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A Glitch is Making Pokémon Scarlet/Violet’s Battle System Broken

4K View2022-12-01

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were released on November 18th. Despite the game's 2.9 user score that set the record for the lowest rating of a Pokémon series game on Metacritic, it still sold over 10 million copies in three days.

Most players criticize the game for being rough and for lacking more detail. And it is this roughness that created a lethal accuracy check glitch that could destroy the whole battle system of the game.

The whole thing started with Redditor Lord-Trolldemort, who recently noticed that the accuracy check system seemed to be broken after he missed 14 times with Frost Breath in Battle Stadium, a 90% accuracy move. This would be a one in 100 trillion chance if the RNG were working correctly.

Lord-Trolldemort also recorded every match where his moves missed

The accuracy check of Pokémon games is actually a clichéd topic, most players have experienced moves with high accuracy missing consistently, and there are even theories that suggest the actual accuracy of a move is 15% lower than the percentage it claims to be.

However, missing 14 consecutive times with a 90% accuracy move is still mysterious and abnormal. Players began testing after Lord-Trolldemort’s discovery, and they found that there might be a pseudo-random glitch within the game. For example, Some moves will miss no matter what circumstances when attacking first, while other moves can work every time, even if the accuracy is low under certain situations.

As the tests continued, players eventually found out that a random number table is set at the start of every match, which means that the hit or miss of all moves has been determined before entering the game. This seriously undermines the matchmaking system, which places great emphasis on randomness in battles, and there will be no luck involved in matches if people can find and decipher the RNG seed.

Finding the seed wasn’t difficult for Pokémon fans. Soon, a video of a player using the move Sheer Cold with 100% accuracy popped out. The high damage of the move makes the game an OTK (one turn kill) match.