Breeding Cheaters – Why The Pokémon Company Should Close a Window and Open a Door

Assembling the Best in Breed

Image courtesy of Game Freak

Becoming the very best in competitive Pokémon requires much more than just showing up to tournaments and winning battles. Competent trainers must spend a plethora of time developing teams of six Pokémon that have synergy together. Then for each Pokémon selected, the trainer must breed the perfect candidate. Finally, the trainer has to train a proper EV, or effort value, spread into each Pokémon in order for it to optimally perform its role. This entire process is referred to as teambuilding.

Arguably, teambuilding poses one of the single biggest hurdles when it comes to new trainers attempting to get into competitive Pokémon. The amount of research, trial & error, and knowledge of the current metagame, means a high barrier for entry. Top that off with the fact that each time you want to try something new, or change any member of your team, you must start the breeding process over.

Worst yet is that both teambulding and breeding contribute little to the viewing experience of competitive Pokémon. Furthermore, both of these activities reduce a trainers ability to practice while discouraging experimentation due to time commitment. None of these things foster a healthy competitive community. In fact, the current breeding issues are causing more harm than good.

Breedings not Cheating… or is it?

Investing time into mastering the nuances of battling is extremely important. For the most part, trainers consider riding a Tauros in circles for hours hatching eggs and praying to the RNG gods to be a waste of time. As with most things in life, the path of least resistance is found and the floodgates open.

Image courtesy of @akamiso0608

Cheating, more specifically genning Pokémon, has risen to popularity as a way to cut out the timesink breeding creates. Trainers use a computer program to instantly create the Pokémon they need for their teams. This successfully bypasses the need for breeding and decreases the time teambulding takes tremendously.

In the end, the effect is a lack of consistency and an uneven playing field. While genned Pokémon will end up totally identical to their bred counterparts, the savings in time cannot be understated.

Furthermore, genning requires the trainer to have access to a Nintendo 2/3DS with hacked firmware. This encourages any aspiring Pokémon trainers to almost have to break TOS on Nintendo hardware to stay competitive. Nintendo and TPCI would both benefit from solving this issue.

An Argument for Breeding Consistency

Regardless of whether you are for genning Pokémon for convenience, or doing it the hard way, consistency is needed. With the current system in place, the community finds itself fractured. Those with experience and drive to win will take the most reliable route to victory. The result is a large gap for new trainers to cross.

Image courtesy of Game Freak

TPCI and Game Freak need to streamline the entire teambuilding process. Either enforce the system of breeding in some way, or make the ability to build teams for competitive events easier. There really isn’t another option. Removing the need for reliance on third party applications is paramount.

Ultimately the goal should be to create an easy and transparent way for new and aspiring trainers to get into competitive battling. By lowering the barrier for entry, TPCI can stimulate the competitive community and interest in competitive Pokémon as a whole.

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