The Kanto event made me miss the good old days.
When Magikarp was common trash in my biome.
When Poliwrath was a good defender.
When Shellder was my buddy.
When I used SGPokeMap to hunt Dratinis and do nest farming.
When all the stops in my neighbourhood were lured.
When spins and spawns were not speedlocked.
When we believed that Niantic would eventually improve.
How times have changed.
Answers
I agree with your view on Raids and that quests may keep the fun rolling. Raids are fun and provide exceptionally good rewards for the cost and effort ... BUT they cannot be the "raison d'etre" for this game. Otherwise when the Legendary of the Month (week? biweek?) is boring then the entire game suffers. I live in Asia and find Latias to be extremely boring and useless (looking forward to Latios however). We are stuck with Latias for 5 weeks (yep!) and I can't imagine why I need to catch more. Last time we had a lull it was a thrill to solo 3 stars, but now that is less interesting / challenging given the proliferation of perfect attackers (weather boosted Mons and 5 star Legendaries) with optimal move sets.
The challenge of the game is gone (not that it was ever an adrenaline rush or Arthurian quest). I hope Niantic comes up with some very very hard quests that take a lot of sweat and time and effort to get a good reward. Maybe next quest needs us to walk a buddy or early stage Mon for 50-100 kilometers to earn a Really Useful Mythical. Mew was nice, but not good for much in the current game. Currently the game rewards those without patience with excessive bounty for being lucky. How many Raiders are pleading for a 100% Legendary every time they toss in their raid pass. I would prefer we catch very low level raid Legendaries (say 600-1000 dust?) and then have to walk them immense distances to get an optimal 5000-8000 dust killing machine.
Well... quests and weather and raids represent an improvement. The death of scanners - another improvement. Speedlock is arguably also an improvement, from a public safety point of view. Instead of having Shellder as your buddy you can now have Rayquaza as your buddy. I'd say it's nice to reminisce and feel nostalgic but it's farfetch'd to imply that the game has regressed in any way.
w.r.t. WaterYouWading4's comment; the game doesn't have to be raid-centric if you don't want it to. I typically raid 2/3 times a week and I have a great time every single time I open the app.
Very well written comment that I can relate too!
I agree that to me Pokemon Go was most fun during Generation 1. But that probably has to do with the fact that I grew up with generation 1 and to a lesser extent Generation 3 and everything afterwards.
I miss the old gym system, I miss the dedication I had to play the game, I miss exploring new areas and I even miss the randomness of evolving a Pokemon not knowing which move set it will get. I got so much more excited evolving a Pokemon with the right move set than nowadays.
Times have changed, hell.. I am still on my first quest for Mew and got only 3 stamps. But I've had a great time and I will cherish the memories. The game has become too casual for a competitive player like me that I don't see a chance of me returning. For some reason I like to keep being updated about what's new and these days I like to spend more time on this forum instead.
Tho, because PoGo is a relative simple game, new content for questions are scarce and I have to resist the temptation to troll around all the time. Anyway, quests and the introduction of a weather system have been a great step forward to many players. Niantic is improving.
I still miss the original 3-step system however
Research: Definitely an improvement.
Raids: Definitely an improvement. Unfortunately, gym defence is now trivial and prestiging is no more.
Weather: An improvement but overdone.
Speedlock: An improvement for some areas, but not in others where passengers are far more common than drivers (such as Singapore, where most people take public buses and trains because cars are very expensive).
Scanners: Discovering and using them turned me from a casual player to a hardcore one, with regular nest farming, running across residential areas to catch rares and meeting other trainers in the process. In the past few weeks, the local Facebook group has seen less fun conversation and more arguments.
We will have to agree to disagree about scanners.
Lack of Raid Scanners has dramatically hurt my local community.
Both in terms of less people talking and less people raiding. When the game turned from a solo game to a group game it needed to have some in-game communication tools/scanning tools to support this change. I whole heartedly believe PMG needs to impliment raid scanners.
I'm more mixed on lack of pokemon scanners. I did like them because of the community angle it built. There was a level 26 Perfect Lavitar in the back of a meijers. It was a blast to see 50+ PMG players walk into the store, some of us stayed in the front and gave directions. We gathered in groups and talked. It was less about the pokemon we caught, and more about the experience and conversations created by gathering us together.
And honestly, if you didn't want to use a scanner... you didn't have to. There is no PVP in PMG. No Ranking System. so if others drove farther than me, or did it more often, or I was at work, I just didn't care.
I can relate to some of these points.
Magikarp as common as pidgey.
The great efforts I made to catch/hatch a few decent Poliwag, grind the candy to evolve them all the way and spent so much dust to max them out...
I never used scanners, but I miss when I could catch 2-3 dratini after a 1-2 h long walk along the river.
I feel nostalgia for some of these things, but the game has improved greatly. So has Niantic. Weather system and research quests are the most notable and recent additions. But also the way they currently run the game, with -almost- weekly events to keep people's enthusiasm. Remember when PoGO had died? Well, I don't think it has ever been more alive than now!
