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’d say no. They’re still hard find. On my X version I NEVER encountered one, but my Y version I only encountered one; my awesome Plusle! 🙂

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  8. Hmmmm….yes and no
    It depends on what you use/want the shinies for
    I’ve caught a shiny in every gen (Silver-Hoothoot, Sapphire-Poochyena, Platinum-Skorupi, White-Audino, X-Fraxure) and was happy every time I ran into one
    I’m trying to get the three shiny Kalos starters to use on my in game team, just to prove that I’ve successfully beaten the game, and have everything I want
    Yes I do think shiny pokemon have been ‘devalued’ but with shiny pokemon never having a true purpose, can they really be ‘devalued’?

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  10. Only ways I have gotten shinies: random encounter, chain fishing, horde battles. Haven’t done Masuda Method, Friend Safari, or Poké Radar. HOW ARE YOU PEOPLE FINDING SO MANY.

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  11. In my opinion, shinies have lost their value, everyone seems to have shinies now, is no more that special thing that only you had

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  12. I haven’t found a shiny since a Pidgey in Silver version. I ran into a shiny Abra in HG, but it teleported -_- But I’m not too upset. Shinies have definitely lost their sparkle. Something that was once random luck and special is now just something you can easily chain for and manipulate the odds to your favor. A brick of gold doesn’t hold its value if everyone else has one.

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  15. I don’t want to sound spoilt, but I don’t know if I’m lucky or unlucky; I was IV breeding protein froakie with a foreign ditto and I got a shiny- but its got torrent!
    If anyone cares, I got a shiny hariyama from emerald and shiny gyarados from diamond. Yes. Diamond

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  17. While they are much easier to find, the magic isn’t gone. Whenever I encounter one or see one in battle, I still find it impressive and I never get used to seeing them. It’s always still a nice surprise 🙂

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  18. I guess I’ll answer the question from the article now. For me, shinies will never lose their surprise and intrigue. Although consecutive fishing guarantees shinies, there are only a limited number of species that can be found using the method. In my opinion, this offsets the certainty of the situation because any other shinies would have to be found either in the wild with the standard 1/8192 chance or with Masuda Method, which actually takes patience.

    I have to admit, after my first two rounds of consecutive fishing I began to feel like I was contributing to a crime because of how easy it was. I almost have to limit myself with how many shinies I get because I could theoretically fill my box with them any day.

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    • “How easy it was” lol. I’ve tried it five times and my button doesn’t click all the way making a slow reel in… Usually around number fifty.

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  19. What nature should I put on my gooey Goomy? It has iron tail which is an egg move. Any ideas? And what should I EV train it and what IVs?

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  20. Daely Snack, i see wath you did there!
    So yea, for me shinys have lost their value, i mean so many event shinys and they seem so comon, just like the shiny haxorus, if you find a shiny fraxure youre extrmely unlucky, because, its just a pokemon that u can find in the post game and everyone has 100% chanses to find it, so yeah.

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  21. Yes. Yes they have. Especially when they started being hacked. Shinies seemed more common than normal colored pokes while online. It’s very irritating. I’ve found three shinies (the first being Wynaut because I had one of those rare in game event eggs that always hatched into shiny Wynaut), not including the Gyarados that was thrown at your face. I lost my shiny Roserade that I caught and trained from a Budew caught at the old chateau. Recently my Shiny Aipom is the best replacement. (It’s pink!)

    Reply

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