I do agree with the vast majority of this, but I think there’s an argument to be made that sometimes it’s nice to do it for fun in cases where there’s no harm in it. Mostly I’m talking about the games that no longer have internet connectivity, so everything from the 3DS to before. I don’t necessarily hold the belief that “shinies only have value because they’re rare”. If somebody wants a shiny starter just for the hell of it while doing a nostalgia playthrough or because it looks nice, I mean why not. Sometimes the only reason is because a black charizard looks sick as fuck and that’s ok.
What do you guys think about hacked Pokémon? Because I have a couple of opinions on it.
First, I don’t like hacked shinies. The thing about shinies is that it’s only an aesthetic change and nothing changes gameplay-wise. There’s no reason to hack one, unlike, say, a perfect IV competitive Pokémon. The thing about shinies is that they only have value because they’re rare. That’s it. Meaning, hacking a shiny takes away its value.
Where my opinion differs is on hacking shinies for competitive purposes, that being because it actually affects gameplay, and there’s actually another reason. As mentioned above, shinies only have value due to their rarity, and thus hacking them completely defeats the purpose of a shiny. On the other hand, you can pretty easily get a max IV or EV Pokémon in scarlet and violet. I’ve seen some people claiming that maxing out a team takes them 3 hours, but with a decent amount of money it takes me, like, an hour at most. At the end of the day, it’s not that much time or effort to max out a team and thus hacking doesn’t really matter. If you honestly care that much about hacking competitive Pokémon, then I honestly think you’re overreacting.
Those are my thoughts, anyway. See ya!