No Bans After Illegal Save Changes (Sw/Sh)

[L1nk2futr3]

A couple years ago I edited my Sword save file against my better judgement to change my trainer's gender and name after having gone online already (in fact, I changed the name twice after it worked the first time). Surprisingly after going online again with the changes I never received any bans and still haven't to this day. So I was curious when I encountered someone in the game the other day named "dumb bitch" when a name like that should be impossible to even have in the first place, let alone online. I read from a few sources that you would get banned for doing this in Sword/Shield even though I never got caught (and this other person is getting away with an obvious hacked name for now at least). If anyone can provide info, I'd be interested in learning more about other experiences since I found pretty much nothing.

1. Have there been any actual reports of bans from anyone having made illegal edits such as changing the trainer name (for Sword/Shield exclusively)? Has anyone else done this and gotten away with it?

2. If this did cause a ban, was it specific to the save file or did it extend to anything else (HOME, NSO, console, etc.)? I'm interested in the answer to this one even if the ban was for something else.

3. Is there evidence of the January 2021 banwave strengthening all hack checks, or was this a specific attack on people distributing hacked Pokemon?

I don't expect many responses but I wanted to share my unusual experiences and would like to potentially shed some light on these cases. I suspect that TPC's focus on blatant hacks such as unreleased shinies, hacked raid dens, etc. might cause them to turn a blind eye to obscure save edits like this.

[Hammertime64]

Hi, I know I'm really late to the party, but I'm replying here because I'm thinking of doing the same thing that you did; i.e. changing my Shield's save file to a girl trainer. I'm just wondering if you still haven't been banned for doing this? I haven't heard any reports of people doing this and being banned, but I also haven't really seen anyone try this other than you so I'm just wondering if this is still working for you.

[L1nk2futr3]

1 hour ago, Hammertime64 said:

Hi, I know I'm really late to the party, but I'm replying here because I'm thinking of doing the same thing that you did; i.e. changing my Shield's save file to a girl trainer. I'm just wondering if you still haven't been banned for doing this? I haven't heard any reports of people doing this and being banned, but I also haven't really seen anyone try this other than you so I'm just wondering if this is still working for you.

Hi there,

The last time I played ranked battles online in Sword was around October 2022 (I attempted to again a few months later but the servers were empty by then). I also did a lot of Dynamax Adventures online up to this summer; I never got banned there either, and I can still use HOME just fine. From my own limited experience, altering the save file itself as opposed to taking blatantly hacked Pokémon online seems to be something that TPC just doesn't care about, at least to the point of implementing hack checks for details like your trainer name being altered. Even if they did check for this manually and I somehow got away with it, I'm sure it's even safer to do so now that their attention is focused on gen 9. I hope this helps!

[theSLAYER]

Whatever was shared holds some truth; they probably don’t care until they set up a system to retroactively check logs and catch specific offenders, and you might get caught up in them.

We don’t allow cheating against unsuspecting players, but doing other stuff online is typically fine (like interacting with their servers). In any case, do what you want at your own risk

[Hammertime64]

Thanks so much! I'm glad that this worked out for you; hopefully it will work out for me too. I agree, cheating online like with illegal Pokémon is bad, and I definitely won't be doing that, the only edit I want to make is to my trainer. From what I've seen, to make it work, in PkHeX, you have to change the blocks related to *Object MyStatus for the character, and *Object Fashion for the clothes. Are there any others that you have to change or is it just those two?

[theSLAYER]

3 hours ago, Hammertime64 said:

Thanks so much! I'm glad that this worked out for you; hopefully it will work out for me too. I agree, cheating online like with illegal Pokémon is bad, and I definitely won't be doing that, the only edit I want to make is to my trainer. From what I've seen, to make it work, in PkHeX, you have to change the blocks related to *Object MyStatus for the character, and *Object Fashion for the clothes. Are there any others that you have to change or is it just those two?

Besides clothing, you probably shouldn’t edit stuff related to your trainer, such as Trainer ID, and tampering with MyStatus. There are IDs given to saves that has gone online, and you don’t want your trainer details to mismatch them logs of the ID in their servers.

so you can replace fashion block, but you can change the clothes in-game. No reason to mess with MyStatus.

[Hammertime64]

That makes sense, thanks. In that case, how do I actually change the character's gender? If I just change the fashion block, then that won't change the character right? I don't want to change my Trainer/Secret ID, or anything like that, only the gender of my character.

[theSLAYER]

That’s one of the identifying factors for a trainer according the network. OT name, OT gender, TID, SID, assigned ‘game sync ID’.

I’m not super sure, but I believe the following factors are not actively monitored but important as well (based on my experience in Gen 7): version of game the save was created on, save game language. 

Those shouldn’t be changed. I think that’s all I could think of at the moment.

[Hammertime64]

Ah, makes sense. Does that mean if I were to change my trainer's gender that it would be likely for me to get banned if I played the save file again (even if I don't play it online)? The original person in this thread says they haven't been banned for doing this, so I'm not sure.

[theSLAYER]

3 hours ago, Hammertime64 said:

Ah, makes sense. Does that mean if I were to change my trainer's gender that it would be likely for me to get banned if I played the save file again (even if I don't play it online)? The original person in this thread says they haven't been banned for doing this, so I'm not sure.

If you never play it online you can change whatever you want really. But it’s always a risk if you accidentally go online. 
 

Also the whole “will they won’t they ban” was explained earlier by me, and my advice doesn’t change. Do whatever you want but at your own risk.

[L1nk2futr3]

9 hours ago, Hammertime64 said:

Thanks so much! I'm glad that this worked out for you; hopefully it will work out for me too. I agree, cheating online like with illegal Pokémon is bad, and I definitely won't be doing that, the only edit I want to make is to my trainer. From what I've seen, to make it work, in PkHeX, you have to change the blocks related to *Object MyStatus for the character, and *Object Fashion for the clothes. Are there any others that you have to change or is it just those two?

I think those are the most important ones, I did it years ago so I don't remember all the details. I'd suggest looking through this other thread I created to make sure you don't miss anything if you want your save to be more authentic to one created from scratch.

[Hammertime64]

1 hour ago, theSLAYER said:

If you never play it online you can change whatever you want really. But it’s always a risk if you accidentally go online. 
 

Also the whole “will they won’t they ban” was explained earlier by me, and my advice doesn’t change. Do whatever you want but at your own risk.

Sounds good, thanks! I don't play the game online anymore (I've moved on to Violet and PLA), but I do connect it to Pokémon Home on occasion.

 

50 minutes ago, L1nk2futr3 said:

I think those are the most important ones, I did it years ago so I don't remember all the details. I'd suggest looking through this other thread I created to make sure you don't miss anything if you want your save to be more authentic to one created from scratch.

Makes sense, thanks! I did see that thread, I will check it out in that case to make sure I get all the little details to make the save file correct.

[Hammertime64]

So I tried it just now, in PkHeX I used the block editor to change my trainer's gender, as well as the current clothes and skin colours from a girl save file that I have. I also imported a complete girl fashion block for shield, but when I tried to use this save file on my switch (I used JKSV to inject it), the game now crashes on startup before even showing the title screen. Do you know what could have caused it? I didn't change anything other than those two blocks.

[theSLAYER]

sounds like you did something you shouldn't have. you probably missed something under current clothes/skin.  Everything associated to the player's body (was it current status? can't remember the name) needs to be changed to match the other gender, else the game will be confused by what it sees and just not load.

[Hammertime64]

makes sense, I'm 90% sure i changed everything other than the TID/SID values, but I can try again and see. I'm assuming those shouldn't be changed because those are important for the game right?

[Hammertime64]

So I tried this, I imported the *Object MyStatus block from a girl save, and then put back my original name, TID/SID, and Watts, but left everything else. Then I imported a girl *Object Fashion block, and when I restored this save file, it worked, but I'm stuck with the default gym challenger clothing, without a backpack or anything. It shows that all clothing is unlocked, but when I try and change into them, it allows me to select it, but it doesn't change the trainer look. I tried changing makeup as suggested in another thread I saw about this, and that worked but it still didn't let me change the clothes. Do you know how to fix this?

Edited December 17, 2023 by Hammertime64
clarification

[Hammertime64]

Also another update, when I tried to change the player's hair, instead of showing the normal model, it showed the player T-posing and there was nothing where their face was supposed to be. The hair still showed up, and it let me change it properly, but when I was in the hair-changing menu, the player's face just didn't show up for some reason. After doing this, it still didn't let me change clothes. When I updated my league card, it showed the proper clothes that the game thought I had on, it just isn't displaying them on my overworld model