed to you, don't worry. I'm just talking about the people who do, for some reason, cheat at these games.

That said, I don't really think this guy should be penalized too harshly. The only thing wrong with his monster was the design of the ball, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he unknowingly used a hacked monster to breed it. That could happen to anyone. All of the Pokémon I've gotten via Wonder Trade are just sitting in my PC Box because I'm worried about accidentally using a hacked one in battle.

I just wish people would play the game properly in the first place. It all comes from slackers trying to get something for nothing.

@Uriel_PikpikVII

Dittos cannot pass their ball. His Aegislash was hacked one way or another.

The question is if you care if someone wins tournaments with Pokemon that he pretty much openly admits is hacked if the Pokemon doesn't have stats that are beyond what is possible. The GTS has no ball check, you can have female Blazikens with Speed Boost in a Dream Ball, which is also impossible, pass through it.

Aegislash, one of the best Pokemon in the entire game, is in a peculiar situation, as it's one of the few Pokemon that actually need 6 perfect IVs to be at their maximum potential rather than 5, which is what the Destiny Knot will allow passing, making them much harder to breed "perfectly" than most Pokemon.

@BLPs
You are entitled to your opinion, but it's not as if "esports" is tiny and obscure, and even if it was, as said, it's insignificance is still an opinion. There are plenty of people in America who think Soccer/Football is trash but it doesn't stop it from being the most popular sport on the planet. You're telling people who play professional Starcraft 2 and LoL, some who make hundreds of thousands, and are watched by over 32 million people around the planet, that their chosen competitive platform is manure and they shouldn't care if there is what could be considered cheating during tournaments, depending on what the actual written rules are, and in Starcraft 2 and LoL, the rules are written down for all the tournaments to specify what is legal and what isn't, because they should "go out, get a job and support the world economy".

You could just as easily tell any sports fan to go to hell because they are upset if there was blatant cheating in their favorite physical sport, like a team clearly paying off the ref to allow them to beat on the other team with no fouls, or a boxer paying his competitor to take a fall, because it doesn't matter, they should "go out, get a job and support the world economy".

No competitive anything starts out big, but if you want your competitive scene to grow, you need to ensure everything is fair. In Pokemon, this is complicated of course, by the fact that Game Freak designs the IV system to be mostly inherently unfair and arguably requires more time on luck based breeding than practicing and learning the game, which is why people hack in the 1st place.

Over reactions. I have my doubts he did any hacking, otherwise he would've thought more about which ball to have it in. He would have had to actively specify the dream ball when hacking it. It likely was due to wonder trade, some ancestor of the Aegislash likely was hacked and I'd assume it wasn't his, or he'd have been aware of what ball was used. Besides, its stats were legit, it's perfectly plausible that it was due to a trade and not his knowledge. He shouldn't be punished if he himself didn't do any hacking, and it's impossible to prove that pokemon was hacked rather than one of its ancestors.

This shouldn't be an issue. The Aegislash has stats a legitimate one could obtain and has moves that a legitimate one can obtain. The only difference is literally the pokeball it comes out of.

If they want people to stop doing this, then they should make breeding not takes hours and hours and also remove all elements of chance.@Pixel-Perfect Yeah, no. Only if you're lucky.

Cheating is cheating no matter if the impact is big or not at all, he should be banned for life from competitions. I really hate cheaters, just look at MW3.

This does nothing but make predicting the Aegislash easier, since you can notice the Ball it's in. And that's not something in his favour.

Also, as someone else mentioned earlier, you still need to breed even if you do use Powersaves. I don't have one, but I don't think it has any Perfect IVs cheat and I don't think there's anything like past Pokémon-creation programs for Gen VI yet. The Aegislash still had to be bred legitimately.

From what I read- though I don't remember where (possibly his statement?)- he had someone else breed it and only had about 60 hours on his game cart. If anything, that's worth complaining about more than an impossible Poké Ball which hardly even matters.

All-in-all, I'm not bothered by this, since it doesn't affect anything in his favour. The only thing that would affect anything in his favour would be getting others to breed his 'mons for him/generating them, which would give him more time to practice.
Considering how stupid the breeding process is- I just think, mnyeh... I honestly dislike it so much that I do RNG abuse in past gens instead of breeding in XY, unless nessicary for the Pokémon I want. But I do see how you could see that as an issue, too, since that is an unfair advantage, at least to some extent.

It's too grey - if he cheated to get a dream ball, how do we know if he cheated to get it realistic and great stats without any work? While that's fine for just playing the game, in tournament that's akin to.unplugging an opponent's controller - stupid, clear cheating and only done by people who can only have fun when they power play and not just win everything, but also win everything by a gigantic margin, or they can't have fun.

He didn't win, it didn't affect the battle. So I don't see why it matters.

Well I think if it was hacked for looks what else is this guy doing? He's obviously using something to hack his game. I say he's out. LIFETIME BAN! break out the pitchforks everyone!

Were they playing in the jungle? There's always a cheetah in the jungle.

If they only want Pokemon that have been bred and raised by the player in tournaments than you shouldn't be able to use traded Pokemon b/c you can never know if what you are getting is legit or not. Simple as that. Of course anybody could still pay somebody to spend hundreds of hours breeding on 1 copy of the game while they play on another There's really no way of knowing how "legit" any of these Pokemon and their trainers are.

@DarkKirby Couldn't this Aegislash inherit a Dream Ball after some other parent than Ditto? There are many other Pokémon in Aegislash line's egg group.

@GeminiSaint
LOL

@BLPs So you are saying people play competitively should get themselves evaluated? If they want to do that then let them, who are you to judge them. And just because you get a job doesn't mean you proved yourself,you don't have to prove yourself to anybody if you don't want too.

I thought the X and Y games weren't hackable at this point. How the heck did he hack a gen 6 pokemon to change its ball, anyway? Only the female parent can pass down the pokeball, (in this case the female parent was honedge/doublade/aegislash or ditto, none of which can be in a dream ball in the first place) so he couldn't have used a gen 5 dream ball pokemon to pass down the ball. So this means that X and Y are now being hacked in some way?

I'm okay with people "hacking" just for legitemate stats and attacks. That's fine, it's not like those pokemon are any stronger than my own flawlessly-bred babies. If Rizzo's pokes were hacked, then at least they had ordinary stats. I think it's only a problem when pokemon have stats higher than they normally can, and have attacks that they normally can't. I'm still mad at the time an opponent's salamence used aeroblast. That's just cheating. >: (

@Vrael

That's not entirely true.

If you care about if a Pokemon is hacked, then someone who hacked their Pokemon might have an advantage over someone who didn't and eliminate them from the bracket, even if they themselves didn't win.

@MaciejKuczynski

That's not how ball passing works. The female in the breeding pair is the one who decides the species of the Pokemon and the ball it has. So for an Aegislash to be in a Dream Ball, you would have to catch an Aegislash in a Dream Ball, and Dream Balls don't exist in X/Y.

@noctowl If they took out IVs, then they would save me hours and hours of my life going toward training my pokemon. Which would be a gods send in my opinion.

Why couldn't an ageslash have been bred with a dream world ditto... It seems entirely possible

Stats weren't affected in anyway and he didn't even win, the competors seem butthurt to me

@DarkKirby

What advantage? If a pokemon's stats are perfect.. that's no different from perfect stats on a breedable pokemon.. or for that matter any pokemon including legendaries who can be soft reseted for perfect stats.

Plus.. everybody hacks their pokemon with two things: action replay, and pokegen.. pokegening stopped when wi-fi shut down as it involved hacking the gts on BW/BW2 to send perfect mons like legendaries over. Those then, if everything is legit, can be sent through pokebank. The poketransfer would stop ANY illegal mons from going to the pokebank.. so nothing illegal can be hacked that way.

The other which is action replay, a product made by datel.. that.. well..can be bought at gamestop! The 3ds models are called powersaves. I got mine for 30 bucks there. There is NO CODES ON POWERSAVE that alter stats.. change nature, change IVs, or change abilities... only things are to alter a pokemon's forme, shinify them, and change the pokeball they're caught in... nothing that is of concern.

@Zzyyvux

It's been said already, but Dittos cannot pass their ball.

There wouldn't be controversy if there was a legal way to get an Aegislash into a Dream Ball. The people complaining are the people who are aware of that. While it's been known that the winners in Pokemon tournaments almost always used hacked Pokemon, usually they are hacked well enough where you can't distinguish it from a "natural" Pokemon, even if the probability of 6 perfect IVs for 1, let alone 6 Pokemon, including legendaries that can't be bred, is astronomically low (especially before X/Y).

There was a top Japanese placer in the last Gen 5 tournament that openly admitted he used hacked Pokemon online after the tournament was over and he wasn't caught during it.

@Zzyyvux
Two problems with that: Ditto can't be obtained in a dream ball, and ditto can't pass down its ball to its offspring. Whether ditto is acting as the male or female parent, the offspring won't inherit its ball. If a male pokemon is bred with a ditto, the baby will hatch in a regular red pokeball. If a female pokemon is bred with ditto, the baby will inherit the mother's ball.

@Crimzonlogic
^this

@noctowl
For once, I agree with you. If they can't get rid of IVs, then they could at least make a way to strengthen IVs on a pokemon so that they aren't set in stone. Imagine being able to train up your low-IV starter and make them perfectly ready to battle "competitively" in tournaments after the story/adventure part of the game is done! That would REALLY be training your pokemon. No longer would any pokemon be "unusable" because it had low IVs. Any pokemon can be trained to be the best that they can possibly be! I really hope they do this OR get rid of IVs in future games.

@BLPs That's not everyone that's just people who can't go out of there way to help someone.I know people like that it sickens me, it kills competitive gaming for me sometimes,is sad really.

This huge controversy wouldn't exist if Gen 6 didn't introduce the option of passing down the parent's pokeball. If it wasn't included in X & Y, we wouldn't have this discussion as the Champion will either have a pokeball for his Aegislash if he didn't hack. Or he'd still have the dream ball and would be considered "cheating". [Which I highly doubt in this case]

@BLPs
Hey, you just didn't talk to the right people. I would have certainly helped you with whatever questions you had that I knew the answer to(If it were about pokemon games, that is, since I'm not too knowledgeable about other games.) Not all of us are a-holes. I'm sorry you met with a bunch of jerks. I have, too, actually. I guess it's unavoidable.

@Stomatopod17

The advantage being if you hacked your Pokemon you had a much easier time acquiring Pokemon with the correct IVs, and as I said earlier, this is especially difficult for Aegislash, who requires 6 perfect IVs to be at maximum potential, over the 5 Destiny Knot passes and the 5 most Pokemon are okay with. In reality, because of confusion damage, Foul Play, and possibly Hidden Power, Special Attacking and/or Stall Pokemon are only optimized with precise IVs anyway, which even with the Destiny Knot, is still very, very, very time consuming and almost entirely luck based grinding.

This is of course, as I said, "if" you care about hacking.

If you do, it's equivalent to saying it doesn't matter if anybody cheats in any sport if they didn't end up winning.

@Iggly

It would be more fair to say, it would matter a lot less, and people might care a lot less, if IVs didn't exist, as they are the number 1 reason hacking is done at all, that and event Pokemon. IVs do not add positively to the game mechanics in any way, all they provide is a lot of luck based grinding under the guise of being a simulation of DNA. What you're suggesting is it would be better if the game had less features and people less informed, which isn't really dealing with the issue as much as saying it's better if the issue still exists but it was less visible.

@darkkirby

You're focusing a lot on how people spend time breeding and how it is not "fair" for them to get perfect pokemon. So is it justified for the huge load of 6IV dittos(obviously hacked from B/W era) breeders are using to make 5/6IVs, and then trading them for hard earned 5IVs that aren't bred using those dittos? As long as the pokemon doesn't have moves/abilities it isn't supposed to have, all is fair in battling.
This also leads to another point, that is the obsolete form of IV breeding. Sure, back when it was fresh and new (RBY/GSC) it was to make the game more hardcore. Now that it has been thoroughly exposed and evaluated, all pokemon should come with 0IVs (or max IVs if that's your thing) in everything with each Hidden Power being a separate TM.

@DarkKirby

Aegislash is actually fairly easy, most aegislash actually do not run spe IVs so that they can purposely lose speed ties against other aegislash (I.E. their king's sheild activates while your's fails.. so you can go for it again next turn doubling chances of lowering their attack.. that or they shadow sneak.. you take a weakness policy, and shadow sneak back on blade forme and sweep). That's only 4 IVs needed.. 31/31/31/x/31/x.. or when special, 31/x/31/31/31/x.. or even when mixed you still have the 5 IVs, 31/31/31/31/31/x.. hardcore players may even aim for the 0 IV in speed along with brave nature for best results or even speed ties against similar aegislashes. Personally I use a regular sword's dance sweeper with weakness policy as well as a toxic+sub+king's sheild staller fully defensive.

And like I said before, the only methods of hacking is; one which does not work on kalos pokemon as it's done only in gen 5.. and the other has absolutely no method of manipulating the IVs or stats in anyway of said pokemon. In short, the advantage is nothing as rizzo's aegislash, if it has the proper ivs, would REQUIR breeding as there is no easy way out of that this gen.. even pokegen was closed when the wi-fi for the wii+ds consoles shutdown.

Who cares? Long live Action Replay and Game Shark!

Aegislash's dream world ball could have come from either a female Yamask or Dwebble since both can be caught from the dream world and used to breed with another one.

Also here is Aegislash's egg group: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Mineral_(Egg_Group)

@bananaking123
@Stomatopod17
I do not support the IV system. Of the many problems I have with the Pokemon mechanics system (despite loving Pokemon itself), the king of the mountain on top of everything else is IVs. I am simply explaining why it is considered unfair. And for people who choose not to hack, they are at a disadvantage at the very least, luck and time wise. Whether it be creating the Dittos in Gen 5 or creating the Pokemon itself.

@Sakura_Moonlight2421
Like I said earlier that's not how ball passing works. For any Aegislash to be in a Dream Ball, someone would have to catch a female Aegislash in a Dream Ball at some point, and that's not technically possible right now without hacking since you cannot acquire Dream Balls in X/Y.

@Sakura_Moonlight2421

Only the female pass down the pokeball.

Plus a female yamask will generate yamask eggs not honedge eggs. The species the egg hatches as depends on the female or ditto. Or in legendary's case being in the undiscovered egg group which prevents breeding whatsoever.

@Stomatopod17 Daaaaaang u musta went ta Pokecollege!

I've been playing since the dawn of Pokemon and beyond. I exploited those games' glitches and it was fun for a minute. This has always been a thing with Pokemon. I can see both sides of this, but I'd like to think Nintendo would've figured this out by now. Sad that kids take the easy road. I'm a fan of hard earned glory myself. Hopefully, Nintendo can stop this kind of junk from even being a possibility someday. Sportsmanship people! Man-up and be honest!

@GeminiSaint

Competitive Pokemon: Evidently where it isn't okay to use completely legitimate Pokemon, because the Pokeballs they came out of have animations they shouldn't? idontgetit.jpg

Ok I think people should calm down, he might of had a pokemon in a ball that is impossible in x and y but it didn't alter the battle in anyway. Also he pointed out that he got it from another person. It's just funny how us gamers are so heartless when it comes to winning and if we don't win we complain so lighten up and play the game for fun.

Oh the horror

@DarkKirby Right, I probably should've thinked a bit more before stating what I said. Like you said about IVs and Event Pokemon, those are probably the largest factors for hacking in Pokemon. IVs wouldn't be a problem if there was a way to influence them like EVs. While Event Pokemon are only an issue because Gamefreak barely gives us Event Pokemon in the West compared to Japan. Has no one seen the amount of events we missed in Gen 5?

Overall, hacking wouldn't really matter today if Gamefreak can do something about those two issues. The Champion wouldn't really be considered a cheater in this case as he doesn't have an illegal moveset, ability, or stats. The only "cheat" is really just how his pokeball looks, I don't think they should dethrone him just because there's a small oddity in his pokeball as he doesn't look like a guy who would play unfair.

It's kind of frustrating that people are kind of mocking that this is even an issue at all when there is deeper questions at hand than the obvious "Does it really matter what Pokeball it came out off." This is just some random guy on the scene who has seen a little success, this is Ray Rizzo. He has won Worlds 3 TIMES. He is widely considered the best in the format. No the stats weren't changed, and no he didn't win. But he made it very deep in this tournament. Maybe he was just doing it to save time, but he went out of the games normal means to do so, giving him an advantage over players who aren't willing to do it the right way. With the easy of EV training in X and Y you think that Nintendo will make IVs earlier in the future. But until then, it is the long, clunky, annoying route, or hacking. Plain and simple.

Sounds like the Pokemon Company has also been caught red-handed for having faulty hack checkers. Something as simple as a ball should have been an immediate red flag. The fact that it wasn't makes both Ray and TPCi look bad.

How does anyone know for sure it was due to a hack and not some kind of rare glitch in the game that caused it? Pretty much every game has some sort of glitch, especially with games getting more and more complicated to track down every possible bug these days. I wouldn't automatically blame the player, especially if they have a good track record for honest play.

In BLACKB0ND fashion, both Ray and TPCi have been exposed.

Wow, this is pretty heavy stuff.
Quick, if you live in the US tell me (without looking) who your mayor, governor and state senator are, because just about anything else on this news day seems more meaningful than a Pokemon animation.
Minor issue, leave it alone.

I suspect some players at a high level feel the rules apply to everyone else.
If you need to cheat to give you an edge, don't even bother competing!

Just to get this out of the way, Ray claims he had no idea about this since he plays on Pokemon Sims and only has around 60 hours in the actual game.

In general, there are two things I consider when it comes to this hacked/illegitimate Pokémon thing. First: stats. The Aegislash had acceptable stats, so there's no problem there. Second: breeding/training. It's possible that the Aeglislash could have been hacked to have perfect IVs and a specific EV distribution and nature from the moment it hatched from its egg, not to mention having the right ability on top of this. While this has no impact on the battle itself, it does significantly shorten the amount of time spent trying to obtain such a Pokémon. I consider this unfair to the many trainers who have spent who knows how long breeding and hatching eggs to get the right IVs, nature, ability, and possibly egg moves. If the Aeglislash was indeed illegitimate in such a way, then I believe Rizzo should have been disqualified if he had made it further because it tramples all over the hard work other trainers put into making their teams. If such a thing were allowed for the sake of convenience, that would be a different story. But under the current rules, I stand by my position.

@GalacticMario28 The Aegislash was bred by an anonymous friend of Rays and then given to him. His friend probably didn't even notice either.

He knew that his ball was illegal. You don't win 3 times without knowing a thing or two about Pokemon. And I personally believe that the judges should ban anyone who has an illegal ball regardless of whether it has any effect on the Pokemon being used or not.

As soon as you start letting little things like that slip through the nets, people will try and push things further and further in the hopes of getting away with it.

Why fret over this. You can still get a 6iv aegislash by normal means. Even if its hacked, its not something impossible that gave him the advantage

It takes a lot less training/time to become a winning sprinter if you fire the right drugs into your arm, should we just let everybody do it because all it does is reduces the time and effort required? Any indication of hacking , inherited or otherwise should be punished. Experienced players like this know exactly what they have in their hands and should make a good example. The 'win or go home' generation of gamers/cheaters have killed my enthusiasm for multiplayer. Even friends back on the C64 who immediately entered cheats to finish a new game made me laugh. I play games to experience them, not just win or speed play as many as possible, but, I'd expect nothing less of the Me generation (brace).

@Cav44

"I play games to experience them, not just win or speed play as many as possible, but, I'd expect nothing less of the Me generation (brace)."

My generation has a lot of problems, but you mean to tell me you think a Pokemon player not spending weeks pressing left and right on a d-pad to get virtual disappointments to hatch is one of them?

As long as it doesn't give the player an unfair edge in battles I don't see it being to big a problem. Their are so many hacked spawn pokemon on the WTC that it can be very difficult to find them all.

@8BitSamurai
Err, yes. I don't like running around the same map shooting at folks anymore so I simply don't play FPS's at the moment, I don't cheat or hack in an attempt to enhance the experience. Whether or not the IV/EV training on X and Y is boring is a different debate (and I'd agree entirely with you on that subject) but it is how the game was built for all players. My pokemon experiences are fairly low compared to some of the masters I know and love to learn from, I just want to enjoy gaming as intended alongside everyone else, for example enjoy MK8 now before the must wins destroy another masterpiece and the scores of players move on. Sorry to generalise about generations (I did brace for impact , I simply get overwhelmed with online contact being about finances/hacks/CEO's and 'winning' E3 instead of communicating about gameplay.

@FragRed
If its possible for the officials to miss it, the very people who's job it is to know theses things, then why wouldn't it be possible for a competitor to?

The fact is we have no clue what Ray does or doesn't know, if he plays mostly on emulators like @AzureFashionist said its possible he doesn't keep up with things like the Dream World, and really didn't know.

The only ones who would benefit from knowing which Pokeballs are legal for what Pokemon would be the hackers trying to make legit looking Pokemon. Its an odd mistake to make, especially for a 3-time champ who should be very familiar with the rules.

@8BitSamurai No, it doesn't seem you do get it - if the key animation is wrong, it means the pokémon is hacked & it is therefore NOT at all legit. Legitimate is nothing to do with the stats, it's whether it's a genuine game-spawned unhacked pokémon.

As someone who has spent the time training up a fully IV'd EV'd team for online events, I think it's absurd that someone who at some point cheated is not disqualified... if he turned up to a TCG event with photcopied cards he'd have been kicked out. We're not talking about someone who may have "accidently" made a mistake, if he's into pokémon enough to attend 3-4 nationals then he'd know that his pokémon was dodgy.

He didn't cheat but this whole situation is why I no longer play competitive Pokemon it is absolutely rife with cheating.

Can someone explain to me the point of competitive pokemon if you can just trade or buy your powerful pokemon?

I've had an "illegal" pokemon before, and It was very obvious, but I still didn't see it. My friend a couple houses down wanted to trade some of his pokemon with me, and after a while, he offered a Shiny Zekrom. I already had Zekrom, but this was a SHINY one, and all he wanted for it was a baby of one of my starters. So obviously I said yes. But when I trough him out on the battlefield, I noticed his Level was at 1. Then I thought to myself, how could this be? You can only catch ONE zekrom, but thats at level 70, or so. And you can't breed him... And thats the first and only illegal pokemon i've ever had. I was so excited I was getting a shiny legendary for such a cheep price, I didn't even look at his level. So stuff like this CAN happen. And mine was more obvious than his, so I can see that he wouldn't ever have thought about looking at the pokeball.

Btw, for anyone whos wondering, I put my Illegal zekrom in a separate box, to make sure I don't use or trade him, since I don't know how to get rid of him.

@MadAdam81 I wish I had got a powersave device prior to playing A LInk Between World so I didn't spoil it by playing the easy one. I know when I do play the Hero Quest it won't be as good as if I had played it first.

Trainers like this one only think of winning and look what happens. This cheating thing has been in all the Pokemon games so I don't understand why Nintendo haven't done anything about it. In game boy was the game shark, action replay in ds era and now the internet. Nintendo needs to do something to stop this and make people train their Pokemon the right way. So you ask me what do I think? I think that the guy knew what he was doing. Don't tell that the champ played all those Pokemon games and And won all those tournament and didn't know about the pokeball because that is bullshit. Didn't know about a dream ball, Hahahahahaha, very funny!!!!

I feel like everyone is jumping to the conclusion that the Aegislash was hacked or bred from a hacked Pokemon. Doing a bit of research, Snorunt falls into the same egg group as Honedge, as well as appearing in the Dream World. Therefore, it is plausible that, legitimately, he could have bred it to get into that special Pokeball.

While I haven't tested it, I was surprised that there was a version of Action Replay for 3DS. I was shocked because these weren't supposed to work anymore on Nintendo consoles.
Upon closer examination. you plug the cartridges into a USB converter and add all of the codes in via a computer. I lost whatever faith I had left in GameFreak being able to regulate cheats from non cheats.

If the only thing that's off is the pokeball but everything else is legit, then I don't see the problem. I'm just saying this based on that most players either hack, want to trade for a hack, or want to trade for a "legal" pokemon that just happen to have 5-6 IV and may or may not be unbreedable and/or rare. From there you can breed, inherent, and say it's legit.

The only one I can confidently exclude is the people who don't know about IV values and such and use their own pokemon. Everyone else I have my doubts (I'm no exception).

All the guy had to do was keep it in a normal pokeball but nooo. Such a noobish mistake.

If pokemon are set in statistics and possibilities, shouldn't nintendo run a checksum on their database to detect fraudulent pokemon? Seems like a simple system to be set in place that could catch a ball from another game being used in a game that it doesn't exist.

He should be punished for using any kind of hacking tool. It's just NOT fair for everyone who doesn't use those things.

@GeminiSaint Hahahaahah!

I don't know about this case because I'm nowhere NEAR a Pokemon expert but I do feel that anyone who attempts to win using illegal Pokemon should be banned instantaneously without any further suggestions.

Disqualified. I earned my Aegislash legit, and I bet it could pwn his anyway anyways!

You do know that breeding in gen 6 passes down the poke ball right?

@jakysnakydx Pokemon games have internal cheat checks that makes it impossible to make Pokemon that have higher stats or any moves unavailable to "normal" Pokemon.
So in no ways is "hacked" Pokemon BETTER than fully "legit".

And the argument about speeding the breeding of "perfect" Pokemon giving unfair advantage is ridiculous, most of the players that compete in nationals should already have bunch of old tournament Pokemons from older generations that can used as breeding stock.

Here's the thing guys:

1) You can't tamper with stats so far this gen. You CAN tamper with stuff like genders, pokeballs, and shiny status.

2) His Aegislash was legit. Its mother, somewhere down the line, had a pokeball that was tampered with and had its ball altered. Not sure about the shiny status, though.

3) I don't think he should be disqualified for a legit Aegislash with a bad mother.

4) Despite 3, this brings a good point to a head: Pokemon's competitive community is WAY too lenient with hacks and cheats for the sake of "time". They'll argue their reasoning to the death of them, and that's understandable to a minor degree, but Pokemon's about Pokemon TRAINERS. That means it's the breeding, team building, and battling. Not just the battling part. If you're taking shortcuts in the breeding and team building phases, you get access to hard-to-obtain stuff way too easily, like perfect shiny Heatran and Cresselia. That or straight-up hacks like Mega Latios and Diance (both of which haven't been released yet, but their data's in the game). If Pokemon's gonna become more popular on a competitive level, the hacking and cheating needs to be culled out much more aggressively. It doesn't look good when people are cheating their way through the preliminary steps of competitive Pokemon. Still, since this Aegislash in and of itself is legit, and just reflects a bad parent, I don't think he should be disqualified for it.

So if Rizzo got caught does that make him a Pokemon too?

@JebbyDeringer

I would've seen what you did there if my eyes weren't burning.

@XXIV
Except that only the female can pass down the pokeball and a female snorunt will only make more snorunts. Hence, how it is simple to see it's mother's illegality....well simple for everything except their anti hack checks of course.

listen up! if your going to have hacked pokemon, for the love of god, DON'T bring them to tournaments!!!(and don't use them online either) just play with your hacked pokemon at home,offline where they wont harm anyone!

@xj0462

The dream ball killed thousands, it hurt people across the globe!

And it's funny how all these anti-hack comments have no clue what hackers are even limited to. A hacker can only do what's provided to them, there is not 1 hack that alters the outcome of the games other than an unreleased item or pokemon which obviously wouldn't be aloud on sight at tournies.. and those unrelease items and pokemon aren't that great (I personally run around carrying a mega [email protected] against passerbys.. they kinda hold the rest of the team back as they need tons of support and take up a better mega slot.. if I lost them, usually the rest of the team falls as they're ment to keep [email protected] alive and support with SR and such..)

You're forgeting how insanely difficult it is to encrypt a 3ds game. So he could only have done that with powersave, whether it was him (assumingly.. shiny aegislash is obvious, especially if somebody else bred it for him.. I certainly wouldn't hatch 1000+eggs for a shiny aegislash to give away anyway.. still harmless, but red flag right there) or somebody else.

It's well worth noting that I think you're aloud to use kalos born pokemon ONLY so any pokegened mons weren't even aloud.

Oh btw.. he lost the battle anyway, or according to some of your logic, he hacked so he could lose! This guy is one big threat in the championships! I never want to face this guy if I attend!

As others above stated, while IV training is easy for me, for younger players its like trying to solve college math. The good players, like smogon, are higher aged and usually stomp on casual players making it a little more of an aggressive strategy game rather than RPG.. Natures do provide some kind of break through for things like outspeeding normally faster threats, etc which is good, but IVs are too complicated.. players have no clue what they do unless you research them yourself.. and how to even get them.. and if the dizziness didn't already kick in trying to understand them, actually breeding them is when the headache really begins! Turns out their purpose is really important in competitive play.

Hacking, is probably the only thing keep the fanchise alive honestly. Without hacks events are only limited to certain people who go to them.. like the pokeball vivillon, people are begging for that.. but without cloning or powersave wondercards.. there would only be a 100, maybe couple 1000 of them in the entire world. Unless you buy a plane ticket Then theres everybody's.. AND I MEAN EVERYBODY'S favorite pokemon.. mew and meloetta.. both events (or in mews case glitch) pokemon that you have and adore.. and without the ability to clone, no body would ever give you since it would be super rare in the whole world.

Also why wouldn't gamefreak do something about hacking? Even a company, datel, makes money off providing players the devices to hack nintendo consoles! Well profit, like I said.. pokemon would fall without hax as events would be too hard to get, and also there'd be no hype for anything.. when players hacked mega eons and diancie in the game, it gave players something to search for and talk about, then when players were able to hack them in, the few seen begin to raise hype and excitement to get them at any event, spend money on a movie ticket or like.. or buy the next game which may have them! Money money Money!

Besides.. everybody is on pokemon showdown now, a free program you don't even need to download half the time on the internet! Why work making your team to fight other players with poorly prepared teams, when you can make your entire team, and edit it at anytime, on showdown! This is were gamefreak is at a standstill.. nobody buys their games because they're instead on free application that is unassociated with them. Thankfully I oddly enjoying building my teams on the cartirage games myself.. I hatched 9 shinies (actually 8 but one was a nincada so.. counting shedinja in) legitimately, I have the device to hack but never use it even for shiny breeding.

Ray Rizzo works for TEAM ROCKET!!!!! (or Hydra, I guess) NOOOOOOOO!!!!!

@DanteSolablood

The Pokemon had legit stats, moves, etc. It did not in any way alter the course of any match whatsoever. The only thing different about it and any other in the competition was the entry animation for the Pokemon. The question of if it was game-spawned or not should not have any bearing on the matter at all, as long as he didn't gain an unfair advantage from it.

Pressing left and right on a d-pad for weeks does not make you a better trainer, it's just a waste of time.

This, doods, is why I avoid Pokemon like the plague.

Thing is, patience is a skill too, if you don't have it then you're not suited to "raising pokémon". Plus it doesn't take days - it takes me an hour or two per pokémon to make a perfect IV & EV'd team in X&Y... they've made it SO frickkin' easy!

Finally, if I photocopy TCG cards... it won't effect the stats, the battle or have any bearing on the matter at all, it's still wrong & the cards are still not legit. Honest people have spent time getting their cards - same applies to pokémon in the game.

@DanteSolablood

So a competitive game should be about "patience"? A.K.A. Pointless, mind-numbing grinding. If they've made it easy, then why would he "cheat" in the first place?

And last time I checked, physical trading cards =/= virtual Pokemon. And yes, even if the cards are photocopied (Which I do not endorse, mind you), it does not effect the outcome of any card battle in any way whatsoever.

He isn't "dishonest" because he used a virtual monster that gave him absolutely no edge over any other player whatsoever.

@Stomatopod17 are you saying i dont know what im talking about? all im saying is DON'T bring hacked pokemon to tournaments! i i actually HAVE hacked a pokemon game before, so i have some knowledge of what a hacker is limited to.

@ultraraichu what are IV values

@JebbyDeringer LOL nice one!

@8BitSamurai That's a good question, why did he cheat? They've added the Friend Safari which guarantees you 2 perfect IV's a pokémon, there are items that pass on those IVs in breeding, there are mini-games which allow you to perfectly EV your pokémon in 20 minutes and need no skill. Gamefreak have gone out their way to make sure anyone can make a perfect pokémon in a couple of hours... so why cheat? It's laziness.

So why don't you endorse fake cards, it fills all of your rules for being fine - doesn't effect the gameplay, makes no difference to the other player does it? It's not as if there is skill in opening a packet, it's just patience and grinding. If you endorse fake pokémon you MUST endorse fake TCG cards as it's the same principle.

Finally, if he didn't tell anyone it's a fake pokémon when playing in a tournament where fake pokémon are banned then he IS being dishonest - entering a tournament where you are meant to have legal, game spawned pokémon FUNDAMENTALLY means you are being asked "are your pokémon 100% game spawned". When he started playing he was saying "yes"... which was a lie.

I used to be a national Yu-Gi-Oh player and we had cheats and fake cards - it's the same principle, it makes things easier for the cheater, gives them more practice time over the honest player AND is just plain wrong.

@DanteSolablood

He probably didn't know it was fake, because nobody should care about what Pokeball it's in.

And you're right, I don't endorse fake cards, I don't endorse fake Pokemon either. However, in the situation of a tournament, they do not change the outcome in any way, or give any players any advantages, and I see no reason why he should be disqualified because of something that gives nobody any advantage.

And like I said, he probably did not even know it was fake. He's a former champion, do you think he doesn't know the rules? But his "fake" Pokemon had legit stats and moves, how does it make it "easier"?

@xj0462

This is why they should be removed, take notes.

IV stands for indivigual values, every pokemon is randomly generated with a value of 0-31 in all 6 of it's stats. Pokemon with an IV of 31 in one of it's stats will have an extra 31 base points in that stat when at level 100, which is pretty big..

It is possible to breed the 31 IVs on pokemon, you simply catch dittos from the friend safari as all pokemon in the friend safari are guarenteed perfect IVs in 2 of their stats, and then giving the ditto the destiny knot pass on up to 5 of those IVs. (you'll need more than one ditto to do this as you'll need ivs for each stat.)

You can watch a tutorial for the whole breeding process. It's really really deep ingame stuff that's explained no where but when researched or asked..

and I didn't say you don't know what you're talking about. You said keep your hacked pokemon away where it won't harm anyway, in a sarcastic reply I said the dream ball killed thousands since it was the only thing hacked about the aegislash and it didn't do anything but make an animation nobody cares about.

Last gen we had pokegen.. which was indeed hacking as you could make ANYTHING with overkill stats and like.. gen 4 we had action replay (still did for gen 5) which could make you do just about anything if you knew how to code it (which others often provided those codes only)

This gen we got powersave, and it doesn't let us do that much overall. There is no easy way out of breeding.. seriously everybody is arguing the breeding is what causing hacking, this gen you are still stuck breeding even if you are using powersave as there is no code on powersave whatsoever that fixes IVs, nature, stats, species, abilities, or anything like that. You can only do 3 things to a pokemon.. change it's ball, change it's shininess, and max it's happiness and whatnot which only affects pokemon amie anyway. No matter what we hack into the game we're still breeding. We can't even transfer pokegened pokemon from last gen anymore because the hack filter on poketransfer will block anything illegal, and as of may wi-fi is shut down, so is pokegen since it required it.

Also it's well worth noting in a legendary's case you cannot breed them.. so your stuck with that 1 in some million chance of random catching one. This gen they did nerf it a little so that any legendary caught in gen 6 will be guarenteed atleast 3 perfect IVs but still for things not catchable in this game try catching a 6 IV heatran or latios.. WITH THE RIGHT NATURE under those odds of 1 in a million. Now you can see the importance of hax!

I hacked myself a snow warning aurorus, contrary serperior, and adaptability dragalge.. I still had to breed every single one like normal.. even for hidden power fire on serperior and that's always never fun..

Back to ray rizzo, the only harm he caused was maybe not being able to upload a battle video now because battle videos won't upload if hackmons are used even if it's minor things like this. So the tourny wouldn't of had anything to show for if they wanted to show all the battle videos.

@Stomatopod17 yeah breeding can takea LONG time

Well, I must agree with most that since the stats are the same, no problem. Still, I think that he should apologize for hacking or using a hacked pocketball to everyone.

@DarkKirby Regarding Aegislash and Dream Ball: A female DW Geodude and a male Honedge COULD produce said Pokemon, and it could be traded through Wonder Trade to Rizzo, who raised it into the Pokemon he had at Nats.

@noboty Breeding a perfect Pokemon is so much easier now. Anyone willing to learn about the system and devote a little time should have no problems. It's no longer a matter of praying to the RNG gods for a good spread.

@TsunamiSensei I know this post is from 2014 but nobody ever informed you. Only females pass down the pokeball, Ditto have no gender, so nope.

This is, personally, quite straightforward to me.

A football/soccer (if you are American) athlete wins the world cup. A decade later he is stripped of his title because it comes out that he was using steroids at the time. In the meantime, his son, now a competitor in the olympics in football/soccer, manages to win gold. While it is fair to strip the father of his title, is it fair to strip the son of his, NOT because he used steroids but because his family line did? If you think that Aegislash should be punished for this, you also think an athlete should be punished for the actions not of his career, but his father's too. That is not the world (most of us) live in.

@TsunamiSensei Ditto's cannot pass down balls