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?”

    • Sweet mother of pokemon that is one beautiful avatar its perfect thank you so much Jordin I love it 🙂 you are awesome thank you thank you thank you xD I’m gonna annoy you with all of this lol seriously I cant get over your talent my friend

      Reply

  7. To answer the question; no.

    In fact, I still think shinies are far too rare. They really don’t HAVE a purpose. They are not that special besides being bragging rights, which isn’t always a positive thing.

    I suppose this is because I see shinies are just alternate colored Pokemon. If anything, it’s a cool change, not so much OMGIHAVEASHINY. There are many Pokemon where I like the shiny coloration better than the regular, and vice versa.

    Basically, I guess for people who value shinies as ‘rare bragging rights’, perhaps the value has gone down a little, but getting a shiny is still ridiculously tedious. Even with X an Y cutting the value by half, the probability is still below 1% WITH Masuda Method, which is absurd.

    If the actual targeted market of Pokemon is the focus (the children) then yeah, it’s a different story because the little kids have a lot more time on their hands. The actual buyers market of Pokemon, the college student, typically have a lot of other responsibilities that don’t allow time for grinding for a different colored pixel monster that can take months and months due to the low probability.

    They have no problem obliterating the meta game, why they are so stingy about color palettes is beyond me.

    Reply

  8. i found a new method of consecutive fishing, if the chain passes above 10 give up and begin again surprisely it worked for me

    Reply

  11. The problem is the purpose of shinies was wrong. Them being things that are so far beyond control that you have to give them huge amounts of value is wrong.

    They should be just opportunities to have something different. I miss Gen1 Stadium. Each of the 150 Pokemon had a variety of color pallets depending on the nickname they had. I remember trading my Pokemon back and forth changing its nickname to see the variety of colors and then picking a nickname that gave me something I liked.

    Reply

    • I completely agree with you. I loved how nicknaming pokemon in gen1 and 2 made them have different colors in Stadium/Stadium2 depending on the nickname!

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      • Exactly. I wish they would drop the concept of rare shinies, and create a handful more of pallet swaps for all Pokemon, and either let them be random in wild, or make a place in game you can go to get them changed.

        Reply

    • They are really important believe it or not. Special Defense not being perfect could mean the difference between a KO or it taking the hit and KO the opposing Pokemon. 😛

      Reply

        • Try breeding with a Ditto or a Pokemon in the same Egg Group that has Special Defense IVs and make sure they don’t have an IV in a stat you don’t need. (e.g. Alakazam doesn’t need Attack IVs)

          Reply

          • It’s been makin babies with a Scyther named JesusSaves that I got over Wonder Trade. Ironically it has perfect Sp. Defense IVs.

  24. I shall now post both of the Multi battles between me, @ScroogeOff:disqus, @542f8a265a4fded4a9b5073943208eac:disqus, and Luigi!

    First one, me and Luigi vs. ScroogeOff and Fairly Psychic!
    CA3W-WWWW-WWW3-BK6L

    Second one, me and Fairly Psychic vs. ScroogeOff and Luigi!
    KY8G-WWWW-WWW3-BK73

    Fell free to watch both! 😀

    Reply

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