Pokémon GO has now been out for 3 years and 5+ months. During that time, we’ve gotten a vast amount of new features. Some of those being Raid Battles, Trading, PvP and the Friendship system. Even with these amazing features, Pokémon GO burnout is becoming more prevalent today than it ever has been. So why is this happening and how can it be fixed? Can we actively fix it? Can Niantic add changes so there is more value to the game? Let’s dive in!
The Same Old Song and Dance
One thing that has never changed, since day one, is how we catch Pokémon. We’ve all succumbed to mindlessly throwing Pokeballs at any Pokémon we come across in order to get that sweet, sweet stardust. Which, honestly, is completely fine. Don’t change the mechanics!
HOWEVER, the kinds of Pokémon we frequently come across is rather bland at best. It’s always the following (on average): Gulpin, Weedle, Rattata, Sunkern, Bellsprout, Seedot, Pidgey, Castform, Sentret, Zigzagoon, and so on. Of course, these will vary depending on your area.
Unlike when the game first launched in 2016, there has been a severe lack of “chasing” ultra rare Pokémon spawn recently. This process can bring a lot more life to the game – finding a Snorlax in 2016 was insane, right?
Interestingly enough, Niantic has attempted to bring rare spawn hunting back with the release of final stage Gen 3 evolutions in the wild. A decision made back in October of 2019, brought the following Pokémon to wild encounters: Sceptile, Blaziken, Swampert, Aggron, Salamence, Slaking, Ludicolo, Exploud, Shiftry, Manectric, and Flygon.
Now I completely understand that these Pokémon are meant to be RARE, but I haven’t seen a single one yet! I find more Snorlax in the wild than I do any other rare spawn!
I propose a simple solution for the lackluster feeling of navigating the map: simply up the percent chance of the rare spawns. If its 2%, make it 5% or higher if needed. Seeing these rare Pokémon pop up in the overworld brings both a fun factor and a nice surprise! The days of going out for hours and seeing absolutely nothing appealing whatsoever should be over by now. Right?
Does Anyone Want to Raid?
From 2017 to 2018, this question was never asked in my local community chat. Everyone was either ready to go or already out raiding. But nowadays, it is a real struggle to just to gather people around for 1 raid. From what I’ve gathered, its mainly a mind shift from the dedicated/long-time players.
Most of the Legendaries that have been coming out within the last year have been duplicates with a shiny chance or a new Pokémon that has no literal use at all. Of course, getting that Pokédex entry is important. Therefore, the dedicated players will only do 1 raid with the new legendary, catch it, then be done with it. Getting a high IV one does not make sense, as it’s often completely useless. It’s also not worth the headache of trying to gather people for a raid – they lack incentives.
The most active players we have fall into two groups:
- those whom are new or
- picked the game back up after an extremely long hiatus.
Which doesn’t help the situation at all: most of them are lower level players and need more people to raid with in order to win, which in turn creates more friction around raids.
I honestly do not know how Niantic could fix this overall mindset. Even when a fantastic legendary comes out, it’s raided heavily in the first couple days and then virtually never touched again. There’s also an argument about not doing them at all, and just lucky trading for them (I felt this way when terrible Legendaries were coming out).
So if you guys have any idea on how to bring more life to raids, let us know in the comments. I do not see this repetitiveness changing anytime soon.
How Do I Keep Going
Alright, so here me out on this one. This mainly has to do with those that have it ALL. All the Pokémon for their Pokédex (that is feasible for them to get). All the items they could ever need. All the special research done. All the stardust in the world. All the Pokémon they want powered up, they have completed. Everything that they wanted done, is done. So why keep playing? What are the incentives?
Now I do want to say, I’m talking about in-game incentives ONLY. A lot of trainers continue to play for outside of the game reasons (time spent with friends, activity level for exercising, etc.) and that’s truly incredible! Keep being awesome!
However, the feeling of not knowing what else to do is a real thing within our community.
The development of PvP has been getting better, but some would argue it still isn’t where it needs to be, or that it simply isn’t appealing at all. With GO Battle League coming next year, I hope Niantic knocks it out of the ballpark, because this feature needs that special moment!
We’ll see soon enough when it releases sometime in 2020, but for now, PvP is our one and only true endgame when everything else has been done.
My #1 fix for the lack of something to do is for Niantic to generate a prestige system for leveling up. Once you hit Lvl 40, you can prestige back down to Lvl 1 and obtain an awesome badge that shows on your profile for everyone else to see. Think Call of Duty’s prestige system. It’s a similar concept. We would be able to obtain rewards again, have an incentive to push further and prove our dedication further through the prestige rankings.
Perhaps stop at prestige #10 or even #50, which would be 100,000,000 XP. By the way, you would not lose any progress on your current Pokémon. They keep all their levels and stats. It’s just your Trainer level that resets. This is something that should have been implemented a long time ago, but sooner is a better time than never!
Conclusion
For some of us, there’s no denying that Pokémon GO is real. The constant repetitiveness without massive new content features or changes to existing ones, is taking its toll. Let it be known, we WANT to continue to keep playing this game. It’s what we LOVE. Anything to keep us integrated into the game (new buddy system did help with that) and keeping it feeling FRESH, will be much appreciated.
But then again, even with love, sometimes you might have to let it go and do what is best for you…
P.S. These are things I’ve both witnessed within my community, in reddit forums, on my YouTube channel, and on Twitter that many trainers have been saying. Hence, this article is opinionated off those findings alone.
