I think if I were to try to make something like shinies work, I might lean more towards alphas from Pokemon Legends: make them 50% larger and give them some sort of obvious additional particle effect and glowy texture. But even this would be inconsistent, since pets come in a variety of sizes (there are even ranges within pet species) and some like the void pets may not be able to take an additional texture effect. You also can’t really ignore that the majority of pets aren’t wild - are a certain portion of newly posted BMAH Ethereal Soul-Trader and Thundering Serpent Hatchling going to become shiny? Because those already sell for a million gold.
I appreciate that request in Kaivax’s post, but he posted in the alpha forums, specifically blocking anyone who wasn’t preselected for the alpha from participating. He did this despite there being nothing to test on the alpha besides the “channel to cage” ability, which I can only assume was once again an intentional choice to stymie discourse on the subject.