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?”

  1. To me they still serve their purpose because I don’t really go shiny hunting so coming across them is much more special to me than for others. I’ve only found 3 or 4 my whole pokemon trainer career and I consider them major achievements. Sure I’d like more but I’m not going to spend 60 hours searching for one specific shiny

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  5. For people like me who have absolutely no luck at all when finding shiny Pokemon, shiny Pokemon really have not lost any purpose personally. I still feel envious of others with shiny Pokemon. The last wild shiny I sound was a wingull in sapphire version. I killed it on accident.

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  6. Hey guys I got a Chaney with bold perfect ivs in hp attack defense sp defense and speed. I plan to use protect toxic softboiled and minimize. Is this good

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  8. I really shouldn’t complain about my lack of shiny Pokemon. I’m not really the “shiny hunting” type. I mean I have a shiny Flygon, can’t really get better than that.

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  12. Now that I think about it, I have a real life shiny! Our chihuahua is a blue(silver) Merle, which technically makes her a shiny.

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  13. alright goals for today
    Finish Super Training new guys
    Start stupid research paper
    Finish Gaiasis and pollution Pokemon (and think of names)
    get hungrier then a marooned Snorlax

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  15. I’m trying to completely finish all of my 3DS games other than Pokemon before Christmas so that I can focus on my gift games and also shiny hunt more intensely once Pokemon Bank comes out 😀 On my agenda is Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, getting all collectibles!

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  16. Along with Pixilate, Refrigerate, and Aerialate, we should get Galvanate, Pollinate, and Meditate. Galvanate for normal to electric, Pollinate for normal to grass, and meditate for normal to psychic or fighting.

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  18. I personally couldn’t care less for shinies even before they became more common now. The trouble that you go through for it is just not worth it IMO. If they had better stats or something, I might have some inclination to hunt them, but it would need to be a significant benefit, not like a 0.01% increase

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  21. Anyways about shinies; I never thought they were world all the pain to obtain. Breeding perfect pokemon also takes a lot of time but it pays off by giving you an awesome poke

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  24. I just checked my boxes in my Pokemon White, I have a shiny Froslass that I think I received from a trade. Well, at least I have good GTS bait once Pokemon Bank releases

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