Niantic’s problem isn’t that players are over or have forgiven Pokemon Go’s Dynamax/Gigantimax raids – it’s that the company keeps pushing them in the face of disappointment, anxiety, and heavy shrugs. I’ve felt this more keenly recently not only because of the Legendary Flight event, but because I’ve been meeting more new players and returnees who are just as confused about the system now as we all were when it first came out.
While many became educated through the event, it wasn’t a pleasant learning experience, and some may have learned (perhaps falsely) how “easy” the content was, until they became separated from players who were actually prepared, as with the Giganatamax raids. So for today’s Massively on the Go, I don’t want to retread the whole “Max raids are messy,” bit, but rather I’ll focus on how Niantic’s implementation of that system with the Legendary Flight event’s poor planning really continued the trend of building negative player experiences in the pursuit of monetization.
What’s looking up
Let’s start out with the good. We had a prep-event that gave us some free Dynamax pokemon. As another veteran player noted, even though we play in busy areas, few people drop Gigantamax ‘mon, which grant power spots a small chance of spawning Dynamax ‘mon. My friend and I drop them pretty frequently but have gotten only maybe three or four between us since the feature’s release, so that method’s unreliable to say the least. Getting free ones from the prep event, especially ones that aren’t terrible against the target raid boss, is nice, especially since, unlike the wild ones from Power Spots, they have a stat floor of 10/10/10 (out of 15/15/15).
Getting 500 “free” particles isn’t too bad either. It would have been better to see a particle pack as it would have been easier to avoid accidentally hitting your daily cap (for casual players who aren’t paying attention to turn-ins being applied to the cap), plus it would have actually helped veterans afford better upgrades instead of putting in minimal effort, which is what these quests encouraged in free-to-play players. But clearly Niantic wanted to give a “boost” to the overall Max Raid scene and not truly help the player community. I say this because my own community has numerous players, including veterans, who simply don’t invest in the system and leech off of everyone else’s investments in Gmax raids, and others I spoke to have noticed the same in their play partners or larger communities.
Then there’s the smaller scale of the event. The Legendary Flight fights have been for four players or fewer. This isn’t seriously solo content, which I think we’d all appreciate, but it can be done in pairs, so that’s kind of nice if you ignore the fact that the birds were already small-scale – even soloable – four years ago in normal raids. Still, I met several players who are heavy spenders who genuinely seemed to enjoy the challenges and questioned why others weren’t prepared, so the spendy-crew got content that is at least somewhat challenging for them, even if they’re 1% of the player population.
I also have to admit that the challenge isn’t quite as bad for some of the birds as one might think if you’re a high-level veteran player, invested in the system, and don’t get hit with any bugs, such as rubberbanding, dodges being ignored, or just outright client clashes (which seem to be happening more and more these days across both android and iPhone). I know that may seem like a lot of prerequisites, and it is, but it’s decent duo content for long-timers and even soloable if you also pay for the premium mushrooms, which we’ll get to later. We’re trying to start out positive!
Finally, people like the birds. We complain about them coming back all the time, but there is some nostalgia there. And truthfully, that’s it. That’s all the positive I’m really seeing out there. Not just this event, but this system is really, truly poorly thought-out.
Learning to fly
One thing that’s nice, in theory, is that the pre-event gave players incentives to power up pokemon needed for the event. The problem? They didn’t really give us much ammo. Giving players the very basic pokemon, not even the evolved forms, is kind of like giving someone a gun that doesn’t have the trigger or ammo. Like, yeah, you could hit someone with it, but it’s not exactly a gun at that point; it’s just a blunt object.
That’s what giving Beldum to new players or Scorbunny to returnees is like without the candy to raise them or particles to unlock at least the (discounted) 600 particles to unlock shields and healing. In fact, one could argue that the very first Wooloo and Skwovet players quest for would be better, as we had to unlock a move on one of them as part of the questline. Again, the prep event was better than nothing, but I almost think that even as a veteran, I may have been better off without the prep-event quest distracting my use of particles.
Had it not been for the prep event, I would have focused on unlocking more level three upgrades and raiding only as needed. This was the most palpable during the lead-up to Moltres, when I was so focused on budget spending that I forgot the Gmax Kingler I got on Saturday would have been an upgrade over some of my current ‘mon for Moltres on Monday. Instead, I had long since prepped other ‘mon in line instead, and at least two other players I know were in a similar situation, though mostly because they have little access to Gmax raids and didn’t want to break from their normal communities to get them done.
As I noted, Niantic did take things in the right direction with the G-Max raid day changes we saw in December with Lapras. Those changes don’t apply here, though. While we had the Gmax Kingler event (which we’ll get to soon) in the middle of all this, the messy way it’s implemented once again turned the scene into a messy zerg that broke up not just communities but even smaller groups, including my own, as many people worried about getting content done for themselves. Often you can feel that if you’re too slow, you’ll miss out, and while I’ve found a place that I knew would last my group the entire time as free-to-play players, that FOMO still hit the others.
The biggest issue? Particle gains through messy, sometimes hyper-specific play instructions to game the system. The system is already not very intuitive, as I realized when a former play partner returned for this event. While she’d done a couple of Max raids before, this specific day/event felt needlessly complicated, and while I’m sure some players felt rewarded for their single extra raid at the end of four days of shackled particle usage, I think most of us can agree that “fun” is not the word anyone would use for it.
Refocusing specifically on the bird encounters, I have to also point out all the bugs. Niantic’s known for them, but these didn’t necessarily break the game, just made it annoyingly more difficult/impossible, as did the automatic countdown feature for when a lobby is full. Crashes in both cases made the encounters harder than they should be, and Niantic’s no-refund policy on particle packs, which surprisingly is accepted by a large portion of the playerbase, would go into the more negative section of my review for most any other company. Sadly, POGOÂ players at this point seem to accept bad service as a standard, and that problem is probably a big part of why we continue to see Niantic fail upwards.
Finally, as I’ve been alluding to, there was the Gigantamax Kingler event wedged in at the end of Zapdos week. That alone would be bad enough, but Niantic was also interrupting each bird’s introduction with the prep events, causing players to juggle priorities, which isn’t fun, but it at least had uses against the upcoming Moltres. Returning to the hyper-specific ways people were gaming the system to milk the event, though, I have to note that Gmax Kingler served only as a major reminder that Niantic is dead-set on making free-to-play as painful as possible while also heavily monetizing a game into a pokemon casino.
Gmax Kingler on its own would have been fine enough, but piling it in with the birds broke more hardcore communities. It felt like cheating going to a new area for Gmax ‘mon, and I certainly missed people from that area, but I saw a lot of familiar faces at the new location. Some seemed almost embarrassed being spotted away from our usual local, while others were almost shameless in their pursuit to “be the best that ever was.” I truly think that with a system that was more straightforward and didn’t require people to break group to walk X distance for their “raid ticket,” Niantic would have a stronger case for Max Raids being limited to locals only, but instead it’s only serving as a funnel for whales and the small fries attending to feed off their scraps.
Missteps and misfires
So first, let’s repeat: Niantic is asking players to fight pokemon we’ve had for years that can be soloed, but now in a mode that heavily restricts them and gives so-so rewards that just aren’t as cool as getting the pokemon itself. It’s nice to get candy, but having only 10 balls to catch a legendary pokemon means there’s a good chance you’re walking away without your main prize.
Then there was the complete lack of Rock-type pokemon and Fast Attacks to make the birds more intuitive for the masses (and admittedly easier). On the one hand, I get that Niantic may have wanted these to be a challenge, and surely it wanted to drag out the content as long as possible since that’s been the modus operandi as of late. That being said, challenging content is not something I’ve heard the base POGOÂ playerbase asking for, just a very small, elite-minded subset.
That doesn’t mean Niantic shouldn’t develop content for those players, but it does seem scalable content would be best. Especially since I’ve noted a significant drop in customer service (and long standing issues with moral and ethical responsibility), I’ve dropped the number of remote raid invites I send to other players and focus on getting raids done on a smaller scale – i.e., things most players tell me isn’t possible is but is if you actually invest in the right pokemon. The challenge has been there if you look for it, so Niantic practically forcing a less scalable mode (1-4 players, down from 1-20 in normal raids) is both unnecessary and unwanted by the masses.
In terms of the Rock pokemon, while I’ve heard the arguments that traditional ‘mon like Golem not having Dynamaxed in Sword and Shield and thus probably won’t be seen in the scene for POGO, several Rock types are. Coalossal and Drednaw are both Rock types. Coalassal would be best, as it learns Rock fast moves and could deal good damage even with just a Dynamax form, while Drednaw does not and would require a Gigantamax form with a Rock move, so Niantic would have some options on how accessible/prevailing the rocks were.
Alternatively, the devs could have released the Copperajah line, a Steel-type with access to Rollout, a Rock Fast Move. That would give players a non-STAB Rock option that’s weak to one bird, neutral to another, and resists the third. In short, Niantic had options but chose to hamstring players: By now, most players know that Rock is great against the birds, so asking them to sub-optimal types for such a well-known, years-old content seems almost spiteful for base content. If it were a kind of special Research challenge achievement via Medals (like “Defeated a Legendary Bird with no Rock-type Attacks”), it would be one thing, but that’s not what Niantic did.
Then there’s the post-victory issue. As I noted above, dropping pokemon in Power Spots can spawn catchable pokemon at that location, and dropping Gigantamax ‘mon can spawn Dynamaxes. The problem, though, is that the content is challenging and frequent enough that even high-end players aren’t dropping anything off after these Birds (or Gmax raids) because they can’t afford to split up their team. Heck, even my newbie friends were fairly distressed when they came late into a lobby and couldn’t assemble the meager teams they were able to pull together.
And that’s the interesting part: The people dropping off the most often seem to be newbies and people not highly invested in the system. They don’t really have or see the need to keep their parties intact. Especially for newer players, they don’t have access to Gmax ‘mon, and now that they do, then given the choice between legendary candy or Krabby (the only family they may now have a Gmax ‘mon of), they’re naturally choosing the legendaries. This means that Niantic has made the odds of the already rarely spawning Dynamax ‘mon even lower.
Let’s talk about logistics next. POGO and Niantic now request in-person activities on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of each week. We also usually have at least one weekend event, sometimes two, and I’m leaving out “week” (usually 4-6 day) long events when you may want to do something particular. It’s one thing with an MMO or other online game you can play while you’re sitting at home, but a 6 p.m. start night during the work/school week is rough.
To release the birds en masse only at 6 p.m. on a weekday bad enough, but they also generally take all 800 of your daily cap particles. If you’re tricky and live in the right area (or are willing to drive to other locations), you know you can get a few hundred more than that. That’s not a large portion of the playerbase, though.
That means if you miss the initial push, much as regular raiding, you’ll miss the crowd that comes out, catches one, and leaves. And the problem is that those players admittedly are underprepared but still useful as fodder. If you have 3/4 players cheering on your maxed out Metagross against Articuno, maybe you can beat it. But if there’s no one, you either pay for Max Mushrooms to boost your stats to maybe solo it (which is gross but possible), or you don’t get it done, and that’s not fun.
Now, let’s return to that G-Max Kingler event wedged in there during the end of Zapdos week and right before Moltres. What really hurt both events was the fact that Particles are needed for raiding and powering up ‘mon plus Niantic introducing another big ‘mon with a time limit during this whole thing. Without paying extra for particles, the three events colliding felt like a cash grab even to new players.
Having roughly half the week interrupted by the distraction of the upcoming birds’ quests already took away from the event as a whole, but G-Max Kingler coming out right before the final leg was a greedy move that really drove home something I’ve been feeling personally but the newbies really noticed: The incentive to get good G/D-Max pokemon is killed by how fast you often need to invest in new ‘mon before they feel useless, either because you need to invest in what you have now to do content – as opposed to the current raid system where you can often hoard now and invest much later – or because it’s painfully obvious that the ‘mon will soon be replaced with something much better.
This event was painfully transparent as an artificial challenge. Between the lack of Rock types and pacing, it was both stressful and cash-grabby. It’s not that people didn’t enjoy any part of the event, but anything we may have looked forward to – such as the release of a favored pokemon – was essentially canceled out by other factors. I know I skipped out on Articuno raids because even though it’s my favorite, its use in the future is questionable and I had Zapdos coming up, which, while a repeat legendary for me, feels like a better investment for rare candy than Toxtricity, something that should return to at least the egg pool if not wild spawns.
While it’s nice to have duo content for long-time players, making it technically soloable with a roughly $4 premium item is insane. For context, the raid itself is valued at roughly $1.50, but at least the particles are free daily. The thing is, if you live in a rural area and have no other options, you’re paying roughly 2.6 times the value of the actual raid for a single completion. Remote raids – which also are premium items – would fix this, and I still find it highly insulting for Niantic to restrict this system, as city players in high-density areas already have access to near-infinite raids.
Putting a price-of-entry tag on that for the global audience sucked but at least was originally the same cost. Getting people out is one thing, but restricting the content to local-only kills it, and the mushrooms didn’t solve the issue for Gigantamax Kingler, which was active during this event. While I’m targeted in gyms far more than your average player, the fact that someone spent the Kingler event time taking me out of gyms instead of being social helps highlight how inaccessible group content is if you aren’t super plugged into your local POGO scene, and I say that having moved to a new location for Gigantamax content.
Slowing down the event’s pace/overlapping and reworking the particle system –particularly in terms of being used as raid passes and leveling currency – would have not only made the bird content last longer (which Niantic seems desperate to do with POGO in general) but made it far more enjoyable, especially for anyone not able to meet friends and play on nearly a daily basis to get the most out of this three-week slog of an event.
Final notes
The event’s not yet over, but the way Niantic set it up, it may as well be. The thing that people I talk to keep saying is, “Finally I can just focus on raiding Moltres.” That’s it. That’s all anyone wanted: to tackle the actual raid. While a prep period is nice in theory, intruding on other events ruins the concept of a prep period and the invaded event. To do this twice to a single event feels like a design sin, unless your goal is to either tank your game or milk your community by adding in premium items to take the sting out of the interruptions.
I know they say that hindsight is 20/20, but the fact of the matter is that at least we’ve identified these issues post-release. Niantic has continued to push the Max raid system with very few fixes or adjustments, and none if you consider non-event based changes. The main solution being “spend (more) money” only serves to highlight the game as what it feels like it’s slowly becoming: a money pit.
A friend recently sent me a video of Trevor Noah talking about his experience with Pokemon GO, and I joked that the game he was talking about is dead. Niantic is stymying wild ‘mon releases, and rare spawns are either ultra rare (like Unown or the Lake Trio) or simply stat based, like a 15/15/15 wild Charmander. Asking people to now zerg at one location and then walk as fast as they can to generate “raid passes” so they can then find the raid train powered by big spenders isn’t what I think any of us dreamed of when we first heard of “Pokemon in real life.” Unless the company is taken over someone with better self-reflection skills or more empathy for the fanbase, I fear Pokemon GO will continue to nose-dive into irrelevance.
Massively OP’s Andrew Ross is an admitted Pokemon geek and expert ARG-watcher. Nobody knows Niantic and Nintendo like he does! His Massively on the Go column covers Pokemon Go as well as other mobile MMOs and augmented reality titles!
