At the time of writing, it is May which means we have just strolled out of the first third of 2024 and into the second – what a great time to review the Pokémon Debuts so far this year. The headline news is that…
4 months into 2024, we have had 1 new Pokémon released in the wild.
Let’s take a closer look
Pokémon Debuts so far in 2024
| Pokémon | Debut Event | Encounter method |
Drampa
|
Lunar New Year 2024 | Raids |
Enamorus
|
Valentines Day 2024 | Elite Raids |
Poipole
|
World of Wonders | Special Research |
Charcadet
|
Pokémon Horizons: The Series | Eggs |
Varoom
|
Taken Treasures | Eggs |
Annihilape
|
Raging Battles: GO Battle Week | Evolve Primeape |
Lycanroc (Dusk)
|
Lustrous Odyssey | Raids, Eggs & Field Research |
Palkia (Origin)
|
GO Tour 2024 | Raids |
Dialga (Origin)
|
GO Tour 2024 | Raids |
Heracross (Mega)
|
Mega Heracross Raid Day / Bug Out | Raids |
Wiglett
|
Rediscover Your World | Wild Spawn (beach biome) |
Let’s break it down…
From the information above, we have had 10 new Pokémon debut (including Charcadet and Wiglett’s evolutions), 3 new forms debut, and 1 mega.
The sad thing about these debuts is that every new ‘mon above (apart from Wiglett) costs money if you want to grind it. Particularly with the hatching events, players with only their infinite incubator plus a few extras would not stand a chance at hatching a Charcadet for example, when it took me 48 eggs (16 incubators) to get mine.
You might be saying ‘Hang on Phrixu! Aren’t field research tasks free?’ and to that I say yes, they are. However, the specific tasks required for a Rockruff encounter were ‘Hatch 3 eggs’ and ‘Win 2 raids’, which if you’re trying to grind throughout the 4-day event costs premium items.
What might have caused this shift?
With the introduction of Gen 2, the game was flooded with new spawns. Where a casual player needed 6 months to find Charmander, they could catch at least one form of all 3 starters the first night. They had periods of floods of new Pokemon, then trickled more out. Nowadays, everything is drip-fed and un-fun.
The second part of this is the change of spawn behaviour. Clustering spawns around PokéStops decreased the need to explore. Once they replaced the Nearby with specific Pokéstop locations, the need to ‘hunt’ for Pokémon in the traditional sense was decreased. So, it’s a lot easier to find new Pokemon, AND the release cycle is poor. Catching Pokemon is too easy and lacks engagement.
This is probably why raids and eggs (which are heavily monetised) have been the featured release methods for a lot of Pokémon (along with straight paid access to a few). Niantic is tied to TPC’s pace of releasing Pokemon, so floods of new species aren’t an option. They’ve also killed the concept of hunting Pokemon, so any attempt to release more Pokémon would still leave you with a very short window of interest.
Impact on the Player Base
This is a huge oversight I feel, as it leeches the enjoyment from the F2P community. Don’t get me wrong, you can argue that all of these methods can be accessed for free – using daily free raid passes, the infinite incubator and utilising field research encounters. However, part of the fun is getting the new ‘dex entry during the event the ‘mon debuts in… not 4 months later when everyone is talking about the current new Pokémon debut. This leads to players feeling left out, not part of the hype and community… ultimately leading to less motivation and picking up the games less.
The rarity of Pokémon in eggs is such an issue too, with it taking months to hatch the new Pokémon and then a chunk of rare candy in addition to that to be able to evolve it.
It feels like such a shame when you compare the current gameplay to the earlier years when you would see silhouettes of new Pokémon nearby and everyone was in a frenzy to catch as many new ‘mon in the wild as possible! There were lures everywhere, it was fun to see. Nowadays the only silhouettes you will see now are costumed Pokémon.
I love the idea of Wiglett being a biome-based spawn and it tied really well into the global release of the new catch backgrounds/biomes. Some players reported issues with being at a beach with no Wiglett spawns but this seemed to be an issue with the map not having the area logged as a beach, rather than Wiglett just being rare. I’m looking forward to the next time I go to the coast to be able to find one. For those in pretty landlocked areas, some riversides and lakes have beaches mapped along the water’s edge, which should help to make Wiglett more accessible.
Recently, when we get a ‘mon released in the wild, it is found to be insanely rare – particularly when the event rotation overrides the seasonal spawns for the vast majority of days each month. Frigibax anyone? I think some more unannounced releases into the wild would get the community really excited .
Devil’s Advocate
Enough of the daydreaming… let’s take a look to see why the new debuts were released as they are. It seems the release method for Enamorous, Poipole, etc. was logical…
- Enamorus, O.Palkia and O. Dialga are Legendary Pokémon and as such are Raid-exclusive.
- Similar for Mega Heracross – we wouldn’t expect anything else for Mega debuts
- Drampa is a counterpart to Turtonator and Druddigon, who are also in raids and research only, so it makes sense for it to be too.
- Ultra Beasts aren’t in the wild either, so Poipole is fine.
- Annihilape is an evolution.
To me, dusk form Lycanroc, Charcadet and Varoom don’t have particular logic behind being locked behind eggs. I guess for Varoom at a stretch we could say that each generation after 5 tends to have an exclusive 12k egg spawn (Pancham and Salandit), so Gen 9 would’ve got one eventually. I think it would have been more fun to have dusk form Lycanroc as a research day, with a higher likelihood of the research tasks yielding a Rockruff with dusk evolution.
Your Thoughts?
I’m a comparatively casual player and I’m nowhere near ‘dex completion. At the moment it doesn’t make my experience less enjoyable. I’ve felt that they have done a decent job at giving us a variety of different spawns throughout events, with some events even not having wild spans so we can have some time with the seasonal spawns. This season is focused on raids and so far I’ve felt like they delivered on that aspect. We’ve had some really good raids the past month or two with some Ultra Beast debuts coming up at the end of May.
The amount of new Pokémon we are going to see each year will inevitably slow down a bit. They have less than 200 Pokémon to release, with around 16 of those coming from Gens 1-7, not counting forms/megas.
I do think, however, if new ‘mon are going to continue to be debuted through raids, eggs and research that the event they are part of needs to last longer. Lots of players have work and life commitments meaning that they can’t drop everything to hatch as many 12km eggs as possible during the 5 days that the new Pokémon is more common in the hatch pool. If these ‘debut conditions’ lasted 2 weeks or so, it’s long enough for casual players to have a chance AND for those who want to grind to get as many as they want. I don’t think this would spoil the gameplay.
What are your thoughts? Have you enjoyed the Pokémon debuts so far in 2024?
