Sigh.
I'm absolutely against this, along with all hacks, as becoming the standard.
Why?
First is the very nature of hacks. It's simply to much power. If every single one of us could be the developer of any game we were handed then you bet your *** we would all improve it in ways we see fit. If we had the same tools in Melee back in 2006 that we have in Brawl I bet we would see a bunch of topics like:
Lets make is so Pichu doesn't damage himself!
Lets make is so Sheik can't CG half the cast by messing with the weight/knockback of the game!
Lets make is so the Ice Climbers can't wobble!
Lets cut the frames of all of Bowser's moves in half!
Any game every made in the history of the entire planet can be made better/different. Hacking a game isn't saying that the previous game sucked, its simply admitting that anything can be improved. Halo 1 could be made better with hacks. Melee could be made better with hacks. I'm sure someone could find something stupid about FF7 and hack the game to make it better. However, the problem is, if you actually do make your game better/different, you have to find a way to get not just hundreds, or thousands, but instead millions of people to play it.
Brawl has globally sold 8 million copies. That is a lot. Any single person who buys a copy of Brawl can look up the rules and in an instant be able to practice/play in a tournament. The same cannot be said of hacked Brawl.
It goes beyond that though-in order for competitive Brawl to be viable/interesting to the casual players (to attract new players) we need to be playing a game they can easily access. On top of this though, in order for the Brawl community to be attractive to sponsors (even Nintendo) and leagues (MLG) we need to be using the original game-not a hacked version (this should be for obvious reasons-including image and legal).
Finally, once you start hacking something its hard to say where to stop. As I said in first paragraph it is to much power. It is easily possible, and is already starting to happen, where there are competing hacks and people disagreeing on things like hit-stun (OMG HOW MUCH DO WE WANT!). It doesn't end with disagreement though, its entirelly possible that, after hacking the game, you discover that something you did actually made the game WORSE, then suddenly you have a problem on your hand-do you hack the game more to undo this new problem, or do you remove the previous hack? This problem is coupled with the fact that, at large, there are only a few people (less than 50-100) that actually have hacked Wii's, meaning that the chance of actually looking deep into the hacked game and how everything is changed will take a long time. It took 8 months for people to find Diddy Kong's single nana lock. 8 million copies sold and it took 8 months to find something as simply as short hop + down on the C-stick twice.
In relation to just the PT hack: its a buff. It is clearly a buff. PT is ONE character. Not 3 characters-allowing someone to just play the best Pokemon in any given match up, instead of having to use all three Pokemon, is a buff. It's that simple. The Pokemon Trainer was designed to be a hard character to use, and among those designs was a rather intricate stamina/switch out system. To be good with the Pokemon Trainer is to be good with ALL three Pokemon and to understand and utilize this system as best as possible. Hacking the game to remove this system + make it so you can just be one Pokemon the entire time effectively introduces 3 new characters into the game.
If I show up at a tournament and someone says I have to play a PT on a hacked Wii I'll simply say hell no and make them play the normal PT on a regular Wii. Players should not have to hack their systems to accommodate the people who aren't happy with the game/their characters. If hacked PT's are allowed in tournament then I'll have no choice but to hack my Wii at home so I can train against hacked PT.
Yea...basically there are a ton of problems. The question isn't as simple as: does this make the game better. As I said earlier, you can do something to any game ever made in history to make that game better. The question is: can you, should you, and if you do will 8 million people follow suite?
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I C/P'd that from another topic.
If you are holding a Brawl tournament then have no hacks at all.
If you are holding a Brawl + or a Brawl 2.0 or a Brawl whatever, then go ahead and use hacks, just don't expect the same turnout. 99% of people who play Brawl don't have a hacked Wii (I've never met a single person in tournament who has a hacked Wii).
