Pokemon Go players argue over “bugged” Shadow Pokemon IVs
Niantic/The Pokemon CompanyEver since the introduction of Shadow Pokemon to Pokemon Go, the spooky counterparts to regular creatures have been essential to battle, but fans are wondering if the stats are rigged.
There are already plenty of Pokemon to catch in Pokemon Go, but the addition of Shadow Pokemon heralded a brand new type of Pocket Monster, and one with a unique advantage in battle.
If you manage to find and battle any of the Team Rocket grunts floating around the world in Pokemon Go, or one of the bosses like Pokemon Go’s Giovanni, you earn the chance to catch a Shadow Pokemon.
These versions of Pokemon feature a purple swirl of evil energy, bright red eyes, and an elevated attack stat, making them perfect for Pokemon Go Raids, and PvP. But, they’re not all made equal, and players still need to hope they land one with impressive IVs to begin with.
For some fans, the race to find Shadow Pokemon with good stats is an uphill challenge, and several eager players have taken to Reddit to share their data in the hopes of figuring out if there’s anything untoward going on.
Pokemon Go players argue that Shadow Pokemon are broken
Pokemon Go player DanielHorta10 has taken to Reddit, and shared a post with the comment “The disparity in IV distribution of shadow pokemin seems bugged.” They argue that compared to regular Pokemon, Shadow Pokemon seem to generally have lower stats on average.
Expanding on their opinion, they add, “Shadow Pokemon seem to be bugged, with their IVs being more frequently on the lower floor, below 15/45, below 33%.”
They then commented, “It seemed weird to me, so I printscreened the IVs of the last 50 shadow Pokemon I caught and found out that the average of their IVs distributions was 12/45.”
Before finally adding, “Am I just unlucky? Have you caught significantly more low IV shadows recently?” Several people agree in the comments, however, some of the comments disagree with both the idea and the method of testing.
One person adds underneath, saying “I’ve caught over 50 shadow Dratinis, and not a single 3 star. (I’d be happy with any 3 star!)” While another person argues the point, saying, “I always thought shadow Pokémon had lower IVs on average.. doesn’t mean it’s bugged though, maybe it’s intentional.”
Later in the thread, another Pokemon Go player adds to the conversation, saying “if you want, I can give you a sample size of a few 100s or even 1000s.” Then, they dropped a hefty set of data looking at the IVs of a lot more Shadow Pokemon.
Pokemon Go players have crunched the numbers even further, with a comment adding “Here’s the analysis on OP’s ranges per IV per WB. They all agree that the stats are uniformly distributed” Finally, another comment adds, “the IV distribution is pretty clear, it is normal distribution.”
So, it seems the original post was misguided, and a reminder that a bad run of luck doesn’t mean the game is broken. Luck doesn’t accumulate, so sometimes it is nothing more than a waiting game. Hopefully, they have better luck on this month’s Pokemon Go Community Day.