I just got a shamelessly hacked Eevee (shiny with perfect IVs; hatched on Kalos Route 7 but has a Sinnoh Champion Ribbon) via Wonder Trade and face either the prospect of breeding it for semi-legit Pokémon or just releasing it and never looking back. Either way, I feel like my very game cartridge has been irreversibly tainted by some plague, because I’m of the opinion that the ability to simply obtain whatever Pokémon you want on a whim spoils a significant part of the game and mocks the efforts of honest breeders and trainers who spend hours achieving objectively less impressive results using only the in-game methods that Game Freak provide them, methods that have been made easier over the generations in part, I believe, to discourage would-be hackers.
Do you think that Game Freak should spend more effort cracking down on illegitimate Pokémon and penalize players for using and distributing them? Do you have any idea if they even have the means to do this?
Well, in answer to the last question, no, I haven’t the faintest idea.
I don’t have particularly strong opinions on this, maybe because I’ve never been willing to devote the necessary time to the kind of repetitive tasks involved in breeding for perfect IVs. I suppose my default would be a sort of laissez faire attitude, though I suspect my reasons for that will provoke… disagreement.
The thing is… breeding really top-notch Pokémon is boring. If it weren’t, then why would we regard the time spent doing it as a cost, and why would we be upset about some people not having to pay that cost? Ultimately the whole thing just makes me seriously begin to question the value of that part of the game. The problem as I see it is not so much that hackers are able to circumvent all of the time and effort that goes into breeding a perfect Pokémon, and more that the game is designed in such a way that people would want to in the first place. If it’s not actually fun, then why are we playing? If it is fun, then why be upset that someone else is depriving themselves of the sense of achievement? There is a fairness issue if you play competitively, I will grant you, but at this point I would be more upset at the game for giving concrete advantages to you for spending three hours of your day doing something you don’t actually enjoy. Like, do you want a competitive game where the amount of time you spend riding a bicycle back and forth past a day-care centre is as important as the amount of time you spend actually playing and practicing with your team, improving your skills? To me, that’s the problem that Game Freak should be addressing.
But maybe I’m coming at all of this from the wrong perspective.
Pokémaniacal 