Legendary Exclusive-Moves

I've made no secret about my thoughts on this. I'm not happy about it in the slightest.

I would have been super annoyed but not quite so angry if I had been available to participate in the 3-hour event and caught a good Zapdos with TS. But (imagine this!) I do have some semblance of a life outside of Pokemon Go and had made other plans that could not be changed given the short notice we were given.

Community Days are different in that: a) we know about those well in advance and have the chance to plan around them, and b) we can save one or more good specimens so all we have to do (if nothing else) is find time to evolve them during the 3-hour window. For the record, I'm still irritated that the 100% Charizard I had previously maxed is now outclassed by a different Charizard. But there's a big difference between an irritated customer and an irate one.

I urge everyone who is upset by this decision to contact Niantic directly and let them know. I have.

I'm quite sure Niantic pays no attention to anything said on Pokemon Go sites or forums like this one. But maybe they will listen if enough of us contact them directly and let our voices be heard.

Yes, please contact Niantic if this bugs you. I suspect that when it comes to the exclusive moves for legendary pokemon, they will find another method to pass them out. Something like a 'Signature TM' that one earns with a Mew like quest chain, and then you get one of them, to apply to your best example of the legendary. I can imagine Niantic not wanting hard core players to be able to field a team of 6 100% and 98% Kyogres, all of whom have Origin Pulse. No raid boss would stand up to that except ones directly designed to resist it (and even they would be stressed). But one Kyogre with OP, one Groudon with PB, that seems reasonable.

Niantic knows that this is a game, and the only way for the game to thrive is to keep the paying customers (we players) happy. Finding out that my hard won, maxed out 100% WF/HP Kyogre has just been made obsolete by something someone can catch during a 3 hour window and power up at their leisure would kind of suck, even if I caught one of the new ones.

Speak up. Help Niantic help themselves by keeping the players happy.

I started back when the app first launched. I remember when the most XP you could get was to lucky egg an evolve. I had to wait about 8 months for my first Lapras. I waited six months for my first Snorlax.

The game is changing. And I see a lot of people scoff at newer players who "never had to suffer the way we did." ...I don't care.

Let people get a Snorlax every day for doing almost nothing more than turning the app on for a minute a day. It makes the game fun. And that's what it needs to be. Gratz to the grinders who were there in the very beginning when it was boring and slow. We made it. But, the game is better now without it.

If a newer Zapdos comes out with a moveset that is an improvement over the first - then how is that not a great thing? Just because you pumped up an earlier version? Cripes I walked my first dratini almost 100 miles. I didn't complain when they had dratini day and you couldn't fart without catching a shiny or evolving a great one. ...Oh, and I transferred Dragnoties that got bad move sets. ...Any veteran players can attest to how much time goes into evolving a bad mon and the crushing frustration that comes with the crappy move set . Because TMs weren't even on the horizon yet. ...But I never complained when TMs came out.

The short reply is, if you can't tolerate Zapdos being released with a better move set than I can almost guarantee you're going to hate this game is it continues to evolve. Don't tolerate it...give the account to someone who can.

Death and destruction awaits this game and it won't take long past the hype. It's already fortold in the last 2 years, the last year and this year. There is no escaping it and i think if i get disgusted enough i just quit. There is literally no point engaging in this insanity test once you get the brains straight from the brainwashing, and no game has bought me so much pain trying to read about it. There is not even a point trying to contact them and the game can just die out already.

Gen 3 is a good display on poor game combat balance (Milotic and Swampert inferior to other water pokemon like Gyarados, Metagross and Salamence being inferior to many other Gen 1 or Gen 2 pokemon with equally high stats, Latias worse than Dragonite and the Regis being inferior trash cans etc....) and i cannot imagine it gets any better. If other crimes such as the dodge glitch, the trade ivs reshuffle, the blank sightings glitch and the fact that you will not have a chance to catch any rare pokemon if you have the slightest bit of bad luck and will never be able to re-engage it (Rare pokemon like Unown or Dragonite breaks free from the first GRB + ultra and flees), i am not suprised if they didn't get this straight and receive a death backlash.

I do agree, but for most legendaries, even if a new move is added, it wouldn't change there use.

look at mewtwo, if they added psystrike, it would make it a good psychic attacker, the shadowball/focusblast move sets are more widely used, so that wouldn't really impact that, and this is the case for most all legendaries other then kyogre, another move would let them do something they weren't able to before if they didnt have the moves to do it well (ho-oh being a fire attacker, lati'smewtwo being psychic attackers, lugia being a flying attacker, groudon being a better ground attacker than a grass attacker, etc)

I think they likely gave zapdos that move just because of how much raikou outpaced it, wanting to keep them somewhat even so people stil had a reason to use zapdos, but I do agree it did set a bad precedent, but I think Zapdos is the most extreme example of this, and other possible exclusive moves would be more tame

A minor gripe, but a gripe nonetheless....

Thundershock is NOT an exclusive raid day move for Zapados.

I get why people think it is, because you can't TM to Thundershock. True. But you can't TM AWAY from Thundershock either. You could TM away any other exclusive move in the game.

This means that it's even more dire a precedent.
Thundershock appears to be Zapados's only move now.
Charge Beam appears legacy.
And yet, TMs don't work on legacy move. Raising the question of why TMs were put in the first place.

A majority of the players (at least here anyway) have been pretty vocal about their dislike of the precedent set by Thundershock Zapdos. Whatever their reasoning for TM-locking it was a slap in the face to anyone who had powered one up. Community day moves aren't /quite/ at fault since those are easier to prepare for, but as soon as Pokemon started getting better moves in the 3-hour window a tone shift rippled throughout the game where people have held onto unevolved Pokemon who are most likely to get a CD instead of actively evolving and using them. From a game design point, encouraging players to not participate in the game seems weird to me.

At the end of the day, Niantic is a business. The single only way to get them to listen is to quit funneling money into the game. When coin sales take a noticeable slump they'll investigate where they went wrong. When reading GamePress's open letter about it I was in agreement until DownWithTTP started talking money. Maybe my financial situation is different, but regularly shelling out $100-$200 a month on this game is a fuckton of money. To express valid concerns and follow it up with "Oh btw I'm still gonna give you my money" shoots your entire argument in the foot. Why are they going to care what you say when they know you'll still give them money for it? Why change their shitty practices when they still print money?

I realize many people don't spend money on coins but on forums and websites like this it's likely a good number of people do, myself included. And I get that that makes me part of the problem as well. Money drives everything, and if they routinely pull stunts like this in the future they won't be getting mine anymore.

I mostly disagree. I get why people get frustrated, but what, should every mon be entitled to get the new best moveset via TM just because you invested resources in it? When better mons appear, should we be allowed to transform our old maxed pokemon into the new ones? Or should the best mons today stay the best forever? Man that would make the game lame for newcomers. Most people accept that better mons come along the way. TS Zapdos is just a better mon than CB Zapdos. What's wrong with that? CB Zapdos is obsolete? *Obsolete*? Hell no.

To quote myself in a previous post, take the most resounding hypothetical example of Groudon getting Precipice Blades someday and making Earthquake Groudon second best ground pokémon instead of best. Veteran players surely still have on average more resources than new players to max it. But for the sake of example, let's take one veteran player and one new player and suppose they have equivalent ressources because they play the same way today and it's easier to gather resources now than before, especially stardust. When a new pokemon comes out or a new move is given to a pokemon that makes it number 1 in its role, both player have the same ability to power it up. Both the veteran and the new player would be able to catch and power up a precipice blades Groudon. So the veteran player's ground squad is composed of, say, one precipice blades Groudon, two earthquake Groudons and 4 earthquake Rhydons. The new player has one precipice blades Groudon, let's say to be nice he somehow managed to gather 5 earthquake Rhydons through raids (and if not lets put earthquake Golems instead). In the end, who has the best ground squad?

The only case where the new player can get to the same strength than the veteran is when both have 6 maxed precipice blades Groudons. How likely is that? And even then, worst case scenario they are both equal.

The new player will NEVER take the edge over the veteran if they play the same way. Never. What we veterans powered up before newcomers come to play, we will ALWAYS have that over them. In the end, having the better team is only a matter of how much time (and eventually money) you invest in playing the game, whether you're new or veteran. If you were the best before, you're STILL the best after, until someone invests MORE in game resources into his/her team, which would be a good reason why his/her team should become better than yours.

So yes, it requires you to invest once again in a new pokémon (same species, but different pokémon). But isn't this how the game works? The game gets better, the mons get better and we have to keep up to stay competitive, that's what makes the game exciting!

My Dragonites are outclassed by Rayquaza for sure, yet I still haven't powered up any Rayquaza and my Dragonites are still very useful. Are they obsolete? Hell no, since they are still useful! They are outclassed by better mons, but they are still good. I'm still looking for a reason why I should need more dragons. Should it happen, my Rayquazas are waiting and ready. Same thing goes for any maxed CB Zapdos or any maxed E Groudon if PB Groudon comes some day.

Most of these complaints could be answered if Niantic would release an item that let you transfer movesets between two pokemon that share a pokedex entry. Zapdos to Zapdos, Gengar to Gengar, etc. Allow transfers between male/female and different levels but not between different forms.

This would let anyone that gets a lower level, or lower IV pokemon with a legacy moveset to transfer it to their level 40, perfect IV iteration of the same pokemon. It would make trading for legacy move sets more useful, and it would make community days less stressful.

Note: this would be a transfer, the pokemon that started with the legacy moveset would get the non-legacy moveset in return. No increase in how many pokemon have these moves, just an increase in the percentage of these movesets that would be on high level, high IV pokemon.