Daely Snack: Have shinies lost their purpose?

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Shinies. The elusive differently coloured Pokémon that were so rare that most people thought they were hoaxes/glitches/hacks. Yet, with the internet becoming more and more widespread, soon everyone knew about them. With a 1 in 8000 chance of finding them, they were truly sought after by collectors who had to put considerable effort into getting them.

With people complaining they couldn’t get one, Gamefreak threw a bone and released several shiny Pokémon as events, in addition to making some slight tweaks to the chance of finding shinies. Sorry folks that had a shiny Raikou, your’s became so common that people didn’t care about your achievement anymore. Luckily there were only a few event Pokémon, leaving a majority still hard to catch (even when using the Pokéradar).

But XY changed even more than that. They made so many tweaks that, as evidenced by the comments here and on other sites, you could easily find three shinies a day. The Safari zone with hundreds of Pokémon available, a new egg breeding mechanic, horde battles, the Pokéradar is back and maybe even a tweak to the base chance itself! This brings my to my concern of today: is there still a point in shinies?

The major thing about shinies was not that they were differently coloured. In fact, you could say that over half of all Pokémon looks worse or almost not different at all in their shiny form. No, the thing that made them cool was the rarity of finding one, the thrill of encountering and successfully catching it. It shouldn’t be only about its looks, but also on the memory that is attached to it. But with XY the rarity is gone. People will stop caring about your feat. “Oh, you got 30 shinies? I got 60, hmpf.” The whole elusive aspect went away, and that makes shinies not that exciting for me anymore as they once were.

But that’s just me of course. What do you think? I’d love to hear your opinion in the comments, and when I got the time I will try to respond to them. Seeing as this is a discussion post, keep spam to a bare minimum. If you got something interesting to say, say it, but don’t start 200 comments threads about one battle you had, use the chat.

~Daedardus~

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3,018 thoughts on “Daely Snack: Have shinies lost their purpose?”

  3. I found an error “The elusive differently coloured Pokémon that were so rare that most people though they were hoaxes/glitches/hacks.”

    ‘people though’ People thought.

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  4. I say no. They’re still hard enough to get an really cool looking, too. I have great memories attached to my shiny Diggersby. You should appreciate shinies not for what they are, but for what memories they hold.

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  5. Shinies are still hard to find for people who are not trying to find one but I agree with what is said above. The thing with shinies nowadays is that they’re still rare but you know you an find one if you try hard. That takes the whole idea behind them being very exclusive things. I can try Masuda method right know and I know I’ll end up with shiny soon or not but I’m not trying because it feels like a little waste of time.

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  6. As shinies have gotten pretty easy to find, there’s only a couple of ways to do it. People are speculating that they even ROSE the chances of finding a shiny randomly in the wild! Chain fishing shinies seem to have lost their purpose, but they aren’t always easy to find. It could take someone 6 chains, 78 chains, or even 150+ chains! Now for horde battles. Horde battles aren’t as easy to find a shiny in as everyone thinks. You need to sweet scent and run MANY ON MANY times. You may not even find a shiny at all, which gets a lot of players frustrated! Now for poke radar. Oh poke radar. Using the poke radar, you must have over a 40 chain to find a shiny. This is frustrating because people can break their chains on the second encounter. It is very hard to master, and you must know the basics. Masuda Method: One of the easiest ways to breed a shiny in this gen. Not the easiest. Plus wonder trading the bad ones away gets really tedious. In conclusion, shinies still have their value, but only in some ways, not all.

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    • Still. A 1 in 200 chance is fourty times a big as a 1 in 8000 chance. Shinies have not become that common, but it sure became way easier to get them.

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  7. According to my brother, he ran across three Pokemon in his game. Two were caught by chain fishing (Whiscash and Poliwhirl) and one by chance accident (Noibat). So I suppose that shiny catching has indeed gotten a wee bit easier for trainers nowadays.

    But personally, I find it much more appealing to run into a shiny unexpectedly rather than through chaining. It’s like GoomyForever said earlier in the comments, the memories of coming across my two shiny Pokemon – a Rhyperior and a Leavanny – are with me forever and put a silly smile on my face. Thanks Nintendo for tweaking the PokeRadar and fishing, but I think I’ll take my chances out in the wild. It’s a lot more fun that way!

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  10. SPEAKING OF SHINIES LOOK WHAT I FOUND!!!!!
    (Refresh)
    Terrible nature (gentle)
    BUT A SHINY IS A SHINY (sorry upside down the ipad stupid)

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  11. I guess the rarity is gone for people who play hardcore … but i only play like 2 hours a week and I still haven’t found a shiny in X and Y, so yes I think they’re cool and rare

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  12. THEY HAVE ABSOLUTELY LOST SOME PURPOSE. they’re still exciting to get, but the fact it’s less of a challenge (in some cases) makes it easier to have multiple shinies. They’re supposed to be difficult to get, not however they made it this go around. I think they should have kept the way to get shinies the same. However, the fact that they didn’t does create hype for getting them. I guess it’s sort of become a game to see who can catch the most shinies in the smallest amount of time, or just a game for yourself to go out and use all the methods to get a lot.

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  13. Even though I only have 2 shinies on X, I think they are pretty common, I like how common they are though because (not counting my X) all 4 times i randomly encountered a shiny 2 of the times I knew what a shiny was, 1 of the times I could keep it.

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  14. I never really saw the value of shinies in the first place. Sure they are rare, and some even look pretty cool, but I guess I’m just not that interested.

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  16. I don’t think shinies have lost their purpose, but now they’re growing ever closer to a status symbol rather than a lucky and unique find.
    Sure they increased methods to find shines but they don’t guarantee it since its purely luck and RNGs
    If you found one good for you but don’t go flaunting how many you have (If they’re legit)
    And besides it’s near impossible to catch a shiny with competitiveness qualifications unless they’re hacked (How many times have you fought a guy with shiny non-event Legendary Pokemon I E Latios & Latias)

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  19. When a shiny ditto uses transform does it take on the appearance of a shiny version of the opposing pokemon or a normal version of it?

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  22. For others, yes.
    For me? NO Q__Q I still have NOT found my very first, self caught shiny yet DX< Maybe by my 2nd or 3rd shiny, I'll say it got too easy, but I can't say that yet ;x;

    speaking of that, where are all the places you can tip people at? I wanna see if that actually works to finding shinies.

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        • nope D: as an overall. ever since I was 11 (I’m freakin 17 now) I’ve never encountered a shiny before ;-; I’ve played ruby, emerald (a little), diamond, platinum, black 1, white 2, and now Y. still never encountered a shiny/caught one by myself

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          • oh, well in Hoenn, I always got one of the invisible Kecleon as a shiny and a Whismur in that first cave as a shiny

          • well in white 2 you should have either gotten shiny gible/dratini and a shiny haxorus lol. But those don’t really count as encountering a random shiny though. But hey their still shiny!!!

      • I count 3 shinies equally as my first LOL.

        shiny pidgey route 29 on original Pokemon Gold.
        Odd egg hatched into shiny igglybuff on Pokemon Gold
        then got Shiny gyarados on original Pokemon Gold. I never noticed pidgey/iggly were shiny until I noticed gyarados was red and had the same sparkles that my pidgey had LOL! I was such a little noob at the time. So I started to look at pokes in PC for stars and found out I had two more like the Gyara.

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  23. I wouldn’t say shinies lost their value cause theres still plenty of folk who have yet to even encounter one! But they have lost excitement a tad tad bit. People like to disregard your shiny cause of its nature or ability or IVs etc, but i’m like… its a shiny dude – its already rare enough, so that just annoys me a bit. Other than that, I still scream like a chimp every single time I encounter one. (And this pic doesn’t include the shinies I sent over to my Y version, or past ones that I used to own LOL).

    http://s29.postimg.org/om4zg697r/photo.jpg

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  25. Dae…

    This is what I did my short article about for the magazine application.

    I was going to elaborate on it, much like this, with this exact topic, for my article.

    You stole my idea.

    NOW WHAT DO I DO?

    Reply

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