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. Yay! I just hatched a 6 perfect IV Larvesta. I wasn’t intending to do that but meh. I have a 5 iv one if anyone wants that though but I can’t trade today.

    Reply

  8. Shinies are still too hard to get for me. I found a Shiny Geodude in Fire Red, and after that, I never found another one after that, until I found a shiny Oddish in a friend safari. Consectutive Fishing is a pain, and with the very limited amounted of Pokemon available fishing, isn’t really worth it. I’d say that most Pokemon look better shiny, but I’d honestly prefer a competitive usable Pokemon over a shiny, even though i could make any Pokemon work as far as I’m concerned. I’d like to find a lot more shinies, as even with the friend safari, increased chances, consecutive fishing, poke radar, which I never use, and masuda method, I’ve only found one shiny in my near month of playing.

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  10. I’ve never found a shiny in the wild EVER!! I don’t know if I just have bad luck or what, but I’ve never even seen a shiny and lost it in battle. So shines have both retained their purpose for me and lost it. On one hand I would still very much like to find a shiny of my own to love and hold, but on the other hand if I never find a shiny it won’t be the end of the world for me.

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  14. Most exciting things of my day:
    1.Getting a Gengar hoodie for Christmas.
    2.Got a huge power Diggersby.
    3.Saw a really disgusting children’s advert about a game called ‘Doggy doo’.

    Reply

  15. I GOT A SHINY ALOMOLA RIGHT NOW WITH A CHAIN OF 6 speaking of shinies i would say no yes they introduced new methods but some methods are hard people are in chain of 100 and no shinies yet and friend safari increases shinies but still are hard to get

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  16. I may start designing the professor today..idk (btw did the voting end for her name?)
    Any suggestions as to how she should look? (I have some, but I want dat community feedback)

    Reply

  21. Before Y, I had only caught about 2-3 shinies (One in the wild and one MM that I remember in particular). In Y, I have 15 shinies so far. I found one in a horde, one MM, and the rest in the safari or chain fishing. I still get excited whenever I find one though. I try to get good natured and usable shinies of course, but if it’s something I really like, I’ll use it regardless. That being said, it does seem like nearly everyone has at least one shiny now. Despite this, it doesn’t change the excitement I feel whenever I encounter and catch a shiny.

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  22. Good God people! Some of you have like a box filled with shinies and all I have are 2 – a Meditite and an Audino, both in my pokemon Black, that I caught unexpectedly and out of luck.

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