i'm trying to understand what you're trying to say and i'm failing
what are you alleging about competitive players?
anyway, seems interesting, scarlet
i think they are in part referring to the general propensity for the pokemon vgc competitor population to use
hacked pokemon in tournaments, but i'm not sure if i understand how that's applicable to a tournament hosted on pokemon showdown
related info dump & thoughts:
there were quite a few disqualifications starting in 2023, i think, due to the hack-checking measures on-site becoming more scrutinous that year at the world championships. most of the disqualifications were for pokemon that weren't available in pokemon scarlet or violet, but were missing the tracker data that is assigned to a pokemon when it passes through pokemon home--the only way to transfer those pokemon into the games.
urshifu and ursaluna were common ones, only being available in pokemon sword and shield and pokemon legends: arceus respectively at that point while being metagame staples.
there's an argument to be made for inaccessibility when you have to spend $90 on sword/shield with its dlc and $60 for legends: arceus just to have access to those two pokemon.
the other side of the coin is the actual time spent on getting competitively viable pokemon--something that is night and day compared to even two generations ago, but still not without caveats.
thankfully it was never considered to be worth using in the first place, but therian form enamorous, also available in legends: arceus, ideally wanted to have specific, lowest-possible stat values in its attack and speed.
i think the probability comes out to something like 1/1000 for that, and you aren't actually able to view the stats in-game--it has to be transferred to home first, at which point you'll have to replay the entirety of legends: arceus to get another one if it doesn't have the stats you want, since it's only available once per save file and the game needs to be saved to actually transfer it to home.
bloodmoon ursaluna has the same issue, but it was made available directly in scarlet/violet, so you're able to check its stats directly and reset immediately. after a really long unskippable battle sequence, at least.
it's my anecdotal impression that people who don't actually play vgc are more bothered by hacking than those who do, since it rarely affects the gameplay itself--the lowest-possible attack stat for the prior two examples doesn't really come into play much, if ever, since it just reduces the damage you take from foul play and confusion, which weren't really in usage during the 2023 worlds format.
ultimately, time and money are resources that are widely variable for everyone, but vgc players who are taking multi-day trips to get to regional and international tournaments need to at least have some baseline freedom with both.
nobody has equal resources to begin with, so the holy sanctity of fair competition is sort of moot from the start.
more than that, i just think people lose sight of the fact that pokemon is a product, and that vgc is another marketing avenue.
kurt/kaphotics, the creator and main developer of pkhex, notably doesn't condone using hacked pokemon in any official tournament format. the cognitive dissonance aside, it strikes me as odd to adhere so strongly to the "official rules and regulations" of a multimedia franchise that doesn't really care about anyone's well-being as much as a line on a graph in a shareholder meeting.
the advent of pokemon champions resolves a lot of these concerns, to be fair, but i think it's very telling that it only comes after these controversies when competitive pokemon has really needed more accessibility for, like, 20 years now.
maybe my perspectives are a bit pessimistic, though. sorry for the long post. hopefully some of this was interesting for someone
Mix and Mega Metagame Information
