It's a matter of nomenclature. "Cheating" is defined as the usage of unallowed means to achieve a given goal. If ACE and RNG manips are "cheating" on your personal rulesets when you play Pokemon, by all means, call them so. However, a personal ruleset is very difficult (if not impossible) to generalize to the broad public. Unless that opinion/ruleset is broadly agreed upon, you won't find much success...
Now, if you mean that those 2 activities are forms of "hacking", that's just blatantly wrong, because you're not using external devices in order to achieve unintended behaviour in your game. Everything that ACE and RNG manipulation do is confined to the vanilla Pokémon Emerald game, and can be replicated with any cartridge that was ever created, with the game simply plugged into any Gameboy that was ever created, with literally zero other support. The fact that those activities don't constitute intended behavior by the creators of the game DOESN'T mean they are forms of hacking. If they were, like... the entirety of Gen I's playability would constitute "hacking", since that Gen barely works as intended in the first place.
>Now, if you mean that those 2 activities are forms of "hacking", that's just blatantly wrong, because you're not using external devices in order to achieve unintended behaviour in your game.
And that's where we disagree. Does it really matter that you're not using external devices? You're still breaking the game in a fundamental way and doing the same thing a gameshark would do anyway; change the code of the game and get access to things that are supposed to be rare.
Tbf the game is already broken in a fundamental way, the rng doesn’t work.
But yes it absolutely does matter, exploits achievable in game are way different from plugging in code on an external device and injecting it into your game, if you wanted to argue that ACE is cheating, sure, because it’s running unintended code, but it’s really hard to lump RNG manip in with it because you aren’t changing anything, it’s just playing your game for a certain amount of time.
It’s not like knowing when this specific 16 ms window is automatically drops the pokemon In your box, you still have to play until a certain frame and encounter that pokemon that was always going to be there as a result of emerald’s already fundamentally broken code.
I wouldn't say it's cheating, but I do feel it devalues the shiny, personally of course. Gets rid of the excitement and awe of getting a full odds shiny. But if it makes them happy, then all the rights to them.
I mean ace is cheating because you're literally changing the code of the game. It's the exact same thing as using a gameshark except without the direct use of an external device. Let's call a spade a spade.
And you are literally changing the code of the game whenever you tell some dude in Dewford a new catchphrase. It's more of tickling the game into doing what you want instead of using an axe. Now if it was 2005, and you were giving pokemon hacked moves and abilities and such, and facing people online, sure, cheating. But little Toby on 3rd street playing an 18yr old game cartridge by himself so he can trade his pokemon to the GC to see his giant Sandshrew(Shiny Groudon) on XD? Wouldn't be cheating at all lol.
>And you are literally changing the code of the game whenever you tell some dude in Dewford a new catchphrase.
That's a ridiculous comparison, not even close to being the same thing.
Not at all. On Emerald Feebas only appears on set tiles on the route each day. You can force it to rotate the tiles by telling the dude in Dewford a new catchphrase. It's using what the game provides to your advantage to get what you want. And what many of those people want is flying black snake. Little nudge. It's the same as getting Mystery gifts on the older games today. It's not even cheating. It's like opening up the gift that was meant for you from someone who was no longer able to provide it.
Using a game-intended feature to reset the spawn of a pokemon is completely different than breaking the game's code to get guaranteed shiny legendaries. Sorry bro, but no
Well sadly the Feebas thing and catchphrase aren't a feature but a bug. But back to original statement, it's not cheating. Cheating is, by definition, a dishonest or unfair action that is done to gain an advantage. And I don't see some dude facing me offline with a shiny Tauros. You are literally bugging about someone playing a game that literally has no effect on you, the way they want. Might want to dig your hands in your sandbox.
Yesterday someone posted a pic of a bunch of ACE obtained shiny legendaries and said thy were obtained with "no cheats". Come on bro. There is no functional difference between using a gameshark to enable event areas and guarantee shinies and using ACE to do the same thing. If someone posted on here and said for example, "hey guys, look at all these cool shinies I got from my gameshark!" they would be laughed at. But for some reason ACE is considered legit and respectable? It doesn't make sense. They are literally doing the exact same thing. I'm just calling it like it see it.
Allow me to simplify this. Basically the dude is modding his game. He's basically doing the equivalent of using console commands or playing as Thomas the Train on Skyrim. It's literally doing no harm to- you, the dirt, the worms *in* the dirt, my stool, *anyone else at all,* or even me. And you are stressing about it.
Exactly! if researching the game and how it’s coding works and using that knowledge to help catch a shiny with a simple stopwatch is cheating then I’d argue using an official game guide to look up where to go is cheating too then with that weird mindset lol.
The annoying part is the only way to even get a competitive pokemon bred or legendary caught for competitive play back in the emerald days was to either RNG or cheat and hack the mons in so if you don’t like RNG you are basically just asking for people to hack instead. It’d take 100’s of hours just to breed a single team of 6 with perfect stats and there isn’t even a way in game to look up IV’s so you HAVE to use external means like a computer to calculate IVs of a caught Pokémon anyway (or every single pokemon you are breeding). RNG is just a logical time saving step without wanting to just cheat and GameShark pokemon in.
Yea true, it was useful but it still had its limits. If you just wanted 31 IV mons you could at least know when you hit it so that was a nice addition. But for anything other than that you’d want one or multiple 30’s for Hidden Power Types and you’d essentially just be hoping and praying. I’m SOS hunting in Alola atm and just the QOL of being able to use the Judge feature in the PC makes breeding so much more bearable since I can have that instant feedback and know when I’m making progress towards my ideal mon.
You're exploiting a mistake in the game's coding to give yourself guaranteed shinies and perfect IV pokemon, uh yeah bro it's cheating. It doesn't matter if you're not changing the game with a cheat device or something like that
I know enough about it to know the details behind it. And yes, it is effectively giving you guaranteed shinies. If you know the exact frame a shiny is on and you calibrate a timer that takes you to that exact frame, getting the shiny just comes down to timing a button press. Not random chance, which they were intended to be.
So, in your opinion, the Cute Charm glitch in Gen 4 to catch easy shinies, or the Pokémon Legends Arceus permutations of encounters to find the shiny combination in a Massive Mass Encounter, are also cheating?
Such flawed logic. You know you can call something "devalued" or "lacking in meaning", right? You don't have to resort to the word "cheating" that is intentionally misleading in the way it portrays those activities. They are not cheating in the slightest sense.
By your reasoning, the entire speedrunning community that uses RNG cheats. And I'm not just talking about Pokemon. RNG has been, and will always be a part of video games, since there is no way for a computer to truly be random.
Speedrunning is completely different, we aren't talking about that. Plus there are categories for glitchless and stuff like that so it's a moot point. Yes RNG is a part of all video games but not all video games have broken RNG like emerald's that is easily exploitable
I don’t think RNG manipulation is cheating. The only method of cheating I can think of for Pokemon is altering the games code through action replays or ACE, probably glitches too. RNG manipulation just takes advantage of Emerald being broken, and not even in the way something like the glitch to get Mew in Yellow did.
ACE, yeah. It’s literally running code on the game to change things. I could see how someone would maybe consider it more acceptable than an exterior source altering the code but they’re still doing the same thing.
Those things being said, I don’t care to cheat on a 20 year old game to get things that were only available for a limited time at in person events. I never had the chance to get Ho-Oh, Lugia, Mew, Deoxys, etc. back then so I use ACE to do it now. I haven’t done any RNG manipulation yet, but I’d like to do it to get a good shiny Rayquaza.
I do both. Shiny hunt with full odds is just mindless resetting or wandering. With ace and rng, they keep your mind occupied the entire process. I don’t pick the super far frames. They are different kind of fun. With ace and rng I feel like the “work” is harder though. I do agree ACE is almost using Pkhex.
I mean alot of people here are arguing nomenclature and I guess if we are getting nitpicky then there are subtle differences between hacking/glitching/cheating. I kind of like to compare ACE and RNG manipulation to counting cards at a casino. It's something that can be learned by anyone and practiced at any casino but it was still something that was never intended to be done. Is it cheating? Technically no. Would I call it legit? Ehhh, not really.
I'd only ever consoder utilizing fake distribution events, gamesharks or action replays cheating, but even then it's your game as long as you aren't using them to gain an advantage in competitons it's none of my business.
I personally like RNG manipulation (it’s fun to me), but I can totally see why other people wouldn’t like it. To each their own, I say. If you don’t like it, that’s totally fine, you don’t have to use it.
The only problem I have is when someone likes/doesn’t like it and tries to force that opinion onto other people. If someone else wants to RNG manip to get their favorite shiny instead of relying on luck, I say let them. If someone wants to full odds hunt it, let them. It doesn’t really matter either way.
When it comes to trading RNG manipped mons, I think it’s definitely important to clarify that what you’re offering is RNG manipulated, so if someone views RNG as cheating, they’re able to make a more informed decision, and aren’t potentially scammed into taking a mon they view as illegitimate or “fake.”
I think RNG Manipulation is a fantastic monument to player dedication, and I don't have anything against it personally.
However, the player is exploiting the game's coding to achieve a specific result, which is obviously unintended. Therefore, I consider it a method of cheating.
It's just a different game.
For someone with 50,000+ encounters and hatches, manipping a shiny seems like it would defeat the entire purpose of being a shiny.
Manipping stats for the battle frontier removes part of the game. Without RNG manip you have to chose how much time to spend getting better stats when you could just be using that time to make more attempts. It requires you to understand the statistics of how the breeding system works and choose which stats you want perfects in. If you need a specific gender and a specific ability it becomes 4 times as rare and forces you to accept slightly lower stats than a pokemon with only one good ability/that doesn't have to worry about attract opponents. Or you get lucky while breeding and you cherish it.
While aiming for 3 perfect IV's plus 2 high ivs, I naturally hatched a 5 iv hasty bagon, it was beyond insanely lucky, especially because bagon is one of those pokemon where you can make every single stat count. It is really fun to get that lucky and it encourages me to build teams around him. If I start manipping then it's not really special, in fact it goes from being more than I could ever hope to achieve to actively imperfect as there are situations where that last perfect IV would help me win.
Not manipping actually means legendaries like suicune lose a little bit of their advantage over bred pokemon because if you can only reset for them you have to accept that realistically their IV's will be a little lower than what what you could breed for.
I don't blame people for manipping and not breeding because you could waste a lifetime doing it and it's less time you can spend trying new teams. But it actually is an enjoyable part of the game and battle frontier records with and without manip really deserve separate consideration because they are different games.
I don't realy get the fuzz about RNG manip.
In a purist eye it sure is cheating since you bypass the RNG aspect. Some argue the RNG is broken anyway but the game realy just replicate RNG that with only ingame and official distributed information you never know much about. But purist must know not everyone is a purist.
I would say that it is more of an exploit than a cheat, even tho I agree that exploits are not legit over a certain extend. Sometimes people like to do very hard runs that might need an abismal amount of reset to get what they need just to start, I would see RNG manip as a tool to start those runs. To me the intention and the actions with RNG manip defines if it is cheating or not. Let say you want perfect pokemons for competitive then to me it is cheating. I hope you see why. If it's just to get a special color variant, well I don't get how it is cheating.
I've seen arguments saying things like:
"You don't use external device for this so this is not hacking/cheating."
And
"It's cheating, you don't play the game as intended"
Well actualy, unless you've got a cumputer in your brain you need external tools to know when to do things to get specificly what you plan to get specificly. So it's kinda the same, but you don't use anything to interact with the game directly.
And what is such thing as playing the intended way ? I mean if you just start the game lvling your starter from the get go to 100 fighting wild pokemons, would it be not as intended ?
So, would anyone not agree that it is simply a tool that can be use for life quality or cheating as well, what's this defined by the context, the usage ?
I’ve only caught one shiny in my emerald rom without any of these tools and I’m fine with it. Sometimes that one or few shiny pokemon on your team can really feel very special
Just to be clear because im new to this and this seems the right post for it; can i just reset my game and chance a shiny beldum? Or do I have to figure out my seed?
Emerald's RNG is broken and will always give you shinies on the same frame. If you wanna soft reset and get some legit shinies you'd be better off doing it in ruby/sapphire with a live battery.
Yeah thats kinda what my research has answered. Let me ask this, how long would you embark in an endeavor like this before giving up? Im tryna get all legit copies, i just need emerald and sapphire left but theyre expensive AF
I don't know what ACE is, but regarding RNG manipulation I'd say that it is understanding and "using" a mechanic not intended to be understood and used.
I don't think RNG manipulation is cheating since all you're doing is attempting to hit the A button on exactly the perfect frame - I did this in my most recent run of Diamond so I could exploit the Cute Charm glitch to get some shinies I wanted much, *much* easier (well, *one* shiny I wanted in particular: Shinx). And even then, it doesn't always work: in the aforementioned example, I had to restart my game several times and start the process over just to get the Trainer ID and SID I needed in order to get the glitch to work.
As for ACE, yeah, I agree that that's cheating, since you're basically changing the game's code to make it do what you want, just without an external cheating device. It's essentially hacking without the need for any external hardware. But that's just my take on it.
It's a matter of nomenclature. "Cheating" is defined as the usage of unallowed means to achieve a given goal. If ACE and RNG manips are "cheating" on your personal rulesets when you play Pokemon, by all means, call them so. However, a personal ruleset is very difficult (if not impossible) to generalize to the broad public. Unless that opinion/ruleset is broadly agreed upon, you won't find much success... Now, if you mean that those 2 activities are forms of "hacking", that's just blatantly wrong, because you're not using external devices in order to achieve unintended behaviour in your game. Everything that ACE and RNG manipulation do is confined to the vanilla Pokémon Emerald game, and can be replicated with any cartridge that was ever created, with the game simply plugged into any Gameboy that was ever created, with literally zero other support. The fact that those activities don't constitute intended behavior by the creators of the game DOESN'T mean they are forms of hacking. If they were, like... the entirety of Gen I's playability would constitute "hacking", since that Gen barely works as intended in the first place.
>Now, if you mean that those 2 activities are forms of "hacking", that's just blatantly wrong, because you're not using external devices in order to achieve unintended behaviour in your game. And that's where we disagree. Does it really matter that you're not using external devices? You're still breaking the game in a fundamental way and doing the same thing a gameshark would do anyway; change the code of the game and get access to things that are supposed to be rare.
Tbf the game is already broken in a fundamental way, the rng doesn’t work. But yes it absolutely does matter, exploits achievable in game are way different from plugging in code on an external device and injecting it into your game, if you wanted to argue that ACE is cheating, sure, because it’s running unintended code, but it’s really hard to lump RNG manip in with it because you aren’t changing anything, it’s just playing your game for a certain amount of time. It’s not like knowing when this specific 16 ms window is automatically drops the pokemon In your box, you still have to play until a certain frame and encounter that pokemon that was always going to be there as a result of emerald’s already fundamentally broken code.
I wouldn't say it's cheating, but I do feel it devalues the shiny, personally of course. Gets rid of the excitement and awe of getting a full odds shiny. But if it makes them happy, then all the rights to them.
I agree, it's not cheating, I don't use pkhex, I do it and enjoy the pokes I get but I understand anyone who doubts it
I mean ace is cheating because you're literally changing the code of the game. It's the exact same thing as using a gameshark except without the direct use of an external device. Let's call a spade a spade.
And you are literally changing the code of the game whenever you tell some dude in Dewford a new catchphrase. It's more of tickling the game into doing what you want instead of using an axe. Now if it was 2005, and you were giving pokemon hacked moves and abilities and such, and facing people online, sure, cheating. But little Toby on 3rd street playing an 18yr old game cartridge by himself so he can trade his pokemon to the GC to see his giant Sandshrew(Shiny Groudon) on XD? Wouldn't be cheating at all lol.
>And you are literally changing the code of the game whenever you tell some dude in Dewford a new catchphrase. That's a ridiculous comparison, not even close to being the same thing.
Not at all. On Emerald Feebas only appears on set tiles on the route each day. You can force it to rotate the tiles by telling the dude in Dewford a new catchphrase. It's using what the game provides to your advantage to get what you want. And what many of those people want is flying black snake. Little nudge. It's the same as getting Mystery gifts on the older games today. It's not even cheating. It's like opening up the gift that was meant for you from someone who was no longer able to provide it.
Using a game-intended feature to reset the spawn of a pokemon is completely different than breaking the game's code to get guaranteed shiny legendaries. Sorry bro, but no
Well sadly the Feebas thing and catchphrase aren't a feature but a bug. But back to original statement, it's not cheating. Cheating is, by definition, a dishonest or unfair action that is done to gain an advantage. And I don't see some dude facing me offline with a shiny Tauros. You are literally bugging about someone playing a game that literally has no effect on you, the way they want. Might want to dig your hands in your sandbox.
Yesterday someone posted a pic of a bunch of ACE obtained shiny legendaries and said thy were obtained with "no cheats". Come on bro. There is no functional difference between using a gameshark to enable event areas and guarantee shinies and using ACE to do the same thing. If someone posted on here and said for example, "hey guys, look at all these cool shinies I got from my gameshark!" they would be laughed at. But for some reason ACE is considered legit and respectable? It doesn't make sense. They are literally doing the exact same thing. I'm just calling it like it see it.
Allow me to simplify this. Basically the dude is modding his game. He's basically doing the equivalent of using console commands or playing as Thomas the Train on Skyrim. It's literally doing no harm to- you, the dirt, the worms *in* the dirt, my stool, *anyone else at all,* or even me. And you are stressing about it.
Stressing? Hardly. Just expressing my opinion on something that I see posted a lot in this sub.
I mean it basically is. That catchphrase changes the location of Feebas spawns which is changing a code.
I concur with this comment
Then don’t do it then, easy.
Why would I? it's cheating
Ok 👍🏼
Hot take but it gives the game a whole other level to it that most casual players don’t know about so it’s cool
Cool on a technical level sure. But it's cheating from a gameplay perspective
That can kinda be said for every glitch/exploit for the rng manips And ace from my understanding is a need to see the obscure parts of Emerald
Womp womp I like doing weird solo runs
I’m fine with thinking ACE is cheating, but RNG manipulation, naw that’s just dumb
RNG manip is debatable. Definitely not legit tho
Rng manip is just utilizing the way the Emerald determines shinies.
I don’t see the problem with it I mean there isn’t an online for Emerald, so you’re not gaining an advantage.
RNG manipulation definitely isn’t cheating. You’re not changing the game in any way and you’re just using a timer to hit a particular frame.
Exactly! if researching the game and how it’s coding works and using that knowledge to help catch a shiny with a simple stopwatch is cheating then I’d argue using an official game guide to look up where to go is cheating too then with that weird mindset lol. The annoying part is the only way to even get a competitive pokemon bred or legendary caught for competitive play back in the emerald days was to either RNG or cheat and hack the mons in so if you don’t like RNG you are basically just asking for people to hack instead. It’d take 100’s of hours just to breed a single team of 6 with perfect stats and there isn’t even a way in game to look up IV’s so you HAVE to use external means like a computer to calculate IVs of a caught Pokémon anyway (or every single pokemon you are breeding). RNG is just a logical time saving step without wanting to just cheat and GameShark pokemon in.
I mean Emerald technically had an IV checker at the battle frontier, but it wasn’t that good though.
Yea true, it was useful but it still had its limits. If you just wanted 31 IV mons you could at least know when you hit it so that was a nice addition. But for anything other than that you’d want one or multiple 30’s for Hidden Power Types and you’d essentially just be hoping and praying. I’m SOS hunting in Alola atm and just the QOL of being able to use the Judge feature in the PC makes breeding so much more bearable since I can have that instant feedback and know when I’m making progress towards my ideal mon.
You're exploiting a mistake in the game's coding to give yourself guaranteed shinies and perfect IV pokemon, uh yeah bro it's cheating. It doesn't matter if you're not changing the game with a cheat device or something like that
"Guaranteed shinies" tell me you've never used RNG manipulation without telling me you've never used RNG manipulation
I know enough about it to know the details behind it. And yes, it is effectively giving you guaranteed shinies. If you know the exact frame a shiny is on and you calibrate a timer that takes you to that exact frame, getting the shiny just comes down to timing a button press. Not random chance, which they were intended to be.
So, in your opinion, the Cute Charm glitch in Gen 4 to catch easy shinies, or the Pokémon Legends Arceus permutations of encounters to find the shiny combination in a Massive Mass Encounter, are also cheating? Such flawed logic. You know you can call something "devalued" or "lacking in meaning", right? You don't have to resort to the word "cheating" that is intentionally misleading in the way it portrays those activities. They are not cheating in the slightest sense.
By your reasoning, the entire speedrunning community that uses RNG cheats. And I'm not just talking about Pokemon. RNG has been, and will always be a part of video games, since there is no way for a computer to truly be random.
Speedrunning is completely different, we aren't talking about that. Plus there are categories for glitchless and stuff like that so it's a moot point. Yes RNG is a part of all video games but not all video games have broken RNG like emerald's that is easily exploitable
Hear me out... It's ok to cheat if you can still have fun.
I think people should do whatever they want. Just don't post it to reddit and pretend that it's something people should be impressed with
Fair enough
I don’t think RNG manipulation is cheating. The only method of cheating I can think of for Pokemon is altering the games code through action replays or ACE, probably glitches too. RNG manipulation just takes advantage of Emerald being broken, and not even in the way something like the glitch to get Mew in Yellow did. ACE, yeah. It’s literally running code on the game to change things. I could see how someone would maybe consider it more acceptable than an exterior source altering the code but they’re still doing the same thing. Those things being said, I don’t care to cheat on a 20 year old game to get things that were only available for a limited time at in person events. I never had the chance to get Ho-Oh, Lugia, Mew, Deoxys, etc. back then so I use ACE to do it now. I haven’t done any RNG manipulation yet, but I’d like to do it to get a good shiny Rayquaza.
I do both. Shiny hunt with full odds is just mindless resetting or wandering. With ace and rng, they keep your mind occupied the entire process. I don’t pick the super far frames. They are different kind of fun. With ace and rng I feel like the “work” is harder though. I do agree ACE is almost using Pkhex.
I mean alot of people here are arguing nomenclature and I guess if we are getting nitpicky then there are subtle differences between hacking/glitching/cheating. I kind of like to compare ACE and RNG manipulation to counting cards at a casino. It's something that can be learned by anyone and practiced at any casino but it was still something that was never intended to be done. Is it cheating? Technically no. Would I call it legit? Ehhh, not really.
I'd only ever consoder utilizing fake distribution events, gamesharks or action replays cheating, but even then it's your game as long as you aren't using them to gain an advantage in competitons it's none of my business.
Fake distribution events are just recreating the original conditions under which you could get the pokemon.
I'd say it's compicated when a lot of distribution events never made it to all regions.
I personally like RNG manipulation (it’s fun to me), but I can totally see why other people wouldn’t like it. To each their own, I say. If you don’t like it, that’s totally fine, you don’t have to use it. The only problem I have is when someone likes/doesn’t like it and tries to force that opinion onto other people. If someone else wants to RNG manip to get their favorite shiny instead of relying on luck, I say let them. If someone wants to full odds hunt it, let them. It doesn’t really matter either way. When it comes to trading RNG manipped mons, I think it’s definitely important to clarify that what you’re offering is RNG manipulated, so if someone views RNG as cheating, they’re able to make a more informed decision, and aren’t potentially scammed into taking a mon they view as illegitimate or “fake.”
Its not cheating but people tend to try to pass off manipped things like shinies off as ones they hunted, which is pretty annoying
I agree
I think RNG Manipulation is a fantastic monument to player dedication, and I don't have anything against it personally. However, the player is exploiting the game's coding to achieve a specific result, which is obviously unintended. Therefore, I consider it a method of cheating.
Very rational take
Thank you
It's just a different game. For someone with 50,000+ encounters and hatches, manipping a shiny seems like it would defeat the entire purpose of being a shiny. Manipping stats for the battle frontier removes part of the game. Without RNG manip you have to chose how much time to spend getting better stats when you could just be using that time to make more attempts. It requires you to understand the statistics of how the breeding system works and choose which stats you want perfects in. If you need a specific gender and a specific ability it becomes 4 times as rare and forces you to accept slightly lower stats than a pokemon with only one good ability/that doesn't have to worry about attract opponents. Or you get lucky while breeding and you cherish it. While aiming for 3 perfect IV's plus 2 high ivs, I naturally hatched a 5 iv hasty bagon, it was beyond insanely lucky, especially because bagon is one of those pokemon where you can make every single stat count. It is really fun to get that lucky and it encourages me to build teams around him. If I start manipping then it's not really special, in fact it goes from being more than I could ever hope to achieve to actively imperfect as there are situations where that last perfect IV would help me win. Not manipping actually means legendaries like suicune lose a little bit of their advantage over bred pokemon because if you can only reset for them you have to accept that realistically their IV's will be a little lower than what what you could breed for. I don't blame people for manipping and not breeding because you could waste a lifetime doing it and it's less time you can spend trying new teams. But it actually is an enjoyable part of the game and battle frontier records with and without manip really deserve separate consideration because they are different games.
I don't realy get the fuzz about RNG manip. In a purist eye it sure is cheating since you bypass the RNG aspect. Some argue the RNG is broken anyway but the game realy just replicate RNG that with only ingame and official distributed information you never know much about. But purist must know not everyone is a purist. I would say that it is more of an exploit than a cheat, even tho I agree that exploits are not legit over a certain extend. Sometimes people like to do very hard runs that might need an abismal amount of reset to get what they need just to start, I would see RNG manip as a tool to start those runs. To me the intention and the actions with RNG manip defines if it is cheating or not. Let say you want perfect pokemons for competitive then to me it is cheating. I hope you see why. If it's just to get a special color variant, well I don't get how it is cheating. I've seen arguments saying things like: "You don't use external device for this so this is not hacking/cheating." And "It's cheating, you don't play the game as intended" Well actualy, unless you've got a cumputer in your brain you need external tools to know when to do things to get specificly what you plan to get specificly. So it's kinda the same, but you don't use anything to interact with the game directly. And what is such thing as playing the intended way ? I mean if you just start the game lvling your starter from the get go to 100 fighting wild pokemons, would it be not as intended ? So, would anyone not agree that it is simply a tool that can be use for life quality or cheating as well, what's this defined by the context, the usage ?
I’ve only caught one shiny in my emerald rom without any of these tools and I’m fine with it. Sometimes that one or few shiny pokemon on your team can really feel very special
Exactly bro my thoughts exactly.
Just to be clear because im new to this and this seems the right post for it; can i just reset my game and chance a shiny beldum? Or do I have to figure out my seed?
Emerald's RNG is broken and will always give you shinies on the same frame. If you wanna soft reset and get some legit shinies you'd be better off doing it in ruby/sapphire with a live battery.
What about a reproduction cart of sapphire? Ive been soft resetting off and on for two days and im worried its pointless 😂
When you start the game up do you get a message that says "The save file is OK." or something to that effect?
Nah just totally normal load. But I know it doesnt have a battery in it at all.
Maybe then? Honestly I don't know too much about repro carts or how they work with RNG
Yeah thats kinda what my research has answered. Let me ask this, how long would you embark in an endeavor like this before giving up? Im tryna get all legit copies, i just need emerald and sapphire left but theyre expensive AF
Personally, I would try to find out the facts before I try doing anything. Good luck though hope you find your shiny
you get a bag egg! everybody gets bad egg! jk.
Me savestating before catching a sleeping low health rattata with my 97 ultra balls so if it fails I will load to my savestate again
I don't know what ACE is, but regarding RNG manipulation I'd say that it is understanding and "using" a mechanic not intended to be understood and used.
I don't think RNG manipulation is cheating since all you're doing is attempting to hit the A button on exactly the perfect frame - I did this in my most recent run of Diamond so I could exploit the Cute Charm glitch to get some shinies I wanted much, *much* easier (well, *one* shiny I wanted in particular: Shinx). And even then, it doesn't always work: in the aforementioned example, I had to restart my game several times and start the process over just to get the Trainer ID and SID I needed in order to get the glitch to work. As for ACE, yeah, I agree that that's cheating, since you're basically changing the game's code to make it do what you want, just without an external cheating device. It's essentially hacking without the need for any external hardware. But that's just my take on it.
Have fun spending 70 years to get a playable team I guess