Is it Cheating?

General Discussion
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I ran across a couple of YouTube videos regarding the Pokemon VGC (the Pokemon Video Game Championship) and I was honestly surprised seeing what the community considered cheating. To be put things in perspective, I am NOT a Pokemon VCG player, and I haven’t touched a Pokemon video game since the original Silver, but it came to my notice after someone linked me the video when discussing the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG and Master Duel, which I am a part of…

As such, the topic of cheating in the Pokemon community is very strange to an outsider like myself. Apparently, using a 3rd party hack or program to maximize your Pokemon’s stats and rarities are NOT considered cheating by the majority of the Pokemon VGC community. As an outsider, I would consider it cheating because part of the game is actually catching and training your Pokemon yourself, rather than instantly boosting them to maximum power. But reading the comments in the YouTube videos, as well as watching literal World Champions discuss how they don’t consider it cheating really opened my eyes a bit.

The argument about it not being cheating is that it saves time, especially for players that have full-time jobs and lives outside of Pokemon. They also argue that it’s not cheating because you aren’t giving yourself an unfair advantage because the stats of the hacked Pokemon can be legit given enough time training, etc. Perhaps more importantly, it evens the playing field, and even gives top end players more opportunity to test with team comps or Pokemon that they wouldn’t have time for if they raised them through training.

As I said, this was very eye-opening. I would have always considered such things cheating because I always felt like you should try to earn your own achievements for yourself, but they do bring up some points. And the most eye-opening part of it was the sheer amount of support and agreement the Pokemon VGC community was over it. YouTube videos that stated it was cheating would get down voted to oblivion, while videos discussing the positives of it would be extremely well-liked.

To bring this back to Diablo 3, is the community also majority in support of “time-savers” that are normally against the rules but because Blizzard cannot or do not enforce it, the community consider it as NOT cheating? For example, using bots can save literally save thousands or if not hundreds of thousands of hours that you may not have if you work a full-time job and have a life outside of Diablo. They don’t give you an unfair advantage because getting that high in paragon can be legit, just like the maxed out Pokemon can be acquired via legit means. Same goes with the items found using a bot… all of those items are legit items, so they do not give an unfair advantage.

And couldn’t the same argument be made for people playing on other player’s accounts to boost up their progress/levels, complete quests, etc.? It only saves time?

Thoughts?

EDIT: Watch the YouTube video titled: “Controversy at the Pokemon World Championships”

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Pokemon World Championships are small potatoes compared to the glory, prestige and fame of the D3 and D4 leaderboards. The eyes of the gaming world are on us, and we must hold ourselves to higher standards than niche events.

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It is cheating.

There is an MMO I used to play, tons of people botted and said “it’s not cheating.”

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Yes, the $50,000 prize money for getting first doesn’t compare to the eternal glory of the completely pure Diablo 3 leader-boards xD.

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Glad that we cleared this up. Now let’s discuss whether numlocking a skill is cheating or not.

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They’re cheats and continue to call them out. Anyone cheating in this manner should be given a very lengthy ban.

One sport that takes cheating very, very seriously is Chess. And that’s how every sport should take the matter.

Yes. I see the same crap on D3 console PS4 - people using save wizard and modded gear, including top 10 players who are pretty much all using save wizard these days. Their excuse? I don’t wanna waste time farming for mats.

100% is. It’s automating skills. Automating skills is the same as automating farming with bots. Automation. Consoles don’t have the num lock auto cast option, we have to manually cast said skill, or suffer the consequences. I guess real men play on consoles whilst the boys play on PC and use num lock :wink:

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Short answer is do the developers allow it. If yes it isn’t cheating, if no it is.

I know nothing about the game, but is the competitive aspect basically just battling with your Pokemon against other players?

Because in that case, if it is just about the competitive aspect and not playing the game yourself, I can understand it. In that context I would liken it to if Tekken worked like every time you win a fight with a character you have a random chance to gain X speed or damage to an ability. In other words, the competitive aspect of the game is about playing the characters (Or Pokemon in this case) better than your opponent and not grinding random chance improvements. While part of Diablo is about the time and effort you put in to the grind.

From the way you describe it though it at least sounds questionable.

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I don’t know pokemon very well myself, but I’m guessing there’s a system in place where you pickup a pokemon and they have their “IVS” and “EVS” or whatever, determined? I remember a friend mentioning those systems long ago.

I guess it comes down to, whether those particular growth stats are obtainable, and they hack it so they don’t have to do a thousand resets to begin a run.

This paragraph is likely irrelevant, so I’ll say that first. When it comes to Blizzard games (from my perspective) its whether or not its profitable to the company. Take World of WarCraft for example: GDKP (some system where you join a run of a raid and you buy the bind on pickup loot with gold), casinos, and a lot of other sketchy activities are legal, because people buy WoW-Tokens to get in-game gold to participate in these scams. Last I checked there was nothing against the EULA or TOS against this stuff. (I checked around Christmas time last year about some curiosities).

Generally Blizzard’s view is “1 press, 1 action” but whether or not its enforced is another question.

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You can hack EVs and IVs and they’ll still pass a check. This has been like this for a long time.

I breed my own IVs, which is half the fun.

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As others have said, what matter is how people who are in charge of the championship thinks. In Pokemon VGC, it seems cheating is allowed. If Blizzard had the same view as them then yes, botting would be allowed. Now, they don’t have the same view and consider it cheating.

But to answer your question: yes, the same argument could indeed be made for people playing on others accounts. It certainly saves time.

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In my prior MMO, SE knew what people were doing was botting. However, they deliberately turned a blind eye to it because if they banned the botters, their income for that game would drop 75% easily. If the vast majority of your players cheat, they greatly out-weigh the complaints of the legit folk.

For pokemon vgc, they’ve stated that cheating isn’t allowed however, people have gotten a lot more clever in circumventing detection. Same goes for physical cards in that realm. People have gotten so good at making counterfeits that little effort is made anymore to detect it.

There just isn’t enough resources out there to fight cheating/illegit things.

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I think cheating is a little more than just if the developers allow it.

There are certainly lines that are cheating, and lines that aren’t cheating.

Using any third-party advantage is clearly cheating. This shouldn’t even be up for debate.

And using unintended exploits, which cannot be done naturally is clearly cheating. What I mean, is something like boosting someone 1-70 in a T16 game. A <70 player cannot just join a T16 game naturally, so you need to go out of your way to do this.

But then, what about Num lock or snapshotting? These are available to everyone right off the bat, as they don’t require any special tricks to do. This is where it gets into a grey area, and you’ll get people disagreeing on whether or not these constitute cheating. They’re clearly not within the spirit of the game, but they are clever use of the mechanics of the game.

And that’s where I’d take the line of, if it’s available to me, and Blizzard hasn’t taken a stance on it, then it’s legal. I view it like card counting in Blackjack. The spirit of the game is that Blackjack is supposed to be random. But if you notice exploitable mechanics, why shouldn’t you be allowed to take advantage of them?

I mean, these aren’t top secret mechanics Blizzard has been unaware of. They certainly should know certain mechanics can be abused. But you’re still playing within the rules.

Because if you have to abide by the spirit of a game to not be considered cheating, then it becomes a very tricky issue. What exactly is the spirit of the game? This could change on a dime, depending on who’s in charge.

Now, I also agree with Mattelot, that if the majority of your player base is cheating, they’re going to turn a blind eye. It’s still cheating, but it’s a level of cheating that’s been accepted, which is what I feel the op’s original post goes towards.

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Is there any particular reason you’re spamming this in at least two fora, especially when it has nothing to do with Diablo?

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I should have probably worded mine differently, by allowed I meant they know and are ok with it, not like let it slide even though it is against the rules or how prevalent botting is said to be in D3.

I agree with this stance of what is acceptable or not. For lack of a better word. If the devs don’t say no you can’t and if it is something everyone can do if they have the knowledge/skill then it is fine to me.

It is also important to distinguish between exploiting of a bug and taking advantage of a feature. I am also fine with unintended consequences of mechanics. Like in Dota for example there are things that are like core parts of gameplay now that started out as someone figuring out an unintended thing in the mechanics.

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Maybe they are trying to find out if 3rd party softwares are allowed without asking the question directly on the Pokemon forums :man_shrugging:

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So I had a look at that video, and he finally gets to the topic at hand at about 23 minutes or so.

So, I’d say the D3 equivalent of what’s being talked about is if I just create a new character, and just inject a bunch of boosted primal legendary/set items, with max level gems, all without going beyond what is possible in character stats, and then compete without actually finding and developing my character along the way.

Edit: Also, I think I have a good chance at winning these Pokemon Championships with just entering with a level 3 starter Pokemon because my opponents are all getting DQ’d. lol

Another edit:
He also complains he needs all these games/consoles/dlc making it “expensive” but they’re all very wide in release dates, its actually doable to prepare for tournaments:
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet - Nov 28 2022 ($60)
Pokemon Legends Arceus - Jan 28 2022 ($60)
Pokemon Sword And Shield - Nov 15 2019 ($60)
(Some DLC he didn’t say) - $30
Nintendo Switch - ($260-$450 USD, model dependant)
$660÷18 months = $16.33333￣ (most expensive switch)<
$210÷18 months = $11.66667 (dedicated light and portable switch)

Total about $16 a month average if you were picking this up as a hobby, is not shabby.

(BIG EDIT: OK LETS DO MATH BETTER, YA DRUNK. THERE AINT 6 MONTHS IN A YEAR
$510 to get Switch+Sword&Shield ÷ 15 months to Legends Arceus = $34 a month
$60 Legends Arceus ÷ 10 = $6 a month
I mean, the rest speaks for itself. I’ve done worse for hobbies.)

So not only I think the Pokemon players are cheaters, but they’re also cheap.

Yet another Edit:
He talks more about how “The company tells us not to trade Pokemon when the game is big on Pokemon Trading.” I don’t think the company would expect people to find ways to hack undetected, so they tell the competitors not to Trade because of the risk for hacking, which is not unreasonable.

I think its also reasonable if you want to compete, put in the work to show you are capable.

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I play both games and I’m curious what the two different communities think about this topic?

Diablo 3 has had “cheaters” on leader-boards for over a decade. Bots run rampart playing 23 hours a day without punishment. Even if you disagree with people doing it, that has been the reality of Diablo 3’s history. And the same can be said about the Pokemon VGC community, because they’ve had decades with people using a myriad of ways to obtain the best-in-slot Pokemon without playing the game via normal means.

Diablo 4 on the other hand has trade, which Diablo 3 does not. Diablo 4 does not have the history of bots, etc. Diablo 4’s community is also arguably more casual so I wonder if that will change the consensus of what people believe what is and isn’t cheating?

I have very strong opinions on the subject myself, but I am very curious how my views are the same or different from what the Diablo community believe in.

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Diablo 4 has bots.

Also, the leaderboards there are completely busted. You’re getting players putting up scores of hundreds of millions when, even if you could potentially run a perfect game, you’d be lucky to score a million point.

And they’re not banning anyone (at least not anyone worth while). You have major streamers cheating directly on stream, and Blizzard is actually promoting them. (And I’m not even talking debatable cheats, but rather blatant cheating.)

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num lock isn’t available to console players.

num lock is automating a game function.

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The numlock trick could have easily been removed by Blizzard. At the same time, it’s no different than just holding down controller buttons.

The thing here is, you can hold down all 8 buttons on a controller, and it will spam the skills. This isn’t necessarily possible on the PC. Many keyboards have limitations on key rollover, so that you can only press 2 or 3 keys at once. By your standard, if it’s not available to all, then should we limit the controller, so that only 2 buttons can be pressed at any one time, just to keep everything fair?

But even take that out of the equation. Something like the monks dash, you can just hold down the key on the PC, and it will dash forever. On the console, you need to constantly spam dash (not sure why it’s only the monk, as other classes you can just hold down the button).

The bottom line is, they’re different beasts, with different mechanics, and need to be treated as such.

That’s why I don’t view it as a cheat. If you’re playing on the PC, you have access to it. It’s in the game, and doesn’t require a third party, nor is it an external macro (which is typically multiple actions at once, which the numlock trick is not), and Blizzard has taken no stance against it.

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