With the Johto Tour coming on 26th February, all remaining Johto shinies will be released as part of this exciting event. The Johto Tour event was announced back on 7th December 2021, and since then, we’ve had a surprising amount of Johto shinies released as part of events. A lot of feelings about this are being shared on social media, so we wanted to talk about this on the Hub. So far since the Tour was announced we’ve seen the following be released:
- Shiny Hoothoot for New Year 2022
- Shiny Slugma for Mountains of Power
- Shiny Hoppip for February Community Day
With more events bound to happen in February before the Johto Tour, potentially we’ll see even more released before the event actually happens. We’d like to think they won’t be, but who knows? At the time of writing, we’ve gone from 16 shiny Pokémon due to be released during Johto Tour, to only 9. It is also worth mentioning that originally shiny Corsola would already have been released by now via the cancelled Pokémon Air Adventures event. So that would have taken us down to 8 new shinies. This event was cancelled last July due to Covid and has not been rescheduled so far.
This is proving to be a really controversial decision, but one that many players aren’t particularly surprised by. In the run up to the Kanto Tour we also had 9 missing shinies from the Kanto Pokédex, while this didn’t change between the event announcement, and the actual event taking place, we had seen a fair few Kanto Pokemon being released as shiny in the run up to the announcement, including the Goldeen family and Slowpoke family. But importantly, once Kanto Tour was announced, we didn’t see any more Kanto Pokémon get their shiny released until the event itself took place. Arguably we are currently even with the total shinies released for each tour, but with February events to happen still, who knows what else might change?!
Releasing the Johto shiny Pokémon after you’ve already announced they will be released for Johto Tour, feels like a bit of a kick in the teeth. Most trainers who are choosing to take part in Johto Tour will have bought the ticket early, in order to get the additional free research you got with an early purchase. Since then we’ve seen shinies we were excited to hunt for the first time on 26th February be featured spawns for events, and in fact, for every event that has a new shiny released so far, bar the Winter Holiday event which released Spheal and Galarian Darumaka. Ouch.
Looking at feedback online, many players believe this is devaluing their Johto Tour ticket, and that is a pretty shady business tactic on behalf of Niantic, as they know that most players who have bought tickets for the Johto Tour are doing so to hunt the new shinies. Johto Tour tickets aren’t cheap, especially with conversion rates making their price rocket in certain parts of the world. People want to feel they are getting what they paid for, and they paid for 16 new shinies, not 9. It feels misleading that the amount of new shinies featured in the event has changed so much, particularly with Hoppip being one of the featured increase shiny chance Pokémon, right after they feature in Community Day. Hoppip in particular has left people feeling really confused, it’s gone from a much desired shiny, to one we imagine many players now won’t even bother to shiny check during Johto Tour.
Other trainers don’t mind so much, and feel like it means less pressure on them to hunt out some of the newer shinies, as with Hoppip being a Community Day shiny, most people will be easily able to obtain 3 shinies on Community Day to have for their living shiny dex. The Hoppip family are such fun shinies, and now you don’t have to worry about getting them during an already busy event! Getting 3 of the same shiny would definitely be a hard grind, and Jumpluff will be getting more viability in PvP as a result of this decision too. Plus, any shiny Hoppip or PvP IV Hoppip obtained during Johto Tour can be saved to evolve for the exclusive move during December 2022 Community Day.
There is an argument that events like this shouldn’t focus on shinies, but Pokémon GO for the majority of players is a game focused on shiny hunting! We can now hunt for XL Candy, different Unown are featured, as well as potential rare spawns and a regional, so there are other things to hunt, but we would argue that most people playing this event are interested in the shinies above all else. There will be people hunting for PvP IVs, and aiming to complete their Pokédex, but shiny hunting will be dominant for most.
For Gold version there is one exclusive shiny, Mantine, and for Silver version two, the Phanpy family. Of the yet to be released shiny Pokémon, there is no mention of increased spawns or shiny rates outside of Mantine and the Phanpy family. It seems safe to assume Tyrogue will be egg exclusive, so that is one less family to shiny hunt in the wild for, yet it isn’t even mentioned in the egg pool in the event announcement! There are no mentions of the Remoraid family, Girafarig, or Corsola at all. We’d hazard a guess that Corsola will end up raid exclusive which is a whole other issue, but so far it appears Remoraid and Girafarig won’t be boosted spawns, despite being brand new shinies. We’ve seen a plenty of Kanto Pokémon be announced for the event due to their being necessary to complete the Johto Pokédex, but zero mention of certain Johto Pokémon. Mantine will have to be shiny in the wild as Mantyke doesn’t make an appearance until Sinnoh, unless Niantic opt to do something unusual with it. Presumably Smeargle will be available via extra photobombs, so none of these new shinies can be released via that mechanism. Why release brand new shinies without them being featured spawns, especially with fewer shinies being new to the event as days go by?
Looking at feedback on social media, it seems most players who have already bought their Johto Tour ticket feel they’ve been cheated out of part of what they’ve paid for. 16 new shinies, not 9. How do you feel about these new Johto shinies being released in the run up to the Johto Tour? Let us know in the comments!
