Shiny / Albino rate update

My friend and I were going to start hunting random shinies and now it just feels more frustrating than before. Albinos didn't need to be doubled, I guess this is good for delta points but just frustrating. I have never paid a single cent to this site and I keep my HM and UC up most of the time, it's not up now because I barley touch this site at the moment because of a lack of modiviation due to them announcing that this site will eventually get ditched for a new one. I hope HM is the same? It sounds like it is except now shiny rates are going to be worse.

As a free-play shiny hunter I got excited at first that shiny chances would be better but...I'm honestly confused. The answer to balancing ought to be increasing the free-play users chances, not cutting the HM users shouldn't it? This way doesn't change shiny hunting for free-play users but nerfs it for HM users...it just doesn't make sense. In my experience, shiny chances without HM are dismal and chances with just HM are better but not great. Even adding both charms and Sei day doesn't help much for the cost. I don't get back what I spend on HM and charms (site currency) in what shiny and albino pokemon I hatch while hunting. I never have and I honestly don't see this changing that. Thanks for the Albino boost though. I suppose that's something.

well it would be nice to finally get a 2 petrapeep shinies so I can break that damn chain and finally get back to collecting type gems for badges

@Kaiken It's two updates merged together, the non-HM buff isn't related to the overall balancing. Personally as someone that's using all boosts, I don't think it's a big change, I've hatched several shinies since which is perfectly normal for my hunts until that chain bonus is significant enough. People just need to give it time and see the results before assuming it's a major nerf.

"Your 1,700+ chain is granting a Long Chain Bonus of 25.5% for hatching Melanistic Pokémon!" Oooh, thank you so much! This will help my Melan Stufful hunt so much!

@iOlrickx For the past several weeks, first anecdotally, then tracked, it was/is taking (on average) twice as many hatches to get a Shiny as before. Or, as the announcement says, hatch rates have been halved. This is direct experience with an already implemented change. I believe the merging of the two into a single update has to do with bringing the non-HM user experience Back to what it was Before the 'nerf' but falsely presenting it as a 'boost' (except in relation to when the halving was done, however many weeks ago). As mentioned somewhere else in the thread, and (also) being a fan of (true) twin hatches (rare enough before the change), the chance of simply hatching 2 shinies in the same party now seems similarly unlikely. So there's that too. (Note: I hatch with HM, Shiny & Uber charms, plus any Day bonuses)

That's just your own experience and doesn't really mean much, mine is the opposite of yours. I keep track of all my hunts and their numbers look fine to me when comparing shinies to total hatched, my Glileo hunt (tier 1 long chain) averaged a shiny every 25 eggs, Ferroseed (tier 2) was every 22 eggs, Mudkip (no long chain) was 27 eggs. Now let me look at a chain from a few months back, Bergmite back in march (tier 3) averaged 25 eggs per. These averages are looking very similar to my hunts these past few weeks and don't suggest that rates were stealth nerfed...

The changes are good. I hatch way more shinies than I even remotely need. More albinos are always nice and making hunting more accessable for non-HM users is very cool! I'm glad that the long-chain bonus was finally buffed. Overall, great job!

To add on to what Trebor and Olrick are discussing, I've been tracking my hunts for almost a year, logging those results in my journal and 'about me'. Based one those, I can see that I haven't had an "average" hunt ratio since the June site crash. I can go into all the numbers and in detail about each hunt, but the summary is here:

• I'm averaging 1.5% chance of hatching shinies and 0.9% for albinos while using HM and Ubercharms.
• I'm averaging 1% for shinies and 0.8% for albinos since the site crash in June, same boosts.
• The last two hunts, within the last week, have 0.8% and 0.5% chance for shinies respectively. That is including a Sei day boost at over 200 hatches each.
• My shiny/albino numbers are a lot more even since the downtime.

That's not even including "random" albinos not related to my hunt, but those are always more common than random shinies. Granted I have been doing smaller hunts (less than 500 hatches) so the numbers might be a bit skewed, but having equal shiny/albino chances seems off. All of this has been before the announcement of the shiny nerf, meaning I'm going to have an even tougher time finding shinies it seems. I'm not saying the chances were stealth nerfed. Comparing these numbers to the ones given by Olrick shows I have had incredibly bad luck for a few months now (which boosts were you using?). I really don't want my chances to go down. This update is a nerf to hypermode-users hatching shinies, while keeping the non-HM chances basically the same due to their "buff". Plain and simple. It is removing some of my benefit to having hypermode. The changes to the long-chain bonus have no effect on that. I'm not a fan of it. It may be a balance adjustment, but I honestly don't think it was done in a good way. Albino chances did not need to be increased. Yes sometimes people can hatch "hundreds" of extra shinies, but there is always a place for them (even if that place is the delta grinder). If the goal is a nerf, then call it a nerf and own up to it. Don't try to spin it as a "site balance adjustment" that really only affects one part of the player base. I guess I will need to grind and attempt a longer hunt just to see how it feels, if it is significantly more difficult. But I'm not happy right now based on how it looks on paper.

Im really confused right now so gonna have some questions to answer Is this a nerf or balancing? Will Albino be easier to get than Shinies? How will S/A prices change? Will DP price change? From the view point of HM users, is this update beneficial? That's my questions for now :>