Idea: Raid pass should only be used up when...
...the raid actually starts with the player inside.
Benefits:
1. Reduces raid pass wastage due to GPS errors, game crashes and other glitches. Such wastage may deter players from buying premium passes.
2. If players know that they can back out (for instance, if there are not enough raiders) without wasting a raid pass, they will be more likely to enter the raid lobby (rather than wait until others are in the lobby before entering; a common approach in some areas) and thus more raids will take place.
3. Players can try figuring out what moves the boss has before they decide whether to spend a pass or not. This is most relevant for tier 3 solos.
Answers
1. Start a standard public group with 10 people against a tier 5 boss.
2. If a spoofer joins. Everybody goes out and starts 10 different private groups. Wait until around 15s left.
3. At 15s left: you decide everybody except 1 leaves each respective lobby and joins the one raid with 15s left that you decided should not leave.
The spoofer will need to try several group codes to find the correct one and will in general not have enough time: thus wasting a raid pass
Edit: polished my shitty english
I disagree with items #2 and #3.
Personally, in our local group, we check and make sure everyone is ready to enter simultaneously, and if there's an issue, we all back out. There's none of this staggered entry stuff you're talking about, so I don't quite understand it.
As far as number three, that's part of the luck of the draw. It's like a ticketed event. You can't walk back out the gate and say "Oops, I'm not staying. I'd like my ticket back."
#2 affects city players without raid chats. For example if you miss the first wave of a raid in a busy place, your only option may be to risk your pass just to show other players that you're interested in the raid.
#3 Currently it's like buying a ticket to a movie except you don't know which movie you're getting. Letting the player know the moveset before using the pass drives up sales because most players won't risk their pass if there's a good chance of failure. And more sales is good for everyone.
One of the biggest aspects of the loss of Scanners which hasn't been talked about much here relates directly to #3 - most of the scanners I saw used would note what the moveset was for the Raid Boss. That would be invaluable information right now.
Last night there were 2 raids I was interested in doing (both Kyogre) but we could only get 6 players interested - most of whom are new players, so are level 30 or below. 6 players, 4 being level 30 or below (AND not having optimal counters for Kyogre because they weren't playing when Raikou was around, and don't have enough candies to power up a Zapdos, for instance) aren't going to beat a Kyogre with Blizzard. So because we could only get 6 players to commit, we decided it wasn't worth the effort to risk using up 12-18 Revives (I went in on a 4 person Kyogre raid vs a Blizzard Kyogre, where I (level 39) had the weakest team. We won, but I went through 16 Pokémon by the end of the battle. Gotta say I LOVED that raid, but I'm sitting on 250+ Max Revives even after that Raid so I can afford that kind of loss.) and not having a guarantee of coming out victorious.
If I could have gone to the gyms, hopped into the lobby and gotten a sense of what the moveset was (it's giving me all Grass types, so it's got Thunder or Hydropump. Woot! Raids on! Oh, the top two recommended attackers are Groudon, so it's got Thunder. Woot! Raids on! It's giving me my Aggrons... dammit, Blizzard. Raid's off.) and maybe we would have done the raids after all.
If I could get that kind of information without having to waste a Raid Pass to get it, I'd be buying more Raid Passes because I'd be doing more raids.
