Is it cheating to use save editing to WEAKEN a Pokémon?

[Topaz Light]

Is it cheating to use save editing to WEAKEN a Pok?mon?

I'll be perfectly blunt:

I'm really, really not a fan of how all these cool event Pok?mon are being given away at Level 50~100 straight out of the box. I understand a lot of them are probably balanced with them being received during the postgame in mind, but for me, personally, I don't have any fun using a Pok?mon I didn't train myself.

So, I was thinking of using PKHeX to level down my event Pok?mon, like the shiny Silvally, and revert them to their first evolutionary stages where applicable, so that I could actually train them up myself and enjoy using them.

Do you think this would be considered cheating? On the one hand, it's not something that's possible to do in game legitimately, but on the other hand, it's not something that would give me an unfair advantage at all, either, and the Pok?mon involved would still be compliant with legitimate event specs outside of level.

I'm not really 100% committed to doing this; I just wanted to see what other people thought about it.

 

[Melody]

All save editing is cheating; however your reasons are understandable. You may be forbidden from trading the modified Pokemon on this forum however.

A Leveled Down Distribution Pokemon may never pass legality checks even after being re-raised to it's max levels. This is due to the way all stats are reset when you level down a Pokemon, you can't level it down and not actually reset the EVs too, which may be a part of the distribution Pokemon traits.

So definitely understand that modifying your pokemon will have consequences, even if your reason maybe acceptable.

Honestly I do not recommend cheating in Sun/Moon; these titles among others are notorious for causing a flag to be set on your console Unique Keys on serverside which in turn causes bans during banwaves if you play online. If you don't understand the nuts and bolts of how your 3DS works, don't mod your save. At all.

 

[Topaz Light]

I mean, I've already played around with save editing in Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates, so it's not like it's something I don't know how to do or haven't done already. I'm only really interested in using save editing for the sake of getting normally-unobtainable novelties, though; cheating in the sense of giving myself an unfair advantage isn't something that interests me.

Also, why would EVs be an issue? Aren't they something that can be reset and re-modified legitimately, as of Emerald? Are event Pok?mon flagged such as to not let you do that with them or something? And even if they are, if I'm save editing already, couldn't I just jot down the EVs it comes with and re-add them if the save editor automatically removes them when the level is lowered? If that even is an issue to begin with, it doesn't sound at all hard to circumvent. Thanks for the heads up about it, though.

 

[Altairis]

Cheating is using tools to modify your Pokemon.. so yes, it's cheating.

You don't need to justify anything in-game though, like who's going to be slighted by you leveling down your Pokemon? The NPCs? As long as you keep it within your file, it's cool.

 

[Desert Stream~]

Well theoretically it could give you an unfair advantage, but it's super unlikely. It could allow you to redistribute EVs, and learn moves that only the pre-evolution could learn.

 

[Jesylveon]

I completely understand why you would want to do this, but I think it is considered cheating since you are modifying your save. However, I don't think there is anything wrong about it, ethically.

I sort of sympathize actually, since I hacked my 3DS not for the ability to download games for free, but for the ability to stream on Twitch. What I did is still against the rules, even though I did nothing that could actually hurt Nintendo and I still buy my games.

Like Melody said, you should only do this if you know what you're doing, which you seem to. But like Ammako said, you should do what you want to do. I don't see the harm in using event Pokemon you edited against other players, as long as they know what you did and are fine with it. :)

 

[Topaz Light]

Thanks, everyone, for your responses! Now that I think about it, I suppose what I really meant to ask was more along the lines of whether or not it's ethical, since I realize it is technically cheating in terms of whether or not it's something that can be done legitimately.

And, I'd obviously make sure people knew and were okay with it if I were to do it, but I'm kinda thinking I won't bother, since it'd be more fun to just use a full team of other, non-Legendary Pok?mon instead. That said...

A Leveled Down Distribution Pokemon may never pass legality checks even after being re-raised to it's max levels. This is due to the way all stats are reset when you level down a Pokemon, you can't level it down and not actually reset the EVs too, which may be a part of the distribution Pokemon traits.

Well theoretically it could give you an unfair advantage, but it's super unlikely. It could allow you to redistribute EVs, and learn moves that only the pre-evolution could learn.

Seriously, could somebody elaborate on why EVs would be an issue? There've been EV-lowering Berries ever since Emerald version, through which EVs could be reset and retrained completely legitimately. Unless I'm missing something, the resetting of EVs in itself should not present a legality issue.

 

[User19sq]

Yes. Any editing is considered cheating, so, yes.