Concerning trend regarding raids

Pokemon GO PoGo Discussion
#1

The raid meta in Pokemon Go is dying a slow, painful death.

A couple of things:

  1. Niantic recently announced they are decreasing the amount of rare candies earned from raids and increasing the amount of candies earned from PvP.
  2. Many of the last community days have been designed toward PvP oriented Pokemon. The last new community day that made a significant change to a Pokemon Go meta was Garchomp receiving Earth Power. And it also impacted the Master League as well.
  3. This.
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I understad Niantic is a corporation and they can do what they want as far as the movesets and their parameters… but a common move like Psychic is 7% stronger DPS-wise and a whopping 31% stronger in DPS*TDO^3 than its signature move in PvE. Let that sink in for a minute. With the current trend, Niantic might as well tell us outright that they are intentionally nerfing raids in an effort to transition the player base to PvP. It’s a bit disappointing to say the least. I don’t really know what I was expecting, but it’s sad to see. Hopefully, Niantic makes some changes and they don’t screw up the other legendary signature moves. Maybe PvE will turn around one of these days. This is a dark time for the raid meta. Thoughts?

#2

Raids were boring anyway. If a death is involved, it was already dead a long time ago. One side of the fun was to join with friends (transitionally also from far away), and that will stay regardless any weakness of a new move. Now they enhanced the mega system which will give and gave already a slight boost to the raid scene, but it was not a real enhancement. Most people play PoGo anyway just randomly and they won’t care a lot. Btw, do we already know for sure it’s a one-turn move?

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#3

Yep, not mine I’ll add, borrowed from a random facebook group

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#4

I agree with @stativision, it’s been dead for a long time.

I play now more through force of habit and an unwillingness to stop the project I started in 2017. I get excited by the prospect of maybe, 1 in 10, events/releases at best.

My local group is quiet, we do raid hour, that’s pretty much it and how it has been for a year or more.

The problem, as I’ve said elsewhere, is partially with niantic (we still need to see what nonsense the raid consultation yields) for shifting the balance of raid rewards from contribution to overall time, which I recall was mid-late 2020 around the mega release/rejig.

The “problem” is also the community, most see raids as a means to an end - the reward - the quicker they get there the better. As people who enjoy competitive raiding, we’re outnumbered massively by those who collect. They want a hundo, shiny, shundo ideally and the variants. Luster Purge could have a base power of 1 in PvE and 80+% of players would still raid it.

Yes, we’re being pushed out and I fully expect the trend of Apex (or whatever) variants to be pay-for-early-access to be the new norm. They trialled it with Lugia/Ho-Oh because nothing could realistically make them stand out and it worked. LP+ on the other hand? Say a base power of 130? That would be good. For me though, not £12 good.

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#5

Lugia is hopeless in PvE, but Ho-Oh not. Sacred Fire being a slightly faster Meteor Mash could surely push it to the top. But we all know, Niantic doesn’t care.

#6

Another problem is Covid shifted Raid culture to Remote raids - about half of the Raids I do these day are raids in the USA via Friends in the USA. So to do those Raids, I have to buy Remote Raid passes - which are significantly more expensive than Premium Passes. (Premium Passes are included in Bundles, Remote Raid Passes aren’t, which significantly reduces the cost of Premium’s) So when I’m going to do a Raid, usually I’m not going to do it unless I’m certain to win AND I’m going to get a useful reward from it. (Even the Raids in Canada are normally done via Remotes - last Sunday was the first day in literally years that I’ve been able to do more than 2 non-soloable raids in a day with Free or Premium passes. Shame it was Kangaskhan.)

Also, XL Candy. XL Candy is an aggravation. And the best place to get it is in Raids. So if I’m already paying for a Raid, I want to do a Raid where I’m going to get XL Candy for a Pokemon that I might, potentially, want to raise to Level 50.

Sometimes I do miss the Raid Train days, where I’d spend the previous 30 days getting 50 coins per day to buy a 1480 Box that had 15+ Premium Passes, then did 15 Raids and didn’t mind doing a few weird ones or challenging raids (like Duoing a Tier 4 or some Legendary, or seeing if a single Diglet could beat a Shinx, etc.). But until those days come back, and there’s a better way to get XL Candy for Legendaries, I think this is the new Normal for Raids.

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#7

Apex Ho-Oh with SF+ is Reshiram that costs more to power up. I wouldn’t pay £12 for a fancier looking Resh again - the fault is mine for buying the ticket before I knew what the “prize” was.

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#8

I absolutely agree with everything you said. It sums it up absolutely perfectly about how it is and was.

I used all 5 passes on Sunday, even though it was a rubbish raid boss, it did remind me of the good old days, 4 of us, everyone got a shiny or a hundo.

I absolutely get remote raiding, it’s a vital route for access to anyone in a rural/suburban area. It’s the switch to time based rewards and xl (as you say) that’s driven lots of raiding remote.

The only thing that can save raiding in person is a significant change in rewards - both bundles and xl - to promote individual damage and smaller lobbies. It won’t happen because it doesn’t benefit niantic financially.

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#9

Seeing that the new Mega Bosses have more then 80 000 CP smaller lobbies will become less and less possible.

#10

Some people may complain but all they need to do is complexify PVE battling and yes I just made up that word just now, I do things like this all the time. The majority of the moves already have different properties from PVP to PVE, they just need to actually brainstorm and find a way to implement more abilities/buffs/debuffs into the raid scenario without breaking everything. For example if you’re raiding something which knows Sand Tomb and the entire raid party is debuffed until it’s literally impossible to stay in the fight and win, then that’s a problem. I think it would take some work but I think it’s possible.

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#11

I meant regular Sacred Fire Ho-Oh, not the Apex shadow.

#12

Like the game isn’t already?

Remember all the latency issues are there for one year and and now it’s not just in GBL because of a game-wide bug.

Cookie cutter events for 2 straight years, no boosts, no interactive events, nothing.

Meanwhile everything is way more money and sanity taxing to play. When you play something and it makes you feel like you are paying for a product instead of a game, it is not a good sign, and you bet it’s gotta go worse.

When a game intended for casual exploration degenerates into this, it is on the way to a slow and painful death, and always has been since they buffed the Shadows.

#13

Most raids I can duo, this gives me less rewards but as XL is the only important reward and is not dependent on time. Losing some RC/revives is well worth not having to wait for others and announce raids 1/2 hour in advance.

When I can’t do the duo all I do is invite random people who are connected and usually I would get the necessary 3rd person who does not bail. If it does not work I get out and try again with new different people.

Most high level players in my community do the same. This means my telegram group is dead and we barely join even for raid hour. There are only 5 people I have seen in person in the last 6 months in my community, this incudes raid hours, community days, etc. I have more than 20+ lucky friends waiting…

I am sorry but Alolan Geodude is not going to make it. The live comunity is slowly dying and being replace by couch potatos.

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#14

I would have to say the community itself is dying bevause the game starts looking more like it is selling a failed product instead of providing an immersive experience.

It has always been since the pandemic, and nothing will change the decline.

Hate these words anyway you want but nothing about Niantic and GO from March 2020 is POSITIVE.

The game is too far gone and it could end up like Pokemon Duel at any given moment.

#15

Yep, completely agree, see my response on the Mega-Raid thread if you have half an hour to read my standard essay-length post.

#16

Is it possible to get Xl rare candy from pvp? I have not played the new season and plan on playing one day during Go battle day Master league just to get the Elite tm’s. I find it easier to dominate and go on long winning streaks during Go Battle Day.

I still raid hard on relevant raid bosses that are top tier Master league Pokémon or raid attackers. Best way to Xl candy so far. If pvp offered Xl rare candy, that might change the way I play, but I enjoy raids, it’s a strangely relaxing activity for me.

I do miss the days when 10-30 random people piled into a parking lot for new raids bosses and and half the people would get out to chat. Kyogre, Groundon, and Mewtwo were absolute insanity when released. I still raid mostly in person, but most of the old people i raided with don’t communicate as much since the remote raids were released.

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#17

Unfortunately no.

I agree with this 100%.

I miss those days as well. Sadly though, I feel like those days are a thing of the past. For all of the reasons mentioned in this thread and more, I don’t see how Pogo can consistently have moments like that.

I’m in the suburbs, so most of my raids are remote. Our discord is active and for the most part, people use decent counters. If I had the option, maybe I’d raid in person more often. But being in the suburbs and driving all over the place for random Tapu raids isn’t ideal for me.

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#18

They could remove remote passes (not likely as it is a money making machine)

They could increase rewards for live raiding, some brainstorm ideas

  • More RC
  • Higher chances of shinies
  • More XL
  • Lower IV floor

You could limit the use of remote raid passes. If you don’t want to screw rural players too much just a walking requirement could do, something along the lines “walk 5km before you are allowed to use another remote pass”. At least this way anyone who wants to do more than one raid during raid hour needs to move from the sofa.

PoGo was a waking outdoors game before COVID, Niantic did a good job on keeeping the game alive during the pandemic but now they need to revert most of these changes if they want to return to the original gaming experience.

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#19

This wouldn’t bring back my local raiding community, just kill what little of it is left unfortunately. My community has been struggling to even exist since late 2017. Nobody raided before remote passes, why would they raid after?

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#20

My Discord group is fairly active but nothing out of the ordinary. When rare XL was announced for in person raiding during Johto tour, someone asked why rare XL for in person raids wasn’t announced & that it is significant enough news to make an announcement for. Quickly one of our mods replied and said that rare XL from in person raiding was not important enough to make an announcement. And quite a few people in our group agreed with the mod that rare XL from in person raids wasn’t that big of a deal.

During Johto tour, I received plenty of invites. On Discord, lots of people were calling out raids. but not many of them were in person raiders. There were some remote raiders asking why they weren’t getting XL rares. When they learned that you had to raid in person, they didn’t complain. They just continued doing more remote raids.

My point is that no matter what incentives there are to in person raiding, I think that Niantic will have a tough time getting remote raiders to do more in person raids.

Niantic could’ve reverted all of the changes a long time ago if they wanted to. I don’t have any numbers, but I’m going to assume that there are a lot of people who never knew the original gaming experience. All they know is incense before it got nerfed, remote raids, expanded radius for spinning gyms, don’t know what ex-raids are, etc. And these players who only know the current Pogo probably spend their fair share of money, but are not as invested in the game as long time Pogo vets. So if Niantic decided to go back to the original game, they’d probably lose a decent portion of their players because newer players would be getting a different version of the game that they initially started playing.