Since the release of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet by Game Freak back in November 2022, the state of the franchise has remained a source of equal amounts of love and hatred from fans. The game continues the company's efforts to create a fully-3D open world Pokemon experience, but also continues to suffer from the same performance and visual fidelity issues of previous open world titles. What this approach has provided though, is a variety of new options for encounters and captures in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. With combat remaining relatively unchanged, the wild encounters and exploration have taken on even greater significance.
Since wild encounters are now a bigger part of the game, the rarity and variety of Pokemon available to capture has a major impact on the player experience. In the early games, wild grass could conceal a Pokemon's rarity until their sudden reveal in battle. Now that players can spot Pokemon from further distances, creating a meaningful surprise and a sense of stakes is more difficult, but just as critical. The series has historically amplified this sense of surprise through the rare appearance of shiny Pokemon. The problem is, shiny Pokemon are actually far less rare than they used to be, leading to a diminishing sense of surprise and excitement when they appear. Bringing shiny Pokemon back to a truly rare status may not be easy, but doing so would benefit all players in the long run.
The Odds Game Behind Shiny Pokemon
When it comes to shiny Pokemon, players have been attempting to optimize their capture since the beginning of the series. Shiny Pokemon began at a base odds rate of 1/8192 for the first 5 generations, with limited methods of improving those odds until techniques like the Masuda method became viable after Generation 3. By the time of Generation 3 there were only 3 major methods for capturing shiny Pokemon: using the Poke Radar chaining technique gave players a 41/8192 chance, using the item Cute Charm could result in either a 1/24576 or a 21.34% chance, and the Masuda method which only narrowly improved the base odds with a 5/8192 chance.
As of Gen 6 though, the current base odds for shiny Pokemon is now 1/4096, essentially doubling the likelihood of a shiny encounter in the wild. While shiny Pokemon were probably slightly too rare to the early titles, the appeal of shiny Pokemon has always been their rarity. If any player could have any shiny Pokemon without considerable luck or effort, they would be little more than a re-skin.
With regional variants the series has explored that idea to some extent, but always with a bend toward Pokemon's marketing gimmicks. Shiny Pokemon, while used as promotional tools, are rarely advertised as a feature and have always existed on the fine line between game mechanic and collectible, especially since shininess does not impact the stats or abilities of the Pokemon.
Casual And Hardcore Pokemon Players Want Shinies For Different Reasons
It's important to note that methods to increase the likelihood of shiny Pokemon are essentially impossible to stumble upon by accident as a casual player. The methods serve as expedient tools for hardcore players looking to optimize their shiny hunting. This distinction is important because much of the magic of shiny hunting is from its unpredictability and rarity, something that is more likely to be experienced by casual players.
Hardcore players, having opted into a grind for shiny Pokemon, will almost certainly enjoy the experience to some extent, but it is far from the seamless fun of discovering a shiny Pokemon organically. The competitive and hardcore experiences are critical to consider, but with the vast majority of Pokemon players being casual, the increasing of the likelihood of finding shiny Pokemon takes away more of the magic and mystique from those players than anyone else.
Casual players don't play the odds games. They talk to their friends about their playthroughs and Pokemon teams but likely don't take the time to read wikis and participate in competitive play. It is in those contexts, the casual social experience of playing Pokemon, where the value of shiny Pokemon is truly being lost. Finding a shiny Pokemon is no longer cause for excitement and bragging rights. Almost anyone who completes a modern Pokemon game will encounter or capture at least one shiny, and while capturing a specific shiny Pokemon remains a challenge, they have lost their status as a true bragging right.
Potential Reasons For The Reduced Rarity Of Shiny Pokemon
There is something to be said for the potential causes behind the reduction in shiny Pokemon rarity. The Pokemon series has always been a childrens franchise first, and the increasing emphasis on accessibility in modern video games has had some impact on the approach taken by developers. While skill-based rewards, completionist challenges, and rare events can be fun for an adult player with the ability and time to dedicate to them, younger players, players with disabilities, or players unable to dedicate the time can end up getting a less complete experience.
Game developers approach the idea of accessibility in many different ways, but for major video game releases, the goal of accessibility is generally to provide each player the same highly-quality experience regardless of their ability or circumstances. Sometimes these accessibility options can be enabled and tweaked in the settings menu to accommodate the variety of player circumstances, but there are also accessibility choices that can impact the fundamental design of the experience.
With shiny Pokemon, their reduced rarity increases the likelihood that each player will encounter at least a few on each playthrough. This may mean the experience is no longer special, but it also means that players who would typically never get to encounter a shiny Pokemon now almost certainly will. For hardcore fans who breed Pokemon, using strategies to improve their shiny Pokemon chances were already well in place, but for normal players, the benefits do seem obvious on their face. That is not the whole story though.
If it was simply true that shiny Pokemon have been made more common to increase their presence in casual experiences of the games, that would be an understandable decision. It is the higher shiny odds rate in conjunction with the increasing use of shiny Pokemon as minor special events in games like Pokemon GO that is causing such an over saturation. Time will tell how Game Freak may change the shiny odds in future titles or if changes to gameplay might resolve some of the issues brought on by the new open world style.
What the company must absolutely consider, though, is how willing it is to cheapen the shiny Pokemon experience in games like Pokemon GO. With Pokemon Home allowing Pokemon transfers between games, if Game Freak wants to keep shinies as special as they should be, the developer would do well to reduce its output of shiny Pokemon soon before it's too late.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are available now on Nintendo Switch.