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Should Shiny Pokemon Stay As A Special, Rarefied Concept?


Interdimensional Observer
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I haven't actually played a Pokemon game since Gen 5 as a disclaimer. And, I know SwSh is leading to a lot of bitterness, but do realize my musings won't go to Game Freak HQ, so don't point a shiny knife at my neck if you think what I'm about to say is bad (but it shouldn't be incendiary).

 

Shiny Pokemon, a little detail thats been in the franchise since Gen 2, with that glorious freebie Red Gyarados at the Lake of Rage. Shiny Pokemon have always fascinated some people with their distinctive colors and extreme rarity, such that you'd be severely disappointed for fifteen minutes if you failed to catch one. Not like you'd miss out on anything in gameplay, since, thankfully, Shiny Pokemon differ only visually, they're no better or different than the other 99.9% of their species.

 

But, thinking on it, should Shiny Pokemon be so rare?

In other RPGs, alternate monster colors are usually taken as a sign of laziness, rehashing the same designs for later in a game. And if I turn on Smash Bros., I'm treated to the ability to pick from eight different colors at any time for Mewtwo, Lucario, Greninja, and Incineroar. 

I know Pokemon isn't so lazy in monster designs, there are about one-thousand of them now; and Smash is a fighting game, not a JRPG.

But, Shiny Pokemon are only different in colors, their size and shape match every other in their species. Recoloring the mere surface of things shouldn't be at all difficult to do, and some of them already are fairly lazy, Espeon is just dunked in a can of alien-green paint. There are more significant physical alterations, but they're not used in the Shiny status, they're forms, Formes, and Unknown and the ilk.

So, why not make Shiny Pokemon less rare, why not include more Shiny variants for each and every Pokemon? Why not take the concept and bring it out of the heavens down to earth? I have a red Solrock, so what if it isn't orange? Why not have a black Solrock and a yellow Solrock as well, and have them all have an appearance rate of at least 5% whenever a Solrock appears? 

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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This is hard to answer because I've never seen much value in shinies. Except maybe the red Gyarados as a kid back before I knew what a shiny was and that it could happen to any pokemon. But I can tell people definitely value collecting shiny pokemon. Whether or not people would appreciate more aesthetic color schemes is hard to answer. I don't see people geeking out about pokemon like Unown, Spinda, and Vivillion. But on the other hand, people love these regional variants so maybe they are receptive of the idea. If you could make new colors via breeding that may be cool.

Maybe I'd be on board with shinies becoming more common if half of them didn't look ugly as sin. I don't want these mutts appearing in my game.

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57 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

But, thinking on it, should Shiny Pokemon be so rare?

Rarity is far more at the core of what a shiny Pokemon is than a change in color. You mention the red Gyarados before, and I have always found it telling that when people are talking about shiny Pokemon, the red Gyarados is either explicitly excluded from the talk, or down right ignored until it is brought up. What makes Shiny pokemon interesting and compelling is that running into one randomly in the wild is so rare as to be a story in and of itself, and while there are ways of hunting for shinnies explicitly, these methods feel like monumental tasks worth mentioning. I can still remember that shiny Ponyta video from back in the day, and the rarity is what made that moment magical, what drew that over exuberance to the surface.

Without that rarity, the shine would be taken out of the Shiny Pokemon

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A couple notes you (OP) may not know about if you've been distant from the series for a while.

>Shiny chance doubled starting with X and Y, now 2/8192 and not 1/8192 as it previously had been since Gold and Silver.

>The Shiny Charm is a key item obtained by completing the Pokedex (National in B2W2 and Gen 6, Regional in Gen 7, 8 and assumedly onward) and gives 3x increased odds (3/8192 in B2W2 and 3/4096 in Gen 6 onward, before applying other methods. Speaking of...).

>There's many different type of ways to increase the rate, starting with Masuda Method and Poke Radar chains in Gen 4, with something new added with each removal of an old method due to changes in ways to encounter Pokemon (ie: SOS battle chaining isn't a thing anymore because SOS battles aren't, Chain Fishing was altered due to fishing being moved to set locations, etc).

I'm personally someone who had valued Shiny Pokemon highly for a veeeery long time, and I used to be extremely harsh on the decision to increase the rate and continually add methods with higher and higher Shiny rates. I've cooled down a bit from those days lmao.
Frankly, why I value Shiny Pokemon so much is purely the experience of it. Whether by random chance or through hunting methods, that experience is unique to you alone. If you increase the rates, the less valuable that experience becomes. Now, granted, a small increase like the XY change has been is barely important, it simply lets more people have that experience possibly, and I think it's been a good change overall. Hunting has it's own challenges, needing to through hundreds and hundreds of encounters to obtain it. It's hard work and it's definitely something many people pride themselves in.

2 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

So, why not make Shiny Pokemon less rare, why not include more Shiny variants for each and every Pokemon? Why not take the concept and bring it out of the heavens down to earth? I have a red Solrock, so what if it isn't orange? Why not have a black Solrock and a yellow Solrock as well, and have them all have an appearance rate of at least 5% whenever a Solrock appears? 

The thing is, we already have Pokemon like this. Examples being: Flabebe, a Pokemon family that has 5 unique flower colors or varying location and rarity of encounter. Spinda, a Pokemon with unique spot placements that even outclass Shiny odds in the chance of 2 patterns being the same (not quite the same but a similar concept). Alcremie, a new Sword and Shield Pokemon, has multiple varieties based on the item you use to evolve it (alongside another variable I'm not currently aware of due to how recent the game's release is). Minior, a Pokemon with multiple colors of differing rarities that even has a set single color that it becomes when Shiny (The gimmick being it has an outer shell, and you can only see the different colors once it breaks).

There's plenty of ideas to show this works alongside Shiny Pokemon (Minior especially), so rather than simply removing the concept of rare Shiny Pokemon as is, I'd personally suggest more of these unique variants to Pokemon. Now obviously, that's a lot of work to give it to more than some things, however I think simply taking a selection of Pokemon and giving them new visual variants would be a great idea. The Solrock idea seems like a good example, and personally I'd suggest the Roggenrola line as well, changing the color of it's crystals and/or body. Maybe the crystal color changes from it's Shiny as it already does, while the body changes based on another random chance, with differing rarities, but nothing as rare as Shiny odds.
Rocks already have varieties like this in real life, so they're fairly easy. Another possibility could be for Kecleon to have unique colors based on random chance, seeing as it's a chameleon. You could even tie it into it's Ability Color Change/Protean, if they decided to make 17 color forms for it, with Shiny variants.

Although for older Pokemon it'd be a bit of a controversial change, so I think if they were to do this idea, they'd likely want to mostly do it with new Pokemon (which they have been) while possibly rolling out 4 or 5 new color variants for older Pokemon every generation, probably ones that either have ways to explain it lore wise (like the above mentions). Of course, that's assuming they keep their current yearly model, which is a whole other bag of worms I'm not going to touch on any further and I would ask doesn't get re mentioned, at least not here.

1 hour ago, Glennstavos said:

Maybe I'd be on board with shinies becoming more common if half of them didn't look ugly as sin. I don't want these mutts appearing in my game.

I definitely think we could brighten up some older Shinies though. Green Espeon, while oddly iconic for it at this point, looks terrible. And I don't think anyone would argue with Shiny Gengar matching it's Mega form's Shiny (changes it to a white body with black eyes), alongside Garchomp.

Edited by Emerson
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But the Gyarados is Gold in GSC...

seriously, I don't mind if shiny pokemon aren't special, simply being a repallete isn't really all that unique to begin with, and as others have said, most of them look awful.

9 hours ago, Emerson said:

>The Shiny Charm is a key item obtained by completing the Pokedex (National in B2W2 and Gen 6, Regional in Gen 7, 8 and assumedly onward) and gives 3x increased odds (3/8192 in B2W2 and 3/4096 in Gen 6 onward, before applying other methods. Speaking of...).

 

I personally think this item isn't worth the effort for what you get out of it, and I don't think most people caught over 800 pokemon to get it. Even the 400 or so they have now is still absurd, to be honest. 

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I personally don't care for shiny pokemon being rare. I just want to get my pokemon in my preferred color scheme without having to go through all the hassle of having breedjects, getting the shiny charm, chaining, etc. so having them be common is something I would like.

Actually with nature mints being a thing now, I would have liked to see an item that turns your existing partners into their shiny variation. I much prefer that over having to catch new ones and reject the ones I already caught and trained up.

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11 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

But the Gyarados is Gold in GSC...

Hate to break it to you but...
Spr_2g_130_s.png.5de69886d58ad586c4c17cd71719730c.png

11 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

I personally think this item isn't worth the effort for what you get out of it, and I don't think most people caught over 800 pokemon to get it. Even the 400 or so they have now is still absurd, to be honest. 

If you don't, then don't get it? It's better than just getting some stupid certificate for it.

I'd also like to say, it honestly doesn't take that long now that it's regional Dex only. 400 sounds like a lot, but it only takes a good few hours at most to do everything you have access to with your version, and then some coordination from friends with other versions or online peoples on forums and the like to complete the whole thing.

 

Anyways, I've been looking at older Pokemon we call ugly Shiny wise, but honestly a good chunk looked great at some point.
Spr_2g_196_s.png
The lighter green looks pretty swell on Espeon, it's just later generations fucked it up and make it an uglier green.
Spr_4d_196_s.png
Gen 6 especially made it a lot darker, although I don't think it looks particularly any worse with it than the Gen 4-5 sprite with it's green.

The original Gengar ain't too bad either honestly.
Spr_2s_094.pngSpr_2s_094_s.png
(Shiny on the right)
Unfortunately it just lost this over time, again. The change is significantly less impactful.
Spr_4d_094.pngSpr_4d_094_s.png

In any case, I don't think removing the rare variants of Pokemon just because some don't look nice is really a good thing. It's sort of a big deal that they're rare at this point. Like the OP said and I agreed before, adding more, less rare variants of Pokemon would be an apt solution.

4 hours ago, NegativeExponents- said:

Actually with nature mints being a thing now, I would have liked to see an item that turns your existing partners into their shiny variation. I much prefer that over having to catch new ones and reject the ones I already caught and trained up.

That defeats the whole purpose of the rare variants, though. I think that could be cool for some less rare variants like it was talked about before, say changing Flabebe's flower color, or Alcremie's berry and cream color. But Shiny Pokemon have become such an integral thing to the series at this point, it'd be pretty awful of them to suddenly make it changeable, or make it less rare. Again, less rare variants would be cool, but reducing the rates to common levels without supplying a rarer variant is kind of a big fuck you to players who DID randomly find or go out of their way to obtain a Shiny Pokemon.

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1 hour ago, Emerson said:

Hate to break it to you but...
Spr_2g_130_s.png.5de69886d58ad586c4c17cd71719730c.png

If you don't, then don't get it? It's better than just getting some stupid certificate for it.

I'd also like to say, it honestly doesn't take that long now that it's regional Dex only. 400 sounds like a lot, but it only takes a good few hours at most to do everything you have access to with your version, and then some coordination from friends with other versions or online peoples on forums and the like to complete the whole thing.

 

Anyways, I've been looking at older Pokemon we call ugly Shiny wise, but honestly a good chunk looked great at some point.
Spr_2g_196_s.png
The lighter green looks pretty swell on Espeon, it's just later generations fucked it up and make it an uglier green.
Spr_4d_196_s.png
Gen 6 especially made it a lot darker, although I don't think it looks particularly any worse with it than the Gen 4-5 sprite with it's green.

The original Gengar ain't too bad either honestly.
Spr_2s_094.pngSpr_2s_094_s.png
(Shiny on the right)
Unfortunately it just lost this over time, again. The change is significantly less impactful.
Spr_4d_094.pngSpr_4d_094_s.png

In any case, I don't think removing the rare variants of Pokemon just because some don't look nice is really a good thing. It's sort of a big deal that they're rare at this point. Like the OP said and I agreed before, adding more, less rare variants of Pokemon would be an apt solution.

That defeats the whole purpose of the rare variants, though. I think that could be cool for some less rare variants like it was talked about before, say changing Flabebe's flower color, or Alcremie's berry and cream color. But Shiny Pokemon have become such an integral thing to the series at this point, it'd be pretty awful of them to suddenly make it changeable, or make it less rare. Again, less rare variants would be cool, but reducing the rates to common levels without supplying a rarer variant is kind of a big fuck you to players who DID randomly find or go out of their way to obtain a Shiny Pokemon.

I believe that was their poor attempt at making gold. Sure if you want to pay for online, but if you have to pay to complete it, that says it all then.  I just dont think the effort outweighs the reward, really.

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On 11/16/2019 at 5:53 PM, lightcosmo said:

I believe that was their poor attempt at making gold.

It drops the "Red Scale" and is referred to as a red Gyarados in the game.

For the topic: yes. /thread

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