Unlike our recent article, titled How Niantic’s New Systems Are Dividing the Pokémon GO Community, today we are happy to report that Niantic has absolutely smashed it out of the park with the recent Necrozma Fusion Raid Day.
Despite not featuring any way to obtain a Cosmog, which is a prerequisite for evolving Solgaleo and Lunala, the event managed to hit all the right spots.
Trainers were able to grab up to five free Raid Passes, on top of the ones you usually get, and there were more than enough Necrozma Raids, with a new one spawning every 30 minutes.
On top of that, Niantic’s decision to silently activate Beast Balls while catching Necrozma was an amazing addition, as it increased catch rates and reduced the time you had to spend catching. Couple that with pretty good shiny odds (1 in 10 encounters), great Solar and Lunar Energy drops, and a high interested by the worldwide raiding community.
All of this lead to swaths of Trainers playing, both in person, and via Remote Raids. The lobbies were just filling up like crazy!
Playerbase confirms
As it now stands, we are hardly alone in this thought! Two separate threads (see #1 and #2) popped up on Reddit, both praising Niantic for the same thing we just praised them for – the Necrosma Raid Day was a smash hit!
Additionally, if you scroll into the comment section (at your own risk), you will see that this event provoked some very clear commentary from the player base:
Honestly so much fun when all the barriers to PLAYING the game are stripped and we are allowed to actually PLAY the game. I did feel the IV spread was a bit stingier than expected from 22 raids however
Our seasoned readers may notice that this is the exact message we tried to share with our How Niantic’s New Systems Are Dividing the Pokémon GO Community article:
- Remove arbitrary gate keeping from Max Battles and Shadow Raids
- Make features more integrated with the existing Pokémon collections or provide a way to do so
- Remove mandatory pre-requirements that feels like a chore
Here’s to hoping that Niantic learns from this event and introduces more content that can be enjoyed with ease!
Credits for the cover image go to @campbell_damion
