I don't disagree, but I am concerned about how weather dilutes the work that dedicated players have put into leveling different pokes up. There is now very little incentive to get stronger than level 30 unless you want to max out your legendary pokes. In fact, I think that is where this game is going to go, specifically it will be split between casuals that have caught high-level weather boosted mons on one side and people that have maxed out multiple legendary pokes on the other through dedicated play.

I hope they don't do anything to further dilute the correlation between amount of play and strength in the game. They have already made it more than easy enough for casuals to get strong. Making it any easier on casuals would make the game sorta junk.

prepare to be disappointed because they are guaranteed to do that. They have been doing it for over a year, and absolutely will continue.

and that's pretty much how all mmo type games work. The bone they can throw back to increase the separation again is to raise the level cap. This will also presumably come some day, though there's been no hint as to when as far as I know.

Yeah. That.

It’s why they’ve split up Gen 3 into several different releases. It’s why they legendaries are now out for a month. Everything Niantic does is to make sure people play this game for a long time.

Sure it sucks, but it makes them more money, so they will continue to do it while the vast majority of the players (included me) still play

Meh.

1. Who cares? Srs biz players ca use the same strategy to get good critters, and they'll be better at it.
2. Who cares? Since the gym update, there hasn't been much reason to upgrade anything past 30 anyway, and having top critters is hardly a big deal for anyone.
3. Who cares? It's hardly a competitive game. With raids, it's much more cooperative than anything now.
4. This is actually good, because there's an increased incentive to actually go out and catch things rather than just raid.
5. I did find a downside, though. I normally live in a "desert" biome, with not a lot of water, electric (occasional magnemite and voltorb), or bug (other than paras) types around. Hooooooooooo boy. There are ****loads of worthless plusles and parases out there right now, now that we are getting rain finally. I guess I had been hoping to see an increased variety in weather spawns rather than just more of certain usual types, but oh well.

I think raids still necessitate high level attackers and attention to the quality of the attacker, particularly if interest is flagging in a particular raid. My wife and I can, for instance, duo pretty much ANY T4 (weather depending) because we have done the work of leveling the appropriate attackers. Other groups find it difficult to get raids they might want to done because they can't attract enough attention for them and a few random weather-boosted type-approriate mons are generally not enough to start getting into the short-manning game.

Defending is sorta a lost cause though. All the high-level players locally keep a ton of high CP Blissey/Chansey/Snorlax so that we can defend before legendary/EX raids or defend toward going gold, but not much else. I personally keep 1400+ random junk for gyming when I just want coins (I call them all "Jim").

I do believe that people view raiding a bit too much as a necessity of the game, so stuff that provides incentive to move back to catching is good. I still hope they tweak this gym system though because I sorta loathe rooting for my pokemon to get knocked off of a gym. Rooting for your pokemon's failure is distasteful from a game-design perspective and they should have thought longer about this IMO.

That said, YMMV but our local scene is still remarkably competitive,whether it is territory or just team-based short-manning of raids. At some point I also have to think that PvP, if and when it is introduced (they have actually discussed doing so I think it is at least on their long-term list of things to implement) will do a bit to reintroduce the competitive element.

Ultimately, I just think that some of the design decisions need to work on engaging the power-gamers rather than just throwing bones to the casual populace. I get that an MMO needs to find ways to constantly re-engage the casuals, but we need some attention too. They introduced a TON of catch-up mechanics but the net result is that everyone is suddenly getting to end-game strength really quickly. Without a rise in the level-cap or some other set of far-reaching incentives, they probably risk some of the most historically dedicated players (most whales are probably in this category) getting really bored at best and, at worst, feeling like a constant shifting downward of the bar is a slap in the face to their efforts (I hear an awful lot of complaints about sunk stardust/candy). If they just had some other stuff to do that rewarded the power-gamers among us, I think I would be pleased at peaches.

Note, I am not that upset about it either way. I just think articulating where I want the game to go and actively discussing it eventually trickles upwards to the people in positions to do something about, particularly if the same suggestions keep appearing over and over again.

See, people say this all the time, but I have seen nary a hit that raising the level-cap is even in the plans. They have discussed trading, pvp, et cetera, but nothing regarding the level-cap. Do you have any reference that validates the idea that this is in the works that I am not aware of?

Will be my luck they raise the level cap days before i hit 40. Just let me complete the game k?

ingress.

they raised the level cap in their previous game.

Cliffs: Rayquaza and more of Generation 3 dropping tomorrow; only Gen 3 Pokemon will appear in wild from the 9th thru the 13th; new gift boxes; 6-hour lures until the 23rd

https://pokemongolive.com/post/hoenn-pokemon-020818/

I got another EX raid pass for yesterday's raid. We had enough people to try a rather fun challenge of taking out Mewtwo with nothing but Blissey. I think we could have done it with one less person as we were, and perhaps even one less than that if we were willing to burn some Charged TMs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoa...aid_challenge/

300 dust/doggo aorn (not houndour for some reason) in honor of Chinese New Year. Hitting up just about anywhere with decent stop and spawn density will net you >20k dust in a half hour with a star piece going.

Shiny Poochyena available too now.

Still no exraid pass

Just caught my 4th from my fifth pass. I couldn't attend one. Not sure I am doing anything particularly right or if I am just lucky. I usually just use free daily passes, and all else being equal I try to raid at known ex locations. I pretty much only do legendary raids.

Just in first hour of event

Event was a bit crazy, only grinded for one hour because my fingers were freezing. was lucky enough that the only shiny i caught was level 33

what are star pieces?

Like lucky eggs except they give you +50% stardust for 30 minutes.

Final tally:
158 Dratini
7 Shinies

Wife and I went hard to the paint for the whole event. Had lucky eggs and star pieces going the whole time.

+110k dust
+100K xp
9 shinies (best one was only 73 IV but was fairly high level, 25 or 26 I think)
Got one 98 IV non shiny that was fairly high level.

Had star piece, lucky egg and incense going the whole time.

111,430 XP
244 Pokemon caught
132 of which were Dratinis (3 ran).
4 of those were shiny, one was a perfect.
Brought my dragon badge from 40 to 179/200
135,823 Stardust

Probably would have gotten the gold badge if we didn't spend 20 minutes chasing down the perfect. Ended up spending all of the dust I earned plus a bit to max it out. Worth it.

My Highlights of the Event:

• 230k+ Dust
• 5 Shiny (two evolved to Dragonite, one evolved to Dragonair, two left Dratini)
• Evolved 4 Dragonite to Draco Meteor (inlcuding the two shiny above, an 89IV caught during the event, and a 100IV I saved specifically for something like this)
• Even after all the evolution I did above, I still have 700+ Dratini candy
• My best shiny Dragonite was a decent 80IV with perfect attack (which will top 3500 cp when I max it out)

In my house I caught the least. My wife got 8 and my son got a ridiculous 15 shiny Dratini.

The increase star dust gain by 50% for 30 minutes.

you evolved...huh?

I evolved 4 of my Dratini (two of which were shiny, two of which were high-IV non-shiny) into Dragonite that all had Draco Meteor.

ooooh, the move. duh