Everyone is with you, Niantic needs to add some kind of way. But for now, Silph Road built a resource through their website called "Silph Radio" People place markers for raids and stars and people will notify if they will attend and a chat is available through the website. Unfortunately you may have to wait because the resource must be advertised more in order to properly work( Not enough people use it now.)
GamePress
Raid monitoring
One of the problems now is that when there's a tough level 3 or a level 4 raid boss, one never knows if there are other raiders ready to team up and attack or not. It would be great if there was a way to express interest in a particular raid to the game without blowing a raid pass, to know who was interested, and who was in the lobby waiting to attack. Is there some way that Niantic could make that info available to players? I'd love to get a T-tar, but would need 2-3 other raiders, and I don't have a network at all playing almost exclusively solo. Additionally, being a free player, only one raid a day is sustainable, with another every other day if I'm willing to put off bag and storage upgrades. So I'm really hesitant to blow that one raid pass on something that I may have zero chance at pulling off without help, and no clue if there's help around or not.
Report
Answers
I agree. I think they did that to deter spoofers, and maybe it helps in that aspect. But it ends up being a source of frustration for those of us playing alone or as a pair. I had to go out of my comfort zone yesterday and approach strangers to ask if they're playing PoGo and, if so, are they interested in doing a raid. I got a really strange look and an "um... no" from one guy, but then another guy was interested. So that turned out OK. But since suburbanites are pretty much relegated to driving from gym to gym and then do raids from their cars, what are we supposed to do? Knock on windows? I don't think so. So yeah, I'd very much like a way to check the lobby or something before committing a raid pass.
The main problem I see with this lobby monitoring, is that it will lead to everyone checking the lobby and no-one actually entering the lobby.
Currently, we have the Schrodinger cat problem. You don't know til you commit. But at least if you've committed and no-one else is there, you may wait for help. While if you can check and not see anyone you are much more likely to leave.
My lord, their servers couldn't even handle tracking footsteps on everyone's phone. No way could they do that. Which i think they mentioned within a month or two after launch they would like to implement that. But that is a side project. One that will most likely be done in another year( After legendaires, PvP, and trading.) probably between gens.
So have an outer lobby where people can hang if they are interested, and then an inner lobby once you use the raid pass. Might require some new code, but would probably be worth it, and then you could chat (through the game or in RL) while waiting for enough players to take down the big baddie. This will be even more important when Legendary raids are out there.
If you blow your raid pass, then you'll buy a new one and Niantic will make money.
It's frustrating, I agree, but clearly it hasn't frustrated us enough to stop playing, and that's what they care about at the end of the day.
Niantic isn't going to implement a mechanic that will be costly to implement and will dry up a small well of potential income.
Implementation of a program could be dirt simple. Once a player determines they WANT to do the raid, they click a button, but not commit the raid pass. Everyone who clicks the button gets a small display that contains a head count. Once you see that there are others ready to go, you spend your raid pass and meet in the lobby.
In my area, during the first few days, we met other trainers at the raid then we set up the Line group to keep in touch. The group has been very active since.
However, when I am out of that area I also feel kind of lost. But I could see who are there for the raid as us, Thai people, are normally friendly and will express our interest out in the open. I normally just politely raise the voice among the crowd "who are here for the raid? Are we ready for the next round?" then people will just garther up and the raid is on. It is as simple as that.
Anyway, if we have the option to see how many are waiting without spending the pass, that would be great.
