Morals on "Reborn Cheating"

[TheJawsOfDeath]

So..a few days ago my friend and I got into a heated debate on what we each considered cheating. Our views were so drastically different, I considered certain things he did cheating and he thought certain things I did was considered cheating and we couldn't come to an agreement as to what was and wasn't considered cheating.

Between editing scripts, using cheat engine, RPGmaker/Pokemon Essentials, Action Replay, RNG Manipulation, glitch exploits like duplication or "Tauros fainting", what people consider cheating and their thresholds are very different so I have decided to make a poll to see what YOU consider cheating.

Legal vs legit threads have existed since the dawn of competitive play and debates about cheating are have been done ad nauseam so please DO NOT ARGUE.

The Polling answers are not public incase you are a closet cheater.

P.S Thanks to all who have responded or voted. Its nice seeing where the community stands.

P.P.S I have removed Question 3(the one regarding rare candies) since a mistake in the question has changed its meaning and in turn the results drastically. Also some grammatical errors or ambiguity for some of the answers have been addressed.

Edited May 27, 2016 by TheJawsOfDeath

[Mortally Divine]

I feel like ultimately, it is a single player game and it should be played in the way that you enjoy it most. Think about it like a food industry (sorry I work as a cook)

Ame makes her burger a certain way, and she never, EVER puts Jalepenos on burgers. Why would she? Jalepenos have a strong taste and detract from the rich taste of the burger. She puts jalepenos on other things in the kitchen, but not her burgers, which happen to be her most popular food.

Mortally Divine absolutely LOVES jalepenos, he eats enough a day to kill normal mortals he puts them on everything. Mortally Divine orders a burger, gets some jalepenos and puts them on there. Yum.

Ame might not like the fact that Mortally Divine just put jalepenos on her burger! What the heck?!? She made the burger in a specific way, and that's the way it should be enjoyed? Right?

Well, theres an argument for that. Yes, the burger was not meant to have jalepenos on it. But, if Mortally Divine wants jalepenos, he will enjoy it more with jalepenos if he so chooses. Other people might not like jalepenos, might look at him eating it and think that it is disgusting or nasty, but that is how Mortally Divine enjoys it.

basically, the burgers Symbolize the game, and jalepenos the "cheating". Ame might not intend for people to cheat, and the game is great without cheating. But if some people enjoy it more with cheating, ultimately it is a single player game, and nobody is forcing anybody to cheat.

I hope this analogy made sense and I don't sound like an idiot....

[Ice Cream Sand Witch]

It doesn't really matter to me what other people do with their own game files.

[Caraboo]

I feel like ultimately, it is a single player game and it should be played in the way that you enjoy it most. Think about it like a food industry (sorry I work as a cook)

Ame makes her burger a certain way, and she never, EVER puts Jalepenos on burgers. Why would she? Jalepenos have a strong taste and detract from the rich taste of the burger. She puts jalepenos on other things in the kitchen, but not her burgers, which happen to be her most popular food.

Mortally Divine absolutely LOVES jalepenos, he eats enough a day to kill normal mortals he puts them on everything. Mortally Divine orders a burger, gets some jalepenos and puts them on there. Yum.

Ame might not like the fact that Mortally Divine just put jalepenos on her burger! What the heck?!? She made the burger in a specific way, and that's the way it should be enjoyed? Right?

Well, theres an argument for that. Yes, the burger was not meant to have jalepenos on it. But, if Mortally Divine wants jalepenos, he will enjoy it more with jalepenos if he so chooses. Other people might not like jalepenos, might look at him eating it and think that it is disgusting or nasty, but that is how Mortally Divine enjoys it.

basically, the burgers Symbolize the game, and jalepenos the "cheating". Ame might not intend for people to cheat, and the game is great without cheating. But if some people enjoy it more with cheating, ultimately it is a single player game, and nobody is forcing anybody to cheat.

^^^

Personally, yeah, I've started using RPG maker to create some custom run files. I even added some rare candies. I've played, and plan on continuing to play Reborn as it was meant to be played on my 'Dynne' file. But when I want to play through the game again? I want to try new things, but I don't always want to deal with all the frustration I went though. I limit myself. Nothing absurdly over powered. I don't even speed up the game. Even with 'cheated' Pokes though, the game isn't easy. Reborn has not, and never will be a game you can just breeze through, unless I suppose you had a level 100 Hydreigon or something, but it wouldn't listen so

Sometimes I just wanna play a game I like and kinda have a lazy time with it I guess! But I'm never touching my main file with any of those systems. I would cry if I messed something up.

And on the subject of going back episodes, while I wouldn't do it myself, I don't have a huge issue with it because sometimes I feel Reborn tries too hard to be... Well, hard! What with these differences between episodes. So what if people are breeding in TM moves? Having a Poke with T bolt for coverage shouldn't break the game, because then the game isn't actually hard, it's just making the player THINK it's hard. Not that I'd expect something so powerful early in game, sure, but I think the point still stands.

[Commander]

I'm just going to get my point across before going into detail: "The game is as hard as you want to be."

Cheating is just a very ambiguous term. I cheat in order to make the mod of hardcore. I needed levels and certain mons for testing leaders and their gimmicks/competence. Then for the other project I needed 31 IVs and perfect(ish) EVs for testing. That's why there's a debug mode in the first place. Heck with a couple additions people could even possibly do some gamebreaking stuff. No I mean literal break the game causing it to crash (for that purpose, I may remove online features from the mod).

I'd say cheating is more frowned upon as it's going against the creator's wishes in which they try to design an experience people will enjoy. I can kind of understand why people would want to go back to older episodes for TM breeding, but I feel the newer episodes are heading in the right direction. Some people don't like the new changes which is why the older episodes are still being used. If you do that though, you're really only hurting yourself from the full experience.

[Tartar]

You know, most people on this forum don't really care have the holier than thou attitude that would condemn others for playing a game in the way they want to.

If someone wants to have infinite rare candies, or money, some TM that's not in the game etc. then its their choice, and no one should condemn them for it since it doesn't impact the experience of others.

[Ice Cream Sand Witch]

I remember a similar debate happening elsewhere years ago with "Is it ok to manually set your Pokemons' EVs and IVs to where you want them" and one person said of those people "Shame on you for corrupting your games" and I was thinking "It's just a game, calm down ._."

[Anvilicious]

Funny, my response to what is or isn't cheating in this game is essentially the same as the one I have for silly people who hate speedrunners. As long as it's not multiplayer, people should be allowed to play a game however they want. For multiplayer games, I'd consider it really awful, because someone could hack in the +1 infinity sword that takes a lot of work to obtain the intended way, thus undermining the achievements and skills of other players. But you're not getting an unfair advantage over other players in Reborn. I think that as long as you don't use cheats to spoil content to other players that is currently unreachable through normal gameplay, how you play Pokemon Reborn is up to you.

Edited May 26, 2016 by Anvilicious

[Tartar]

as long as you don't use cheats to spoil content to other players that is currently unreachable through normal gameplay

This is really the key point to take away from all this. As long as your editing of the games' files is only affecting your experience of the game there is no problem with doing it.

[Jokinzazpi]

It depends.

Speed hacks don't give you an advantage, they only make your time more efficient. It's not like you need to finish the game before X time passes, so it doesn't matter after all. If I grind for one hour with a 2x speed hack, I will have used my free time most efficiently. This being said, I don't use speedhacks.

I have just started the game, and I already have cheated. My friend set the friendship of my Budew to the max via RPG maker. Is it cheating? Yes, of course, but I wanted to get roselia before I did anything else, even if that meant walking from one place to another, saving the game, leveling Budew and reseting if he wasn't evolving. I was going to get roselia anyways, but it saved me lots of time and tedious grinding

However adding 3rd party pokemons can lower the difficulty, or even nullify some encounters or events that were designed to make the game more challenging, possibly ruining the original experience, and maybe giving you a different one.

Also, what about making the game harder? Lowering your mons stats or giving them poor IV's in order to face a greater challenge is also considered cheating.

In the very end, you play games to have fun and as long as there is no PVP, if you feel like cheating your way through you should be able to do.

[Raindrop Valkyrie]

Aye, as long as one doesn't soil the personal experience of another in their engagement with the game there's no such thing as "cheating"

There's a reason most games have difficulty settings and dynamic difficulty etc etc... It's to tailor the game to your preferred Experience. If a friend of yours played on Easy while you played on hard mode... you wouldn't say they cheated would you? ((some hardcore gamers would yes, but this isn't the point.)) People play games for different reasons. Some play to be challenged, some play to explore, some play to achieve, some play for the social aspect of being able to talk to their friends and share their war stories with people. It's all okay. In a single player game there's no such thing as cheating. There's just augmenting the experience to your taste. You shouldn't worry what others think of said tastes. Difficulty is a Player's choice. A player should take the game as they want to and go at the pace they desire. So what if they break the intended flow? Not all gamers are the best in the universe, some don't have a shit load of time to be playing.

Cheating is only what you as a player see it as. If you want to do something to augment your experience to enjoy it more for yourself... do it.

((this is very different for Multiplayer games but this is becuase they are a SHARED experience so that stuff in those is DEFINITELY cheating since your cheating another person out of their enjoyment.))

[Masquerain]

Personally I don't condone cheating, but it's up to people to decide what they wanna do with the games they play. If they find any fun in getting everything readily made for them on a silver platter, wellp, good for them.

I myself only ever resort to "inserting" a pokemon in my savefile (and usually staff members do it) if I'm doing a monotype run and there's a lack of said type before 1st gym or among starters. Otherwise, I'd never even consider cheating in any way and I'd play a game like Reborn the way it was intended to be played, using rare candies where the game gives you rare candies, using the available 'mon, TMs and grinding where it's needed. And if I want IVs/ability, reset until I get something I'm fine with

[mde2001]

Reborn's official stance is that we don't care what is done with the game, but we don't condone discussion of it on the forums (not stuff like this obviously, but things like threads asking how to cheat or tutorials on it). I share this opinion too... really it is up to you but just don't talk about it here (note that this doesn't include stuff like going back episodes for breeding). We'll delete threads that have CE discussion of that sort.

In terms of bug reporting, we usually won't fix save files of people who have used cheat engines, getting them to use back up saves instead, as it isn't our problem you've broken your game by manipulating it.

So, I'm really not a fan of it, but it isn't my business what people do with their files until they start to bring them onto the forums.

[Samalet]

I tried going back to normal speed after playing at x5 for a few weeks, but I just couldn't do it. Reborn etc. are all soooooooooooo slow, seriously how can you play this without speed hacks? This is a general problem I have with Pokemon though and probably stems from using emulators too much.

[Kurotsune]

Reborn is to be played however you enjoy it. The only caveat is that if the game breaks due to the cheating there's no guarantee any support will be giving - It's effectively voiding the warranty.

That said when online rolls around there will also be something of an anti-cheating system implemented with it that will remove unfairly added pokémon (until those are made available) from anyone who tries to battle online with them.

[Personthing]

As long as your cheating isn't somehow ruining the fun of others, I see no issue with it. Personally, I find cheating to detract from the enjoyment of the run, but to each their own.

[Lucky98]

The only time ever use a speed up function is during grinding. It gets really tedious and time-consuming having to repeatedly battle wild pokemon over and over again at normal speed. But other than that, I don't really have a problem with it.

I'm assuming that by "using rare candies" you mean hacking in an infinite amount of rare candies or changing the amount of money you have an buying a lot of them. While I don't personally do this, I can understand some people wanting to this instead of grinding. In reborn in particular, the level cap helps prevent abusing rare candies.

Ultimately, the way someone plays the game is up to them. As long as they are having fun and enjoying it and not bothering other people, I don't really have a problem with people cheating

[DemICE]

It is a single player game.
Therefore you should play it in the way that it gives you the greatest satisfaction. You waste precious time of your one and only life on this after all.

For example, I decided to play Reborn, the way the creator meant to be played. Which is, use what is available at the given update.

Strong Pokemon got axed so that future episodes provide a better (from Ame's point of view ofc) experience to the player through (usually) increased difficulty.

The change in breeding TM moves was not Ame's intention, but it SURELY added to the game's difficulty, so its another win for Ame.

The only person that I'm going to cheat by reverting to previous episodes for my convenience, or by using glitches (strength, thief on allied trainer), is my own self.

Because when i started, i decided to play the game in X way. By cheating it is not that way anymore. Therefore i have already lost to a moment's weak-willed decision.

Same as other games. I start to play Doom 3 lets say with no cheats, and on the way i used some infinite ammo cheat or something. Well duh, the creators don't give a damn they even created those cheats themselves. I just lost to myself by being too weak to keep my original goal.

In my original run, the only not-intended thing i've done is that i reverted to a previous episode to access the 9th floor of dept. store to get dream eater tm, and buy some PP UPs. But at that point i thought it was a bug that i could not do it at episode 15, because the I had earned the damn sticker! And the area was there in front of me! Just a silly man was standing in my face! And I heard by reverting to a previous episode you get him out of the way. (kinda like a way around the bug until it is fixed).

So yeah after i explored more of the forums over the months, I realised that the shop block was intended and not a bug.

So now i kinda feel guilty of that already. But im too weak-willed to un-learn Dream Eater from my butterfree and used the PP ups already. So yeah i have to live with that....

Oh and i also use SpeedHack because it just makes things happen faster without giving u an advantage over your enemies... im a busy person after all!

Edited May 26, 2016 by DemICE

[Another Felix]

I've only done cheating twice, once for a specific Pokemon and its shiny in a special run just because the shiny looks so much better, did nothing with IVs. And the "Pokemon Following You" mod just because that's the greatest feature in any Pokemon game ever and should be standard in all of them from now on.

[TheJawsOfDeath]

It depends.

Speed hacks don't give you an advantage, they only make your time more efficient. It's not like you need to finish the game before X time passes, so it doesn't matter after all. If I grind for one hour with a 2x speed hack, I will have used my free time most efficiently. This being said, I don't use speedhacks.

I have just started the game, and I already have cheated. My friend set the friendship of my Budew to the max via RPG maker. Is it cheating? Yes, of course, but I wanted to get roselia before I did anything else, even if that meant walking from one place to another, saving the game, leveling Budew and reseting if he wasn't evolving. I was going to get roselia anyways, but it saved me lots of time and tedious grinding

However adding 3rd party pokemons can lower the difficulty, or even nullify some encounters or events that were designed to make the game more challenging, possibly ruining the original experience, and maybe giving you a different one.

Also, what about making the game harder? Lowering your mons stats or giving them poor IV's in order to face a greater challenge is also considered cheating.

In the very end, you play games to have fun and as long as there is no PVP, if you feel like cheating your way through you should be able to do.

Some could say the same about changing IVs since 5 Hours of hatching eggs may not be considered using free time efficiently to some.

No arguing here though just showing you a different perspective.

Edited May 26, 2016 by TheJawsOfDeath

[daigotsurezan]

Some could say the same about changing IVs since 5 Hours of hatching eggs may not be considered using free time efficiently to some.

No arguing here though just showing you a different perspective.

One of my favorite things from other fangames that I would like to see in Reborn (although I would relegate it to the postgame, obviously) is the ability to change IVs on an existing Pokemon. I'm not skilled enough, or have enough free time, to do breeding, and I'd rather have an alternative in-game (say, a chance to win one IV change from a daily minigame, or cost a boatload of cash in the Department Store) to speedhacking to cut down on time spent.

[Imperial]

One of my favorite things from other fangames that I would like to see in Reborn (although I would relegate it to the postgame, obviously) is the ability to change IVs on an existing Pokemon. I'm not skilled enough, or have enough free time, to do breeding, and I'd rather have an alternative in-game (say, a chance to win one IV change from a daily minigame, or cost a boatload of cash in the Department Store) to speedhacking to cut down on time spent.

I remember Ame clearly stating that she won't do that. She wanted pokemon to keep their own personnality, to be unique. So IV won't change

My point of view about cheating is that in a solo game it's not very important, and depends on the context. I would say don't do that at first, but sometimes doing the same thing again and again can get boring. Speed hack ? Keeping the game at 2x because it's too slow is not cheating. While 5x speed for EV training may be a bit cheating. But when you already have 30 pokemon fully EV trained for your main run alone (+ 6 other runs with trained mons) training at normal speed is just a pain so it gets justified. It's not like you never did it normally. Same for shinies. The 30 pokemon I mentioned are all shiny. Found at normal speed. But when you spent days trying to find a shiny Horsea then a shiny Skrelp, and you planned to get a shiny Slakoth (normal Slakoth are even worse to get than Horseas), it just gets too boring. So I cheated to get it. Cheat must not be the normal way to play, but sometimes a small help to reduce a boring part of the game like grinding can justify it. The main goal of a game is to be enjoyed, not to be endure.

Then there are monotypes. I did a dragon mono with the hardcore mode, which as you can imagine would be completely impossible with just a Noibat to begin with. So I modified the game to get a Deino as a starter. And most people would have added an other starter (which seeing how hard the beginning was is probably better). This is not really cheating, it's just a small adaptation to keep playing the game without always doing the same thing. More a mod than a cheat in a way.

[TheJawsOfDeath]

I remember Ame clearly stating that she won't do that. She wanted pokemon to keep their own personnality, to be unique. So IV won't change

My point of view about cheating is that in a solo game it's not very important, and depends on the context. I would say don't do that at first, but sometimes doing the same thing again and again can get boring. Speed hack ? Keeping the game at 2x because it's too slow is not cheating. While 5x speed for EV training may be a bit cheating. But when you already have 30 pokemon fully EV trained for your main run alone (+ 6 other runs with trained mons) training at normal speed is just a pain so it gets justified. It's not like you never did it normally. Same for shinies. The 30 pokemon I mentioned are all shiny. Found at normal speed. But when you spent days trying to find a shiny Horsea then a shiny Skrelp, and you planned to get a shiny Slakoth (normal Slakoth are even worse to get than Horseas), it just gets too boring. So I cheated to get it. Cheat must not be the normal way to play, but sometimes a small help to reduce a boring part of the game like grinding can justify it. The main goal of a game is to be enjoyed, not to be endure.

Then there are monotypes. I did a dragon mono with the hardcore mode, which as you can imagine would be completely impossible with just a Noibat to begin with. So I modified the game to get a Deino as a starter. And most people would have added an other starter (which seeing how hard the beginning was is probably better). This is not really cheating, it's just a small adaptation to keep playing the game without always doing the same thing. More a mod than a cheat in a way.

In my honest opinion though, my pokemon's IVs have never determined their personality while their nicknames, caught locations and general memories with them have. I don't remember my Rocksann the Golem for its Attack IVs, I remember it for setting up stealth rocks on the fire gym leader and how much it helped me in my playthrough with Quick Claw Explosions.

And yeah I'm not sure what justifies cheating since in a single player game its so morally ambigious. I just say play how you want. If you want to start the game with a Goomy instead of a region starter go ahead especially on your 2nd or 3rd playthrough.

Edited May 26, 2016 by TheJawsOfDeath

[Samalet]

And yeah I'm not sure what justifies cheating since in a single player game its so morally ambigious. I just say play how you want. If you want to start the game with a Goomy instead of a region starter go ahead especially on your 2nd or 3rd playthrough.

This is my attitude as well. Starting with a Goomy doesn't even make the game easier, it means you have to carry around deadweight until it evolves into Goodra at Level 50. You actually make the game more challenging for yourself.

[Juniper]

NGL, thought this meant cheating in relation to dating.

Was quite intrigued.