Pokemon GO recently ran a Water Festival to celebrate International Water Day on March 22, a holiday I hadn’t known existed in either America or Japan (though Niantic’s event was a bit early perhaps a better Thailand’s Water Festival/New Year, Songkran). As you’d expect, the event featured more water Pokemon, but it also finally introduced rare shiny color variants of Pokemon… or at least just Magikarp and Gyrados. Sadly, a tracker display issue and its supposed fix made it difficult for some players to catch Pokemon in general. Combined with the low odds of finding a shiny, like in the main series, fans had been worried that the end of the event meant the end of shinies. Not so.
The Water Festival has come to an end, but rare golden Magikarp are still out there. Keep an eye out, Trainers!
— Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) March 29, 2017
Shinies are an easy way to diversify the appearance of the current Pokemon without worrying about combat balance introduced with actual new ‘mon. This is exciting because it could motivate people to play more, or better yet, make use of promotional event codes, something data miners recently found. Sadly, at the moment, it seems the items are limited to avatar items, stardust, coins, and candy, not eggs or actual Pokemon.
This could be a blessing in disguise though, as trading is still being delayed. Game designer and technical artist David Hollin recently mentioned that while Niantic’s trying to deliver more on spawns reflecting real world time and weather, trading’s still at the mercy of the spoofers that currently ruin the game’s gym scene. While Niantic figures out how to do localized trading instead of an online component, players are free to stockpile high IV Pokemon and now shinies for tradings eventual implementation.
