Opening Gifts in Pokémon GO is part of a daily ritual for a lot of us, especially Trainers in rural areas, who are dependant on receiving gifts to keep their stockpiled Poké Balls in check.
Unfortunately, it seems that Niantic has significantly, if not dramatically, reduced the chance to get Poké Ball drops from Gifts.
Early reports and current observations
A couple of days ago, a redditor named 505User, reported that PokéBall drops from opening Gifts have been reduced dramatically, and we let that news item marinate for a while, hoping that it was just a weekend fluke.
However, this doesn’t seem to be the case, as we are now five days in, and the total number of Poké Balls we get from opening gifts has remained low.
At this point it is not clear if they reduced the chance to get a Poké Ball reward bundle, or the bundle size itself has changed, but we think that bundle size has been reduced to 3 from 5.
Spindiana, our very own staff member, opened 30 Gifts, and here are his results:
- 39 Poké Balls
- 10 Great Balls
- 3 Ultra Balls
- 13 Gifts with no ball rewards (43.3% of Gifts)
I’ve tried this experiment myself, and I’m seeing similar results, especially with Gifts received in the past few days. Older gifts are still rewarding plentiful numbers of Poké Balls, but I cannot say if this is just variance, or there is some connection there.
What we both saw is that we are not getting any 5 Poké Ball bundles, 3 Poké Balls seems to be the new maximum.
What are we seeing from the data?
Our data is a very limited data set, and the Silph Research team will probably have more accurate data, but we are able to consistently reproduce this:
- It seems that the Poké Ball bundle size has reduced from 5 to 3 Poké Balls (40% reduction). The chance to get a Poké Ball bundle seems to be roughly the same.
- Great Ball and Ultra Ball bundle sizes haven’t changed, but think the bundle odds have been nerfed.
- There are way more Gifts with no Poké Ball rewards at all.
Again, our data set is not great, but we got what we got, and this is what we are seeing:
Why would Niantic do this?
To be honest, we have no idea. Maybe it is one of those things that aligns well with “get out and explore” ethos they have been hard pushing recently, maybe it has something to do with Routes and potentially we could be getting some Poké Balls from that game play loop in the future.
Maybe it’s just an experiment to see how it affects the general community, and if it promotes Poké Stop interaction and movement.
We really don’t know at this point, but we are certain that the pendulum swung too hard in one direction. It’s a 40% nerf in the amount of Poké Balls rewarded, which seems too harsh.
Here is what we think:
- The impact of the Gift nerf on rural players is particularly significant, as they already have fewer opportunities to collect Poke Balls in the game.
- The nerf has also been correctly criticised for disproportionately affecting casual players, who may not be able to travel to PokeStops as often as more dedicated players.
- Niantic has not yet responded to the community’s concerns about the Gift nerf, but they really should
- The overall future of Pokemon GO may depend on the company’s willingness to listen to player feedback and make changes that are in the best interests of the community.
