Review Special Rates

My opinion is that I don't see much demand for my specials when I sell, so I might as well have higher rates and feed the DP grinders.

Here's my opinion on this idea I'd like it if the shiny and albino rates were reviewed because to me I feel like it's impossible to get extra boosts outside of the type race for the albinos given I was lucky enough to hatch 3 albinos during the type race last month but once the type race was over I had two ground z-crystals and I hardly got any specials during that hunt. I hunted Pichu awhile ago as well hatched 1k+ eggs got 14 shiny, 1 albino and no melan and I used everything I could a level 7 radar, hypermode, Uber Charm, Z-crystals and shiny charms. If I may suggest but also take a look at the melan rates as well I've seen people get melans super early on in their hunts it being their first shiny and albino. Edit: I understand that the melan sharing thread is supposed to be a positive thing because it's supposed to be everyone showing off melans that they've hatched but to me I feel like it's gloating I say this because there are many people struggling to hatch 1 melan at all and they've been playing since the beginning or have been here a few years and still haven't hatched one but recently I've been seeing a lot of melans hatched at 1/42 or 1/80 stuff like that and those are from people who aren't free to play they're people who spend countless amounts of their money buying enough zc just to get hypermode that lasts a full year whereas free to play users are still working really hard to get a melan but seeing the ones from people who hatched them super early on in their chains makes it upsetting and it's discouraging and I've gotten that just by reading the "Melan complaining" thread.

Here's my experience with hunting. As a F2P user who is lazy-ish one the average day I have a level 6 albino radar and 1 in 400 shiny rate. If it's a Sei or Niet day, I pop a charm and maybe a level 7 radar, and currently, I have an ubercharm active since I'm saving for HM (which in itself is a gruelling task). I ran out of Z's a while ago, and am now just hatching..hatching.. I have hatched over 5300 dreepy for my first hunt. No melan. Meanwhile I'm looking at the paying players hatching a melan delta literally 1 day after it's been released. Melans go brrr for everyone with HM. Everyone with piles of ZC. I understand this is how it is, servers need moneys etc. My solution to this is buffing long chain. It's near useless right now. It should be buffed, and affect both special rates. Something like per 100 hatched +0.5% to all special odds, to a max of +25% at 5000 hatched. So even if you're F2P you can wait and wait and wait and oop a melan. TL;DR Long chain needs stronk and affect both S and A's to enable F2P from grinding for ages for an actual boost

TL;DR Could add an extra part to the equation that buffs the rate a little more and resets between each melan hatched, to close the vastly varying gap between melans a little more without affecting the rate itself too much. Just thought I'd add on to this; if it felt like buffing the long chain might have too much an effect on Melan rates, that there is always the good 'ol "rate resets after hatching" option. The boost could be buffed a little more, not to be too strong but to higher than it is and resets for each melan hatched. Though to keep an 8000 chain from having no bonus right after a hatch, the math involved can simply have a "Melan Rate + Long Chain Rate + Bonus Rate" and only the bonus rate resets per hatch. That might mitigate the problem of having such terribly random bad luck at times. Though it might feel a little convoluted to tack more parts into the equation. It took me over a year to hatch my first melan back in 2018, and I had Hypermode, Ubercharm, and Shiny Charm bonuses active since the very first week I joined...Pretty sure it was around 18k eggs hatched or so, almost all a part of chains, though admittedly I rarely tried to make use of the long chain bonus (as I didn't know it existed back then)...And that melan hatched at a 1/36 chain. I saw others on the other hand hatching melans under 1k almost every day, it made playing feel kinda rough sometimes. It was just my bad luck, and I knew that, but it still sucked. Especially since I was paying for the extra bonuses. As is, the long chain bonus doesn't seem to have such a noticable effect, though perhaps in part because not many stick to a hunt that long. And as much as the math might tell that on "average" it's fine, in the real world the math only has a few hundred samples to go on at a time; not a ton of users stick to 5k+ hunts compared to running an algorithm thousands of times. Increasing the rate even just a touch more, at least to help get that first melan might encourage users to stick to their hunts for that much longer. I'm neither here nor there on the suggestion as I haven't been back long enough to feel the current rates out, but thought I might chime in.

I know this is from a little while ago but I keep thinking about it and honestly this might be making absolutely no sense cause I'm running on very little sleep but here goes. As someone who's been here since 2016 I feel like it's... kinda both things? Pokemon from gens maybe 1-6 are EXTREMELY oversaturated because a lot of them came from when the shiny and albino rates were way too high. It was also back when (iirc) player numbers were on average higher per day. I believe the site would have sometimes 1000+ consecutive players on weekends. I know it was a long time ago but I genuinely believe we are still feeling the effects of this, where there would be hundreds and thousands of the same special mon so every special was dirt cheap. Nowadays, because the market is still feeding off of the oversaturated prices, a lot of people that are hunting for newer gen mon (which are a lot harder to grow out of control cause of the new rates) are still having to sell them for delta point rates, because nothing sells otherwise. I know they don't have to sell at that price, but if you're F2P then you want to sell everything you've hatched so you can keep buying HM. And when you're putting double the effort into hatching a special and selling it for the prices they were at when it was HALF the effort it is frustrating. Unfortunately it's like. REALLY hard to figure out an answer to this cause it's basically economics. While I don't want the market to stay as... difficult as it is right now, I would like special changes to be increased slightly because even with max possible boosts and a maxed shelter pass I can go multiple days in a row without seeing an albino. I personally think the Ubercharm should boost all three of shiny, albino and melan chances but each to a much lesser extent. Sorry for the long post n sorry if I've repeated something that's already been said, didn't have time to read every post in full. (also sorry if it doesn't make a lot of sense, my brain is pretty boiled rn)

I just wanted to bump this again and say I still want the rates reviewed again becuase it's been more time so we have more data now and maybe it's worth it now? I'm just saying since this is still up for discussion maybe we can get a new viewpoint for everyone?

bumping this, personally i think shinies are fine but albino rates specifically need a buff even if only 10-20%. obviously some ppl will get unlucky and go on a really long dry streak of shinies, but ive seen it happen WAY more often with albinos, myself going 800+ gumairy in a row without a single albino, and 250 celesteela as well. it hurts so much for those expensive hunts like exclusives+legends and just a slight boost would be really nice to have. to counterbalance it for melan rates, the uber could be nerfed slightly to 5x or something else, cause imo melan rates are fine atm. hope this can be looked at bc i think a lot of ppl agree that albino rates specifically r really in need of a change ^^

Offering my support on this especially as of late. I feel like after the TR was over for this month rates have significantly felt lower. Probably because during TR I was actually enjoying the bonus to the rates because I was ACTUALLY getting stuff... Now with it being over I've really not been getting anything. I managed to even hatch a melan during that! Now it just feels like it's never going to happen. I just want to clarify that I have full bonuses on including a Z crystal, HM, UC, SC, and full radar (hatching maybe 200-300 a day). Back when I took my hiatus (over a year in a half maybe?) the rates were so much better. My suggestion is to not go back to the old system (I read why it was changed and how many on the staff felt the market was over saturated) but too maybe increase it just a tad bit? A wee bit of a tweak if you will. Also I feel Sei day doesn't give an appropriate bonus on the days that it's triggered. If it does the rates are way too low for me to notice but I will admit it's probably just me. I have INSANELY bad luck on Sei days.

sorry, know my last post here was pretty recent, but i've had some more thoughts. while i know the current rates for specials are round what Niet wants from the site (iirc), i feel like in terms of both returning and potentially newer player the rates are... frustrating? from my perspective, having left before the nerf and returning after it, the new rates are super disappointing. it feels like the rate of shinies and albinos have been almost halved, but i'll get one melan super early and then nothing else until my chain gets quite high. i know it's mostly down to luck, but it genuinely is a shame that the hunt loop seems skewed strangely like that. i always liked getting enough shinies and albinos to get a full living dex for the mon i was hunting, and then getting the melan to top it off. it almost feels backwards now, and while i know it's not at all a bad thing to be getting early melans, it seems like the amount of 'first special melans' is bigger than ever (but obviously i'd need to collect data to be sure of that). on a newer player perspective, and obviously take this with a grain of salt because i haven't been new in 6 years... but it also looks frustrating from what i can see? boosts such as hm/uber/charm are getting harder and harder to get on this site because of the sites economy and such. on top of that, arceus is getting further and further out of sight the later a user joins, and chaining is seen as one of the best ways to get currency to work on arceus. the lower rates people are currently working with seem a little disheartening when such goals require so much effort. i think if the rates were slightly better, we'd get more new users bothering to keep playing the game, or coming back to play.

since playing this game in its early days, even with the supposed melan “buffs”, i’ve never gotten a melan. chains that i’ve had reach into the thousands still produced no melan. it’s really surprising to me that niet said that there’s an over saturation. i’ve gotten hm a few times on hunts and still nothing. if anything, it was ever only saturated if you spent money. it’s very obvious that ftp players have an extremely harder time getting these pokemon. i’ll give him that the albinos were VERY abundant. so much so that i had no joy in hatching them over shinies, even if they’re technically rarer. but now i haven’t hatched any in the few small hunts i’ve done. i’m all for adjusting the rates but it’s very obvious that it’s too drastic. i don’t want the rates to be returned. i do want them to be altered from what they are now, though.