I think it's your not caring that makes you notice. If you cared, you would throw a razz+ultra+curve, and you would be upset if the ball hit excellent, and the pokemon popped out and/or ran away. The fact that your lobbing, and expecting a run away, but getting it instead, makes you feel like it's easier...
GamePress
anyone notice easy catching today?
so after my previous whinging about the catch rates of most of the fire/ice mons. ducked out to the shops this morning and was just lobbing normal balls at stuff yellow, orange even the odd red circle and almost everything stuck first or second ball.
RNG f'ing with me or do you think they might have tweaked the catch rate?
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I have a theory, that could be completely bogus, that there is some sort of random catch bonus added to straight throws with regular pokeballs and no berry. Why would they do this? For the benefit of PoGo+ users, because according to my possibly half-baked theory, a straight throw with a regular pokeball and no berry is exactly the same as a PoGo+ throw, and who would ever buy a PoGo+ if they were completely worthless for catching anything other than low-level, high catch-rate mons? So, by giving those throws a catch-rate bonus, perhaps at random times, they make the PoGo+ seem a little less worthless. Maybe it's even a hidden "critical catch" kind of thing.
I've noticed, both during this event and during the New Year starter event, that straight thumb-flip pokeball tosses catch the tougher pokemon more than I would expect. After catching enough of the featured mons, and depleting my great and ultra balls while accumulating a whole lot of regular pokeballs, I often resort to just lobbing the red balls with no curve or berry, not really caring whether I catch the mon or not, and am often very surprised at the success rate.
It's funny, my husband mentioned the same thing today. After wasting a lot of berries and blue or ultra balls and throwing curve balls just to have the mon escape repeatedly and then poof, he just threw straight red balls at them and caught most of them - even cyndaquil and charmander - with his first throw. So I decided to test this theory (having depleted most of my blue and ultras earlier).
Using incense, I threw straight red balls at every mon (charmander, houndour, chicorita etc.) and caught them with the first throw every time, getting up to 1,400 XP (lucky egg)!
This can't be coincidence. I do think that the Go+ has something to do with this, and the fact that they only sell red balls in the shop.
Test it yourself, I think you'll be amazed.
As I said in my post, I used to only throw balls straight because of an injury I had. You can pretty consistently get great throws, and you get add the medal bonus, but it still isn't as good. Math isn't my strong point, but this site has done a lot of research on this topic...
https://pokemongo.gamepress.gg/guct-medals
I think the issue is the difference in percentage that you see on single throws is not that noticeable unless you are looking at a large amount of data. If we say the base catch rate for my straight toss is 45%, is there a noticeable difference if we upped it to 60%? If we catch 1000 pokemon, there will be a noticeable difference, but if we toss a ball at 20 pokemon, you might not notice much of a difference at all.
I think you are over-thinking it. First off, my PoGo+ does mainly catch low level, higher catch rate pokemon. If you watch the pokemon it catches, with the game open, things like Murkrow have a very low catch rate.
What I do suspect is that every throw is a great, or even excellent throw (maybe checking the xp after a PoGo+ catch can confirm this.) When I was in a sling, I generally only threw the ball straight, and it was much easier to consistently get throw bonuses, obviously without the curve-ball bonus.
Maybe there is a hidden bonus, but I doubt it. Just based on the eye test, my catch rate is higher just curving regular balls and no berries, than it is with the PoGo+, which is why I don't use it as much as one might expect. I mainly use it on bike rides, when I am running, sometimes with my kids at the park, or if I want to hit pokestops while catching a few extra pokemon.
