Even if you don’t play competitively Pokémon, you may be familiar with the Metronone move, which sees a monster wag its fingers back and forth until it hits an enemy with a random attack from a broader recap of moves. It’s an interesting move in theory, but not a particularly effective one, because you can’t predict what your Pokémon will do and whether it will take advantage of your opponent’s weaknesses. . And yet, last weekend, some of the top competitive players entered the finals of an official tournament at the same time. Pokémon tournament equipped with Metronome. It was coordinated, meaning that for the organizers, it was also cheating.
Why do such a thing? They are upset and want to send a message to the bigger league. As one of the banned players explained in a Twitter post, there is growing tension over how tournaments are organized, their format and whether or not they will take place in person. Players feel that the current “best of one” format is unsuitable for competition, because the outcome of a single match may not always reflect the better player in a game with different odds. random element. And there have been many complaints about the extent to which the league operates in South Korea putting young players in the bigger leagues.
competitor also quoted alleged issues with online tournaments where players intentionally disconnect to win, or worse, where connectivity issues prevent both contestants from competing and ultimately disqualification. Players say they also don’t like the way the league doesn’t communicate about what’s going on in it. It’s a complicated situation broken down by one of the banned players, NashVGC, right here.
Why are these top Pokémon players banned?
However, frustration reached a peak in early June, when a player was allegedly banned from participating in a tournament without being told why. Kotaku contacted The Pokémon Company inquire about the situation. But the players who entered the tournament were so upset that they regrouped and coordinated what happened next. Contests required players to pre-submit the Pokémon that made up their team, and that’s exactly what they did. Usually, as with any competitive game, you can see some big similarities in teams between different players, because they all predict the same “meta” strategy. But here’s something different: the players all are sent to teams with the same moving Pokémon. And that move is Metronome.
The next day, all four players received emails notifying them that they were excluded from the proceedings. The rules violated were cited as “Actions that harm other participants or provide offensive images” and “Other actions that Nintendo Ltd. and TPC (and its subsidiaries) deems inappropriate.”
It’s worth noting that not every Pokémon can know the Metronome, and even if a monster has the ability to learn it, the chance that four players can raise (or hire) an entire team to know the same move in such a short period of time is extremely uncertain. Pokémon However, it is a game with many tools that allow you to create monsters by commanding stats without having to actually raise them in the game. Either way, planning alongside multiple competitors like this isn’t really any better in a competitive environment.
NashVGC, one of the players banned for sending the Metronome group, said that the whole ploy is an effort to raise “awareness” of the larger situation with the competitive circuit in Korea. In a tweet, they explained that “There are still people who don’t know what’s going on. When enough people realize the problem, we can move on to a movement. Whether it’s online or offline, we’ll have to ask TPC to have a fair circuit and respect the players.”
“I believe players deserve better,” Nash said in a YouTube comment.
And indeed, the world is taking notice. Not only did the top players in other regions provide support, but since this happened, there are even a fan-led tournament with cash prizes where only one move anyone is allowed to use is Metronome.
Update 10:00 a.m. ET: We’ve made it clear that hacking is a possibility, but not a certainty.
