Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s Battle Stadium has one fundamental issue
The RNG seed is the same for every battle…
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet has plenty of issues, mainly in the realm of performance. We’ve witnessed Pokemon fall through the floor in battle, NPCs that function at around 5FPS, and a host of other amusing glitches and bugs.
It’s not great, but with the gameplay throughout Scarlet and Violet being among some of the best we’ve seen in recent years, these performance issues are easy enough to brush off when you’re having a good time.
That said, players who have spent time putting together powerful teams of Pokemon and have advanced past the end-game may find themselves spending more and more time in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s Battle Stadium. This online mode of gameplay allows players to competitively battle it out against one another, except there’s one fundamental issue with it; the RNG seed appears to be the same for every battle, which isn’t right.
An RNG seed in Pokemon is essentially a calculation done in the background by a random number generator that will determine the accuracy of a Pokemon's moves in battle. While the number generated is supposed to be entirely incidental, in the instance of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Battle Stadium, it is not, meaning the result of certain moves can be constant.
One player took to the Pokemon VGC subreddit after performing some accuracy checks in-game. u/Lord-Trolldemort noticed that the move Frost Breath, which has 90% accuracy, was missing an awful lot. As a result, the user began to record the result of every battle, and began to notice that Frost Breath would always miss if it was the first move in the battle.
In 14 battles, Frost Breath missed 14 times. “That would be a one in 100 trillion chance if the RNG was working correctly,” u/Lord-Trolldemort clarifies. “My best guess is that the RNG is being seeded with the same number every battle, though I have no idea how they generate the RNG seed.”
u/Lord-Trolldemort then shared some recordings as proof that this was happening. While this Reddit user noticed the issue, and how it would affect moves with lower than 100% accuracy in battle, others — such as the player below — have found ways to exploit it while they can.
The issue was also shared to Twitter by a player known as Anubis where it gained even more popularity, but rather than testing the accuracy of their moves, they’ve found a way to make the most out of the issue.
The player said that “Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Battle Stadium is currently using the same RNG seed for every battle.” Alongside a clip of them dealing a devastating attack on their opponent, they continue, “This allows us to choose moves to ensure OHKO moves such as Sheer Cold always hit!”
OKHO moves are any that can perform a one-hit knockout in a Pokemon battle; Sheer Cold is one of few, including Fissure, Guillotine, and Horn Drill.
Similar sentiments are echoed in the comments of u/Lord-Trolldemort’s Reddit post, with u/Rain_Moon responding that, “It is indeed a case of fixed RNG. We can abuse it by making Sheer Cold (or other OHKO moves) guaranteed to hit when used at the right time! Air Slash and Sheer Cold seem to always work as long as the opponent doesn’t move before you.”
As of right now, ranked play isn’t available in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s Battle Stadium. So, here’s to hoping that the issue with RNG is fixed before ranked play is rolled out. In the meantime, I think I’ll be avoiding Battle Stadium and continuing to explore Paldea! What do you think to this small, albeit fundamental issue with the Battle Stadium right now?
For more on Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, we have a full guide as to how multiplayer works, and how to breed your Pokemon so you can compose the perfect party for competitive battling.