The Current State of Legendaries

I think Dialga and Palkia will bring some sort of excitement as they're much better than anything else we've gotten recently, and I think people really miss the times we used to hype new legendaries. And honestly Palkia is only second best to Ray and Dialga has a very unique niche in the game, having good Dragon DPS combined with the ability to tank strong Dragon-type charge moves from the high base attack Dragon bosses, so I'd say they really are pretty good legendaries. The hype won't be as big, but at least there will be some hype.

I think the rerelease of Rayquaza would generate more hype though, whether it's with the shiny form or with an exclusive move.

Gen 4 having a ton of legendaries and fewer normal pokemon that other gens certainly doesn't help regarding the abundance of legendaries ^^ (but if people were limited to only one per account imagine how salty they would be if they get low IVs ones and couldn't change them)

I’m fairly new but has the game always been this liberal with releasing legendaries? Or is it just because 2018 was dubbed the “Year of Legendary”? Do you think the same pace will carry through to next year?

It seems like there are two camps: people who are upset when a new legendary or two isn’t introduced every month like clockwork, and people who are burnt out and disillusioned because of the over-release.

I don't think making legendary raids extremely rare is a good answer. It would be a great answer, if not for spoofers.

What was unique to Go when it first came out, was following that noisy crowd of 5000 people running downtown because someone had heard there was a Dragonite. THAT was insane. Not even for a legendary.

So sure, if Legendary raids were actually rare, like say there was one in a major city per day (which means over the course of a month you may see one or two if you're a common player) then people would probably go mad for legendaries. Combine that with some easier access to rare candy and better balance, and people would probably be powering up every legendary they caught. It wouldn't matter that Palkia is a bit worse than Rayquaza if you only managed to find one or two Rayquaza.

However, Spoofers ruin any chance that had to work. Your casual players would have one or two of most legendaries (and zero of some!) while your spoofers would have the same amount they do now. At a minimum they'd be able to get 3 per day while waiting long enough between for the travel to be feasible.

Can't blame it entirely on spoofers though... I don't think non-players like the crowd of people chasing rare pokemon. Our "fair" playerbase has done it to ourselves as well. Whether it was all the trash left behind in the popular areas, or masses of people jay-walking across the busiest streets and everyone following them even once the traffic gets there again - the game can't make that kind of excitement a regular thing without some response from countries. You'd start getting people in car accidents because people are speeding in their car to get to that legendary raid that's a 45min drive away, etc...

With all that said - I don't think it's a problem that Legendaries are as common as they are, though. Legendaries have never really seemed special. In every pokemon game, you could always acquire the legendaries. In the anime, some trainers had teams of legendaries. I think the "lore" that there is only 1 of each legendary pokemon (from Gen 1) has long been replaced, at least for certain legendaries.

People were always going to want to fill their pokedex, so legendaries kind of had to be available to everyone fairly easily. It may have been nice to make them actually challenging to beat - but again there's the inclusive aspect. If it's challenging for a level 40 player (e.g. make maximum raid size 5 or so trainers) then it becomes near impossible for a level 25 player.

And finally - IVs. Without the ability to get a massive number of legendary pokemon, you'll struggle to get one with good IVs. People want good IVs on their favorite and best pokemon, so people wouldn't be really happy if they only find one or two and they weren't even that good.

I’m fine with Niantic polluting the raid waters, I’d rather them do that than have the gumption to tier 6 Groudon/Rayquaza/Dialga/Palkia

The irony is that I could get 5 legendary Pokémon tomorrow, but I cannot evolve a non legendary even though I have 900 candy for it. Legendary are more common than Pidgey.

Your only gate to salvation is for Nintendo to kick Niantic out and lend the game to more competent developers. This is it.

The problem is we've had so many defensive Legendaries lately who, in a simplistic game like Go, serve no purpose other than being dex fillers. With gyms the way they are right now, even if Legends were allowed in them it wouldn't make a difference. When was the last time you powered up a defensive Pokémon, Legendary or not? There isn't a need to and therein lies a big problem. The game is so unbalanced that whenever a defensive tier 5 comes along, we don't want or need multiples of them. I'm sure when the better attackers are released there will be a surge of interest but they shouldn't leave it too long to release them as another defensive Legendary after Cresselia might be too long to wait for some. From a personal point of view, am glad of the break as going out to do tier 5's takes up alot of my time and at this time of year it is a problem finding it.