As discussed at length on discord, Sparkle Tokens, while initially distributed for a limited time during the HC celebrating their release, have had several more copies sold off during every auction since. While Andy has mentioned there will not be as high as 3 per auction, it has also been mentioned that they will be likely returning next anniversary HC.
I do not think adding more sparkle tokens into the game is a good idea. So long as the sparkle token is available, the rarest shiny can be no rarer than the sparkle token. Had the token been more limited in what it could be used on–such as say, it being only usable on your starter–then I do not believe this would have been a problem. But as they say, hindsight is 20/20, and limiting the token now would be a slap in the face to everyone who invested in them.
To avoid worsening the impact the token already has on existing rarer shiny pokemon, as well as the rarity of shiny pokemon implemented in the future, I believe the best course of action is to either discontinue it, or heavily reduce the rate at which they enter the game. An alternative auction item could be having your starter made shiny; this is something that cannot be held in a sort of “superposition” like the sparkle token can–allowing the player to use it whenever the player pleases on whatever they please, which I believe to be harmful to the rarity of shiny specific shiny pokemon that would otherwise be comparably difficult to obtain.
That’s a totally selfish act.
I know you did get a shiny token from auction. After serving your own benefit of having it you made a thread and told people that it shouldn’t have existed.
I don’t see any harm from this item since it takes ages for people to grind for money/event currency to purchase it. It takes time, and blood and sweat to gain, not just fall off the sky. And if you think this is unfair, why don’t we all remove all the tokens that everyone had used then? (including yours too ^^)
I would like to hear your appeal about it and how you think that was a good idea because all i can see in your thread are the benefits that only serve for your own good.
IMO the introduction of sparkle token kind of ruined the point of the grind for most pokemon initially. Despite this though the damage has been done now and while they can’t just remove them now reducing them would help try to stop “0 effort rare shinies”
Actually, for clarity’s sake, I have a total of 3, and gave away one more. 3 of those were farmed from an HC that was advertised as a limited time opportunity to obtain them.
But this is descending dangerously close to an ad hominem attack. I understand your concerns about a possible conflict of interest, but I do not find the core argument of “because he has it, everyone should have a chance to get it” compelling.
I agree with this thread completely and I’ve already explained my reasons for having this opinion largely in the discord conversation, but for keepsaking reasons, to sum it up:
I heavily dislike the Sparkle Token’s way of bringing every shiny back to a baseline value. If you own a sparkle token, you basically ‘‘possibly’’ own every shiny available in the game. So, with a sparkle token in the game, a shiny Pidgey/Poochyena has the same worth as a shiny Spiritomb/Dratini. To me, making this item regularly available has th effect that it devalues the regular way of hunting shinies because of the amount of time you can avoid by just buying a token instead.
I know many people want the token to stay because of egg shinies/shinies obtained through other methods (like dratini) are unavailable as of now, but the Sparkle token is sadly not a good way to quick fix this problem.
A catch-all sparkle token is not a band-aid solution to certain shinies being unavailable. What would be a band-aid solution that focuses on the problem, is making those unavailable shinies purchasable instead of the Sparkle Token. That way, you can individually determine the price/value of those unobtainables, instead of pouring all that value into one baseline item.
This is just not a good argument. Just because one player played the game a certain way and used something to their advantage does not change the objective meaning of their argument. I’ve seen this used way too many times as well, so please stop using personal arguments to solve a game design problem! :(
Don’t worry i’m not trying to attack you, i’m someone who is good at controlling my temper, or maybe unless you are assuming everything i said above is totally match with what you are!
Anyhow we are in a big community where everyone should have a right equality. And yes, what i wanted to say was like that: “If you have it, everyone should have a chance to get it too”. Do you care about players who can only access on their dayoffs, or maybe only few times a month. How are they able to access those awesome stuffs if things get nerfed to the way it’s impossible to get?
A token can cost at least 7m of poke to buy at auction, and you think how many people who can buy them? How long will it take to wait for the next auction event?
Well i neither on your side nor on anyone else’s side but i just want to make things more accessible for players, of course in a balancing way. Overall, yes i agree with reducing the amount of token which will be auction in the future, but i do not agree with discontinuing them.
It’s definitely not from my point of view, the thread discusses a certain game mechanic and its effects on the game - personal or moral points of view on the way others play the game don’t really have a place there. If anything, you could also argue that because Leostel was one of the people that got to profit off the token, they can make a more valid case on why it’s a broken item (but please lets not get into that).
Game testers (the ones that do it as a profession) are challenged to maximally exploit game features for the sake of balancing the game out before release.
I was one of the players who, when the sparkle token was first released, made a case for the fact the grinding requirement was far too high for a good chunk of the playerbase.
Ultimately, when the 8k “mystery prize” was revealed, I understood why the grind requirement was so high. However, with time to reflect on the entire thing, the conclusion I have reached is that the high barrier to entry was a band-aid solution in and of itself–designed to try and keep the token count low–when really the ideal solution would have been to balance the token better, but make it more accessible. That option is no longer available, and such I believe the lesser of the available evils is to stem the flow of sparkle tokens into the game.
As I’ve mentioned, I believe an alternative item can be auctioned off that instead turns the player’s starter shiny. All of the shinies will eventually be released, but the sparkle token is the only way to turn your very first pokemon shiny and I doubt that will change, so I’m more than happy for a fix to that problem to be implemented in place of the existing “one size fits all” token.
It ‘‘breaks the game’’ in the way of it allowing you to bypass a LARGE amount of time you would otherwise spend to hunt the shiny of your choice, since it can turn any pokémon of your choice into a shiny variant. Whether it’s a cosmetic thing or an actual game mechanic does not really matter, the ease of obtaining said thing does.
You must spend LARGE amount of time to grind for the token anyway!
7mil poke and 8k of event currency are not easy to grind fast.
So fair trade, spending LARGE amount of time to grind cash or spending LARGE amount of time to hunt, both will still worth your effort~
I get what you said there. But currently there are so many pokemon that cannot shiny hunt now, including in egg and fossils but i believe there will be a way to balance them all soon.
I agree with you about the alternative item but that is a far future plan where shiny hunt would be available in every cases. For now token is still the only way to many of them so as i said it would benefit everyone in a good way if we reduced the amount of tokens that will be auctioned in the future. Once everything is in order, the token can be yeeted out of the game for good.
Oh right!
I should’ve mentioned that too.
I’m totally against purchasing pokemon! It’s totally against the plot of PMD. We recruit them and treat them as partners not a goods.
The main argument of reducing/removing sparkle token
which is true has been true since its release. The support that’s fueling this argument right now is auctioning so many Sparkle Tokens is devaluing shinies. If the main premise of this is to reduce how many tokens are distributed, then I agree. I don’t, however disagree with removing Sparkle tokens from the game.
As of right now, there is a good percent of unattainable shiny Pokemon and the sparkle token is being used a band-aid so players are allowed to have those Pokemon. Is the sparkle token a good band-aid for this issue? No. Is what’s being suggested here a good solution to fix the band-aid problem? No. You want to remove it, yet no where you give any sensible solution or compromise. This is why a lot of players disagreed with you when you talked about it on discord.
If shiny tokens are gone, then shiny tokens have to be implemented in eggs, which hasn’t been coded yet. If shiny tokens are gone, every rare Pokemon has to have their shiny rate adjusted, which will probably take forever just to do because you have to think about what rate each rare Pokemon should have. Also, sparkle tokens have been a good money sink in PMU. Just seems like there’s gonna be more problems than solutions by getting rid of this.
I believe you may have mistaken what I was suggesting; I am in no way backing the nuclear option of straight up removing the sparkle token from the game, only stemming the flow of new ones into the game. In fact, I have literally never said I want it straight up removed from the game, I’m not sure where this argument was made, but I sure wasn’t the one who made it. The sparkle token is rather awkwardly balanced, but just nulling the work I and many other players put into either saving up the money or grinding out HC for the tokens would be extremely frustrating.
The solution to certain shinies being unobtainable outside of the token is already in the works, as far as I am aware. Eggs will be able to hatch shiny.
Shinies already have altered rates depending on where they are found. I’m not sure what point you were trying to convey here, apologies.
I thought it was going to be clear when I was said “removed” from the game, I meant to discontinue. Not to take it from player’s inventories. So sorry for the confusion. Also, there isn’t an official statement regarding rare Pokemon having their shinys altered, unless you can show me where.
I’m also not at all for the option of removing existing ones from players inventories, just for clarity. My arguments made in this thread are in support of the discontinuation of regularly distributing them (through for example, anni HC’s).