Pokemon Scarlet & Violet players share fix for “illegal” party error
Game FreakPokemon Scarlet and Violet players shared a possible fix to prevent the “illegal” prompt error that is crippling honest players’ online activities. Here’s what the community thinks about this issue.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet online services have been up and running for almost a year now. Players have felt that Nintendo is ramping up the quality of the multiplayer aspect of the game but also adding a series of restrictions that end up being counter-intuitive for some Pokemon trainers.
It is true that Nintendo have released a series of measures against ‘genning’ (a.k.a. illegally generated Pokemon) and hacking, but the auto-ban feature included in the online services is striking even legal players.
Reddit user ‘The_Dnd_2’ posted about this, and the community suggested what might be the cause for the “illegal prompt” error message and also shared a possible fix to it.
The player posted the error message that reads as follows: ‘You cannot join this raid due to a problem with the Pokemon in your party.’ And then said: “It just started today… I even changed my Pokemon.”
Many players quickly responded, trying to figure out the cause of this error: “Just keep trying, this is a network error. I’ve had this message pop up even with Pokemon I had recently caught in the wild so it’s not a hack check or anything like that.”
Another one shared a possible cause: “This has happened to me before. It only happened with ‘creatively named’ Pokemon who had a punctuation mark in their name, like a period or a dash.” And then added: “Once I changed the name to something without punctuation, it stopped happening.”
Seems like the problem can be fixed by either changing the name of the compromised Pokemon or by resetting your Online Services connection.
Some of the other possible triggers for this error are illegal Pokemon (traded from an unknown source), Pokemon named in a different region or with names that are branded as “banned” (insults in various languages, etc.), or micro-cuts in the Internet Connection.
One of the players also offered a very detailed explanation about why some Pokemon might be branded as “illegal” by Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s online play auto-ban system:
So there you have it, next time you find yourself having this issue, don’t forget to try these fixes before reporting it to Nintendo Switch Online.
We will keep you informed if Nintendo or Game Freak releases a fix for this prompt error. In the meantime, if you are looking forward to the release of the Part 2 DLC, here’s all you need to know about The Indigo Disk. And in case you are wandering the Kitakami region, here’s all you need to know about its origins.
