I'd like to weigh in here I see both sides of this and will say again I AM COMPLETELY AGAINST the lowering of the shiny encounter rate. Why? one might be asking themselves, I've been playing the game for well over 3 years and have been a member for the majority of my time. For one reason shinies. I've never complained about only catching 1 or 2 or duplicates of one's I've already had. But here recently I'm going on close to 10 WEEKS of membership, without a shiny encounter. You can rant and talk about luck or you need to play for 36 hours straight, I've never had to before and don't intend on starting now. Whats the trade off? I can't catchemall, and i can't even battle staff to fill out the spots in the pokedex, ( Don't get me wrong, I don't want everyone to be able to have legendaries, that defeats the purpose of them, but I haven't seen one valid reason why we can't get them for data, but i digress) I don't find the money or xp bonus useful and here's why: 1) you got 0 pokedollars and that includes a bonus of 0 pokedollars (we've all got that message) 2) you give me one good reason why, you can if you're lucky, get 20k xp from a wild poke. 20k to some might look good but when its out of 3 million it's a joke. I set a goal to first get a S green team(check) then I thought well since I can't catchemall I want to get all the ones that can be caught shiny. Two month plus starting on a third of membership without a shiny encounter, and you want to make it even more rare, to that I say neigh; and i'm not going to mention the amount of money spent on the S bonus chance in the TS.
As for those that are talking about ones that aren't worth anything (Shiny Pokes), making them more scarce is NOT going to make your Shiny Rat worth more money. On a personal note and love me or hate me, Shinies are way overpriced as they stand now, I don't care how rare they are, once the took out the shiny boost (vets remember and know what i'm talking about) in my opinion , that in and of itself nerfed the value of shiny pokemon, unless you happen to possess a Shiny UC/UO. Value however is in the eye of not just the beholder but of the holder as well. You can claim your S Rat is worth 3 million and refuse to sell it for any less but until you find someone who agrees, your S rat isn't worth 30K.
As for reducing NPC time 2 days is nothing when the wait time is so obnoxiously long. Don't get me wrong I don't mind skating past the lvl 15 npc's but when I'm trying to reach lvl 99 and only have mt silver 5f and DD to look to, and the whopping maybe, 20k xp per kill, I just want to hit the gyms and at least do half of the last level so it feels like I'm making progress. Before anyone calls me out for it, I KNOW, mmo, fun, grind hours upon hours and blah blah blah. It is fun until you spend 4 hours and realize that after killing everything you're still poor and not even close to being lvl 99. I'm just talking about the last few levels when you're realistically limited to two maybe three areas.
I always feel bad when voicing my opinions because i feel like they come across as being ungrateful. I really enjoy the game and am appreciative of all the hard work of the staff and want to thank the other donators as well. Maybe and I get wanting everyone to feel included but maybe when dealing with topics of this nature only those who partake of the gifts for donations should be asked what if anything we want changed. From my understanding staff can give themselves whatever poke they choose so why the harsh opinion on lowering us plebeians chances of earning a Shiny?