After multiple players were disqualified from the 2023 Pokémon Scarlet and Violet World Championships for using illegally obtained ‘mons, the new World Champion is now also facing hacking allegations. Fellow VGC players, however, are more concerned about the lack of features in the game that could potentially eliminate the need to use hacked Pokémon in the first place.
On Aug. 13, Shohei Kimura was crowned the 2023 Pokémon Scarlet and Violet World Champion in Yokohama, Japan. One of the key members of his winning team was Amoonguss—the best support Pokémon in the game—with its ability to put foes to sleep, heal its allies, and redirect attacks.
Nearly a week later, Kimura’s Amoonguss is now accused of being illegally obtained. This comes after plenty of other players were disqualified from the event for the same reason.
According to the accusations, Kimura’s Amoonguss was modified to have zero Attack IVs, which may sound odd to players who aren’t familiar with what IVs are. IVs, or individual values, are essentially extra stat points that are randomly assigned to each Pokémon on a scale of zero to 31. So what exactly is the point of intentionally making a Pokémon have zero Attack IVs?
Generally speaking, it’s better for Pokémon to have 31 IVs, aka “perfect IVs,” in every stat. But there are exceptions for Trick Room teams or non-physical attackers like Amoonguss. Since Amoonguss usually doesn’t have a physical attack on its move set, it would be ideal for it to have zero Attack IVs. This is to minimize the damage it would take from confusion effects or Foul Play, both of which would be calculated based on Amoonguss’ own Attack stat.
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However, since IVs are randomly assigned, there’s only a one-in-31 chance that any given Amoonguss will have exactly zero Attack IVs. This can lengthen the time it takes to gather up the Pokémon on your team. And while breeding can speed up the process with the Destiny Knot and power items, that still would require you to have a zero Attack IV Pokémon on hand to breed with your Amoonguss.
To make matters more complicated, you can’t even breed Legendary Pokémon like Enamorus who really benefits from having zero Speed IVs. Have fun restarting your Legends: Arceus game to get a new Enamorus if yours doesn’t have the right IVs.
Because of the tedious process to obtain their ideal Pokémon legitimately on their own, it seems players often resort to two alternatives—hacking/modifying their Pokémon, or trading with another player who may or may not be giving you an illegal ‘mon anyway.
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This is not to say hacking should be legalized in official Pokémon tournaments, though. Rather, players like popular content creator Patterrz are asking for new in-game features that would essentially eliminate the reason why hacking is so common.
Patterrz suggested Game Freak could add a feature to future games that allow players to legally generate Pokémon with the exact stats and build they want for official tournaments. This would be an ideal solution for players who love to battle and compete without having to spend so much time gathering up their team.
Another alternative would be to introduce a new item that can drop a Pokémon’s IVs to zero. We already have Hyper Training and Bottle Caps, which max out a Pokémon’s IVs on a single stat. The 2016 World Champion, Wolfe Glick, mentioned months ago in a YouTube short that competitive players would love to have an item that does the opposite of that—a “Rusty Bottle Cap”—to help out Amoonguss, Enamorus, and any other Pokémon that might benefit from zero IVs.
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Either of these solutions would minimize the amount of hacked Pokémon at official VGC tournaments, and then players can dedicate more time to cooking up new strategies and teams. And even if we can’t have a new feature that generates battle-ready Pokémon, Glick’s Rusty Bottle Cap idea is very realistic and definitely worth considering for future generations of the game.
For now, The Pokémon Company is relying on stricter hack checks and disqualifications as seen at the World Championships. We’ll see if this continues when the 2024 VGC season kicks off with Pittsburgh Regionals in less than a month.
