Survey: For and Against Increasing Shiny Rates

What are your takes on changing the default shiny rates across games? Let's assume for the sake of this topic that a hack in question is self-contained and does not have anything you could properly trade into another game to constitute as an unfair games. If we increased the value by a little margin, would this make a hack a bit more interesting? Make shiny finding less miraculous? Or does this have no effect on real gameplay? I'm curious as to what others think.

Since ROM Hacks are self contained, increasing shiny rates only add to the experience, not subtract. You would be giving the player an opportunity to experience something as special as finding a shiny, or multiple shinies, in the span of single playthrough. Most players complete an official Pokemon game without having seen a single shiny. And the majority of casual players don't shiny hunt, plus there's little to gain in shiny hunting in a ROM hack. I feel it's a requirement at this point for ROM hacks to increase the shiny rate (albeit not substantially), because ROM hacks don't have natural longevity due to the inability to connect online or trade between games authentically.

In conclusion, raise the shiny rate. Take a leaf out of Drayano's book with his DS Rom Hacks. Increasing the shiny rate so that it's almost assured you would find more than one shiny pokemon in a single playthrough. There is no loss. 100% of Pokemon have Shiny alternatives, let them see them.

From personal experience, I don't like it. Because to me, the value of finding a shiny therefore deteriorates drastically.

I played Pokemon Saffron recently w/o knowing about boosted shiny rates and, when I first ran into one (Zigzagoon) I got ecstatic. I thought I was the absolute bomb. I don't even use Zigzagoons in playthroughs but I decided to add this one to the team just because of its sparkle. I deemed it special. Then things got fishy when I ran into a shiny Ducklett a mere few more Routes later...

When I heard of the boost, it instantly devalued the guys I caught, and the thrill in general for me. Imho I just don't find it as impressive/rewarding as finding one with regular odds.

Recommendation: Give players the option to choose between regular or boosted odds at the start of the game (if that's even possible to code). Win-win situation.

I support increasing shiny odds. In normal playthroughs i rarely encounter a shiny and if i do i may even miss it since i like to fast forward. Increasing the odds would increase the chance that i actually catch one.
One also has to take into consideration how much to increase it. Encountering a shiny is really rare and and even increasing the chance by 10 wouldnt devalue shinies imo, while i can understand that increasign it by much more than 10 may devalue shinies.
In a hack i plan to create i want to increase the odds to about 1/300

The Roniverse said:

From personal experience, I don't like it. Because to me, the value of finding a shiny therefore deteriorates drastically.

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I can't say I understand why you assign value to finding a shiny to begin with. If shinies did only exist because of an n-in-65536 chance as people play the game normally, that would be one thing, but people farm the things. The Shiny Charm, Masuda method and other means of increasing the shiny rate to me devalue the idea far more than a ROM hack opting to let the player experience a cosmetic feature of the game during their limited time with it before moving on. As Raene says, it's not like ROM hacks can benefit you in the official games.

ThomasWinwood said:

I can't say I understand why you assign value to finding a shiny to begin with. If shinies did only exist because of an n-in-65536 chance as people play the game normally, that would be one thing, but people farm the things. The Shiny Charm, Masuda method and other means of increasing the shiny rate to me devalue the idea far more than a ROM hack opting to let the player experience a cosmetic feature of the game during their limited time with it before moving on. As Raene says, it's not like ROM hacks can benefit you in the official games.

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I respect this viewpoint, but lemme clarify. I assign value specifically to Gen 3 (&2) because those official boosts you mentioned (which indeed makes farming shinies much easier) didn't exist yet for this generation. Finding one with a raw 1/8192 chance seems super rewarding to me.

This is coming from a non hunter; someone who isn't actively looking for a shiny and optimizing the game to do so. Someone who literally just happens to run into one completely randomly out of sheer luck. It's like winning the lottery lol. When you find out it was rigged in some way to benefit you, no matter how minor, the win feels...artificial somehow. Not as satisfying. Imo it doesn't matter if it's a rom hack or an official game. I will feel that way regardless.

Would you still feel that way if the player was notified about this? I think it's fair to say that a responsible hack would make this clear. I firsthand know how it's like to get two shinies only to find out the rate was 1/8 in that area thanks to a lack of documentation. Either way, it can be safe to assume that a hack is a completely different game that runs on its own rules, and I personally think that if most people are going to one-and-done it anyway (unless you provide good replayability) they might as well experience a feature that they most likely would have never ever experienced even through multiple runs.

Fatih120 said:

Would you still feel that way if the player was notified about this? I think it's fair to say that a responsible hack would make this clear. I firsthand know how it's like to get two shinies only to find out the rate was 1/8 in that area thanks to a lack of documentation. Either way, it can be safe to assume that a hack is a completely different game that runs on its own rules, and I personally think that if most people are going to one-and-done it anyway (unless you provide good replayability) they might as well experience a feature that they most likely would have never ever experienced even through multiple runs.

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If the hack maker made it evident, then I can lower my expectations in advanced. So no, I wouldn't feel against it anymore.

The one-and-done viewpoint I agree with. I usually delete romhacks once I finish playing them once (to save space for more), so having the coolest possible playthrough of it would only benefit the game. I'd be a walking ad for it for a few weeks lol. But again, let me know everything you've tampered with.

I don't think there is much of a merit in increasing shiny odds in RSE/FRLG hacks since you can cheat it if you really must have shinies. I mean if I know I just found a full odds shiny it is much more exciting for me, but you could still argue for increasing odds in fangames especially with fakemons or altered shinies you might never see otherwise. I would still care more for a 1/8000+ luvdisc than a 1/100 charizard.

From personal experience, I don't like it. Because to me, the value of finding a shiny therefore deteriorates drastically.

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I agree wholeheartedly with roni.

Shinies have lost their specialness over the years. Decrease their rates, give them qualities and attributes that would incentivize hunting for them such as hidden or unique abilities, perfect IVs (4 or more), and color palette changes i.e. Charmander's line - black and blue theme (black skin and blue flames, like Charizard X's mega) and let's make shinies great again!

Increasing it to reasonable rates yes, increasing it so that finding them is too easy definitely not.

Shinies don't feel that special now when they can be just hacked anyway. Most of the magic they had in the early days has been lost.

1/1000 or 1/1365 seems like good balance of guaranteeing at least one shiny per run but not making them too common for them to lose value.

I believe there is a range to how much I agree with this. Shinys are rare alternste colors that feel amazing to find, but in the worst case scenarios, you can often go months or even years without a full odds shiny. I understand that this is part of their rarity, but in a hack, enjoy some of the sweeter parts of Pokemon is grand. However, if they are too frequent, it can lead to extreme devaluing to the point where you don't even get surprised. Thats why I believe ~1/4000 or ~1/2000 is better, so while they are more reasonable to find, you aren't guarenteed to find a shiny in a casual playthrough. I believe this is for the best, as they are still rare, but not insanely unreasonable.

Why not just give the player the option by adding an optional patch? That way everyone wins...lol

Personally, I think the question is not just changing the odds of getting a shiny, but also the mechanism behind it. Part of the mechanism needs to be chance based, as that gives that adrenaline rush feeling when you actually do get a shiny (for comparison, I'd say the guaranteed shiny gyarados at the lake of rage feels underwhelming). Making it entirely chance based with 1 in 8192 on the other hand makes it too luck driven, with many never encountering shinies during a full playthrough, while some might encounter multiple. Additionally, this greatly inhibits hunting a specific shiny.

Most games have additional mechanisms. The first one is the shiny charm, which increase the base odds of a shiny per encounter. The bar for getting one is set high, having to complete the regional or national pokedex, which given the boost in shiny rate is fair. But this is a high time investment to get an overall boost.
Another method, chaining, focuses on increased odds by maintaining a chain of encounters of a specific pokemon. The way chaining has been implemented varies per game (I am not known with how it works exactly in Sword and Shield). The benefit is that it does only affect the pokemon you are chaining at that specific time (again, I think Sword and Shield might do this differently, perhaps making it too easy).
Then there is the Masuda method for breeding. The benefit of this allows the highest odds of ensuring high IV's and natures.
Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon introduced a mechanic that involves travelling as far as possible in a wormhole minigame (I guess it could be compared to an extravagant flappy duck minigame), which then increases your shiny odds. My experiences were that this made it waaaaay too easy to get shinies, devaluing a whole set of shinies as a result (shiny altaria feels very cheap for me right now).

I'd like to focus on two specific suggestions I have when it comes to shiny hunting. First, having a mechanism akin to the old gold/silver/crystal games, where you can dramatically increase odds if you find the correct pair of parents. Of course I think this went a bit too far in the gen 2 games, but the idea that one can have hidden values (note, it does NOT need to be tied to IV's) corresponding to the shiny chance appeals to me. That way, instead of solely relying on chance, one can make progress in getting a shiny. It would be nice to have a system similar to how one can breed 5-6 IV pokemon with specific natures over multiple steps, but for shinies. The reduction in chance will be replaced by the effort needed of going from one step to the next.

Next, I'd like to talk about legendaries and soft-resetting. In my opinion (and I admit this is extremely subjective) soft-resetting feels kind of an unnatural way of playing a game. There are instances however where people can run away from an encounter and still be able to start it again (for instance the latios encounter in alpha sapphire). This run-away strategy removes the endless restarting of the game. I'd prefer if games allowed this for all legendaries. Perhaps this makes the time between encounters way too short for some people, but having to watch a start up screen between every encounter does not really feel productive to me. I did get a shiny Latios via the run-away strategy and must say it felt extremely rewarding (perhaps more so than the first shiny I got by chance, a shiny spheal, because of the amount of effort I put in).

So in conclusion, I can not answer the poll: I believe that the combination of effort and luck are central and should be balanced.

Doesn't really matter to me, if i want a shiny i just use PKhex. yeah i know it's "Cheating" er whatever. but people waste hours, days of there one and only life on this Fed up Planet. and they find the wrong shiny!. ain't nobody got time for that like, seriously?. if you really think about it, the human life span is pathetically short, less then a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things, and people are wasting it looking for a shiny when they could just get one Now and play the game and have fun...