Equinox said:
Actually, I know I've read somewhere about the odds, it's a lot, and I've forgotten it. So long as there is odds there is a possibility.
I agree with this.. the thing is, if it's one or two of these guys I wouldn't bat an eye. I'd be like, "you got lucky dude! awesome!" It's whole teams/boxes of them that is unethical part. That's be like winning the state lotto every week.
Bacon said:
With that said, I am not sure why people are complaining about RNG. How others play the game does not affect your own experiences, and just like how others choose to use RNG, you also choose not to. Just because you prefer to generate Pokemon by breeding, it doesn't give you the justification to soft-insult RNGers with "unethical" just because they don't want to spend 50+ hours catching a viable Azelf or whatever. I anticipate the response "But that's how the game was supposed to be played!", but who's to say that for this reason breeding is more enjoyable than RNG? If it doesn't produce extremely superior Pokemon to breeding (indeed RNG produces physically possible Pokemon), then why is it so bad?
If it wasn't tournament play I'd agree with you. The issue I have is that due to the tournament nature, the fact that they can cut corners to have a full team of perfect guys is a little much. I fall back to my previous statement. One or two on a team.. sure. A good breeder might be able to pull that off. But when I've seen the boxes of perfect shinies I can't help but get miffed. It's like someone going to a fighting game tourney and using a controller that stores all of the best combos to hot keys. Sure they could put the button commands in themselves, but the fact is since they programmed this controller it is easier for them than someone who doesn't do this. That's the problem. Also, I think this is only a VGC problem. In a format, like some of the online competitions people play in, pretty much everyone uses RNG, AR, or something. That's fine. I don't like those tournies so I don't play in them. Why is it that there is no format where I don't have to worry about someone "abusing" some code to have statistically better odds of doing things than I do? There are formats that ban Brightpowder because it makes moves that normally hit occasionally miss. If that can be banned for that reason, I don't see why not allowing RNG in one format is a big deal.
Wait, scratch that. I know why. Because it helps RNGers rub their shinies in the face of people who don't RNG and it makes them feel smart when they talk about the odds, coding, and calculators that allow them to use this method. I realize this is a generaliztion.. and it's probably because the ones I met at VGC make the rest of you look bad because I was pretty much told by a group of 'em that this is why they do it.
I remember Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldbloom in Jurassic Park) saying that, "..your standing on the shoulders of giants." I doubt each RNGer starts by dissecting the game code themselves and working from there. If they did, I'd respect them more for it. Instead, they are using the work someone else did to allow them to cut corners. I am a full time paleontologist/biology teacher. I put in 40+ hours a week working, and I run my local pokémon league. I work hard to breed and raise pokémon in my almost non-existant free time. If you really enjoy something, you find the time. I will never accept it's ok because, "some people don't have the time." Last time I checked, hard work was measured by how much effort/time was put in. If you don't have the time, or not willing to put in the time, maybe your not as competitve as you think.
Additionally, notice in my first post I am referring to "abuse". The over use of this method is what I think is unethical.
