>>51085646>With that in mind, do you think variants in a Pokemon species' color would be a good next step?Yes. I'd say to keep things simple, have 4 possible color palettes for both regular and shiny Pokémon.
In regular Pokémon, have it adopt the Stadium model where it's slight changes in hue. For shinies, the color choices can be more drastic for 2 of the palettes while the remaining 2 could be black and white in reference to melanism and leucism/albinism.
As with the aforementioned Stadium, this could bring back colors that were used in Pokémon many generations ago that haven't been seen since (Gen 2's purple shiny Charizard) or used interchangeably (pink Ditto vs purple Ditto).
It would also give another reason to make use of breeding as they can be passed down. For example, if both parents were palette 1, all offspring would also be palette 1, whereas if one parent was palette 2 and the other was palette 4, then those offspring would have an equal chance of being either unless one of the parents is holding an everstone. Shininess does not affect any of this.
Markings, like those seen in the cloned Kanto starters and the Magikarp in Magikarp Jump, could also work separate from alternate color palettes, but are less likely as that takes more effort to design than changing colors around and could also easily end up like gender differences.