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?”

  2. If by purpose, you mean their being able to amaze people by surprise and being cherished, then yes, shinies have lost their value. The first shiny I encountered in Y (hawlucha) took me by surprise! The second (grumpig) surprised me too, but I wasn’t to excited. I stopped caring about shinies once I encountered my third (delibird). I have five shinies now, and I’m not very happy about it. I remember when being shiny meant something. Yes, there are some people who still haven’t encountered one, but here’s the solution, if you really want one, try chain fishing. If you are patient enough, I promise you, you WILL find a shiny!

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  3. Nah, I think they’re still pretty amazing in my opinion, they definitely haven’t lost their purpose. I only have 2 shinies so far, Gyarados and Vivillon. Vivillon isn’t that impressive by the way, the body goes white and gray but the pattern stays the same.

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  23. In my personal opinion, I don’t think so. The reason why is that for me they are still hard to come by. I have a hard time doing the chaining method such as the fishing or doing the Pokéradar. The only method that worked for me by getting shinies is the method of breeding, which I got three by doing that method. In a way I can see why people are saying that shiny pokemon lost their value, but they still hold value to the player.

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