Pokemon Go is about shinies. Maybe one day it was about catching ‘em all, but most players have them now. Aside from regionals that is, but I’ve pretty much written them off due to the fact that I’ll need a world tour to grab them all, or otherwise wait for them to be included in events. Events like Pokemon Go Fest.
I didn’t need any of the regionals featured in Go Fest 2022 thanks to trading and some pre-pandemic trips abroad, but it was still nice to see them pop up on my Incense. Tropius is especially exciting as I’m a Go Battle League man, despite the fact that my best one (with a low attack stat and high defenses) is above the 1,500CP limit for Great League. But other than trying and failing to get a single decent Tropius, I also failed at Pokemon Go’s other goal: getting shinies.
I didn’t get a single shiny over the Go Fest weekend. Not one. All my excitement about some of the best shinies being involved coming into the event was for nothing. And I’m not just talking ‘no new shinies’ or ‘I didn’t get the shiny Axew I wanted’. Both of those are true, but that’s not the point I’m making. I didn’t get one shiny. Not a Numel, not an Unown (which I still don’t have shiny after god knows how many events). Nada. And I’m not alone.
Shiny rates were down over the weekend across the board. On social media and Pokemon fan groups, many players were complaining about the lack of shiny rates. The event was also plagued with Incense issues and Raids not working correctly, but I saw the shiny complaints the most. That’s why most players bought the tickets. For a shiny Axew or Numel or even a Karrablast.
I played casually on Saturday, the day with better shiny rates and hardcore on Sunday, the day with better raid bosses. So part of not getting a shiny was on me for having plans (read: being on a train all day) on the day with even more boosted shiny rates, but Niantic’s messaging suggested that rates would be boosted on Sunday, too. And it wasn’t like I didn’t play at all on Saturday – I spent a good few hours on the game over the course of the day. On a normal Community Day, I could get my haul of shinies in a few hours of play. Sometimes I spend an hour on the game and retire with more shinies than I know what to do with. But not this weekend.
Part of the issue might have been the Incense glitches. With fewer encounters appearing via Incense, that’s fewer chances of getting a shiny. But I still caught plenty of Pokemon across the two days, and didn’t see a single shiny. Lots of friends caught one or two, many like me didn’t get any.
There were a few positives, namely the fact that I got a hundo Axew and the XP available for those of us willing to raid. For some people, and especially rural players, the tens of thousands of raid XP were paywalled too, locked behind Remote Raid Passes that recently went up in price.
Shinies aren’t everything, but they’re a lot of the reason players spent £12.99 on a Go Fest ticket. If the rates had been low at a Community Day or other free event, then I’d wager fewer people would be bothered. We had the opportunity to catch some of Pokemon’s best shinies this weekend, but hardly anyone managed it.
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