Raids would have been better without catching the boss
Even though raids are still very new... they are getting boring and lame really fast.
They should have never had you be able to capture the raid boss ... that's totally undeserving.... it should have only been that if you defeat the raid boss you would get it's candies based on how much damage you did ... plus a rare candies and some goldens... and i guess throw in some TM here or there ...
I mean how insanely Lame is it that some guy gives his car tires a workout and stops by that lv4 raid .... and now with doing nothing to deserve it has a charged TM and a fast TM plus 2 rare candies and 6 golden raspberries and a 96% IV Tyranitar.... all for 130 seconds worth of gameplay ...... L.A.M.E!!!
Answers
After the 6th Tyranitar they will lose interest fast because dust is rare to power them up. So the mons are useless except the players start to grind candies and dust.
Raids are boring, I agree. After one week and 12 raids I barely can motivate myself to use my free raidpass. It's only the hope for a TM to change some movesets. I don't need more raidbosses, I already have enough of them. 3 maxed machamps (100 to 93%), 3 more evolved. 5 Tyranitars, 6 evolved Zams, Vapes, Flareon, Jolteons, Gengars - all over 91%. Would need some good Evees for Espeons, but these don't come from raids.
While I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the sentiment (it IS frustrating for those of us who've been grinding for almost a year to see newbies get these mon right out of the gate), I do want to add that there's never been any sort of "deserving" element to this game. It's always been totally RNG and some people being luckier than others. From day one, two people could collect a 10k egg from the same stop and one got a Dratini while the other got a Pinsir. Or two people could evolve the same Dratini and one got DB/DC while the other got SW/HB. It's the same today with raids. I REALLY wanted an amazing Machamp with C/DP. My spouse caught it and got exactly that. I caught it and got only strong with BP/HS.
The addition of TMs has helped that somewhat by giving us hope of fixing what luck didn't give us to begin with, but even that is still totally random. 3 people can complete a raid and two get TMs of some sort while the third (usually me) gets nothing but revives and a berry.
Problem is, if you didn't get a shot at catching the boss, the casuals wouldn't show up and the raid scene would die most places.
I just think that maybe some of the true greats should have been left out of the raids or they should have employed a different ranking system. A TTar and a Blastoise is not in the same universe in terms of power level.
Anyway, I think this is partly why they reduced the catch-rates, which was probably a good move.
This is coming from a rural player, but IMO the game is less of a grind now because of raids. I no longer have to go through the tedious process of "buy incubators --> spin stops, hoping for a 10k but getting all 5k --> after weeks of walking and grinding for eggs, finally getting 3-4 10k eggs --> hatching them only to get 2 gligars, a mantine, and a pineco --> repeat for x months until enough larvitars pop that I can evolve".
Just having the chance to catch a Tyranitar from a raid is awesome. Half of the time I spend a pass and noone else is showing up, but it's worth it for the few times that I get 4-5 others and 1-2 of us catches it. The one I attempted to catch had sub-80 ivs.
Niantic has thrown us a bone and reduced the grind, but I'm sure that they'll find a way to make us masochists once again. No worries about that.
I agree, raids really cut down on the grind, if there is something you want then just watch for the appropriate raid. Yes, this will ultimately mean I play less hours per day, and that is good... the grind was not sustainable. They will need to maintain interest by changing up the raid boss pool every so often. Can't wait until the next event since it will probably come with new bosses. New gym rewards would also be welcome.
The gym change has also reduced the grind. A single busy gym can now give approx. 17 players their full coin complement for the day, it would have been very hard to get that many coins out of an old gym. This increased supply means the same number of gyms can satisfy more players... so now the game's player base can hopefully grow again. I think that has been the goal, to make the game seem more attainable to casual players, and to encourage hardcore players to welcome participation by these casual players.
Yup, I mentioned the boredom setting in for casuals days ago as a prediction.
As mentioned, my wife already doesn't really want to do the "work" to go use her pass...(casual)...
In a month, tier 4 raids will be downright hard for anyone not in a major city/dense area.
When raids started last week, we had groups of people "waiting" for that tier 4 egg to hatch in my area...
Now, every tier 4 raid I did the last few days, no one else was around...
We even waited at a tier 4 and Tyranitar hatched, but no one else was around (actually 1 person was sitting there, but I wasn't sure if he was playing)...2nd day of launch, 14 people came waiting for tier 4 eggs.
Long term problems I see is that as a game called Pokemon GO, the GO part has completely been nerfed (no need for buddy candies, hatching eggs (since I believe raid bosses will rotate), find far and out of the way gyms to "explore", etc...).
All I see are car/gym drivers (us being one of those when we go on our errands).
I wonder if Niantic has realized that most casual players - like most of the general population - are basically lazy... no one wants to walk/exercise/work for something. So they had to make it easier for the great majority of players - the casuals and noobs.
They figure they don't have to accommodate those of us who are less casual (levels 35 and up), as they already have us ;)
