Niantic has decided to share an early preview of a few exciting changes are coming to Pokémon GO this summer! The first of them, “Invite friends to raids regardless of their location”, sounds like a true game changer for Pokémon GO’s raiding system. The other, “Gift stickers”, is a neat way to personalize your gifts before sending them out.
Let’s dive in!
Invite friends to raids regardless of their location
Players have been asking for an in game ability to organize raids for years now, and Niantic has took the first step towards solving that issue. Soon, you will be able to invite up to 5 people to participate in a raid.
Here’s how it works:
- When this feature is available, you’ll see a + button in both public and private raid lobbies that you’ve joined in person.
- After tapping the + button, you’ll be able to invite up to five friends to join you.
- Your friends will be able to see raid invitations on their Nearby screen or in push notifications.
- These invitations will allow them to enter the raid lobby.
- Your friends will use a pass only once the battle starts, not when they join the lobby.
And now for the best part… the ability to invite friends to raids will be rolling out later this month 👏! Niantic mentioned that the feature will be released after the highly anticipated Legendary Pokémon Reshiram has already left raids. This gives us a rough idea of when it will go out, as Reshiram is in Pokémon GO raids until Tuesday, June 16, 2020, at 1:00 p.m. PDT (GMT −7).
We’re quite excited for this feature, as it should alleviate a number of steps to coordinate raids and make it easier to use Remote Raid Passes to actually help out someone. It seems that this feature doesn’t have a location limit, so maybe we will finally be able to raid with our overseas friends! Now that’s big! Pokémon GO raiding guilds could be a thing!
P.S. They also shared that Reshiram will be making a return in the future, which is great!
Reshiram
Gift stickers
Soon you’ll be able to add a special sticker to the Gifts you send. When the feature is rolled out, you’ll get a set of stickers for free.
How it works:
- Right before you send a Gift to a friend, tap ADD STICKER and pick a sticker to attach.
- At launch, there will be five stickers available.
- You can use a sticker only once, so be sure to stock up on more by opening Gifts.
- In the future, you’ll be able to purchase some designs from the shop.
Sounds like a cool idea for folks that want to spend PokéCoins to send out special gifts to people they care about. Honestly, we don’t see how popular this feature will be, as it depends on the Stickers’ pricing and availability. For 5 PokéCoins, sure, I’ll buy one, but for anything more than that… nope.
Parting words
Worldwide raid invitations, huh? Pokémon GO is changing, in a good way. These are not the only changes that are coming this summer, and we’re excited to see what Niantic has in store for the rest of 2020.
2020 has been a terrible year so far, but we’re happy to see that the team behind Pokémon GO is trying to make it a tiny bit better with all of the quality of life changes and game play improvements.
Let’s see how this works out!
