With the scanners down, have raid crowds in your area declined?

It's trashed the raid scene.

I haven't been able to get into a single legendary raid since the scanners went down, because I can't see the gyms I normally raid at from the office, so I don't know when to show up. Discord chat has been failing to gather people for raids most of the time.

''then it must be far worse for rural areas.''

It is.

I work in downtown Toronto and live out in the suburbs.
Downtown there is no problem with getting groups for legendary raids - show up just as the egg hatches and there will almost always be enough people there - often as many as 50-60 people. In comparison when legendary raids first started we actually had a lot fewer people.

On the other hand, in the suburbs it has become a lot harder to find a raid with enough people - often I will be the only one who shows up. I know that some people have a discord group for the area or some such but I have had no luck finding it.

I live in a fairly large town with a good network of people who report raid sightings throughout the day on social media (Facebook and Discord), where planning for them also takes place. The scanners made the whole process alot easier, but raiding still happens.

To be fair, the normal raiding situation (before the scanners broke) was that we had to organise raids ahead of time anyway. Player numbers in my town are decent, but are rarely sufficient that you could just turn up and raid - 95% of level 4 and 5 raids had to be planned in advance or they wouldn't get done at all. So the situation I suppose hasn't changed that much, but everyone's vision is just alot more restricted and we have to be better at communicating.

The Raid scene in my area has significantly declined as well. There are still active raids in the adjacent town, but, for my town, raids are only accomplished during "live hours". There are times in which "dead hours" make it so even the popular sponsored gyms can't find raiders.

The only way to maintain raids in Discord now is to tag everyone you know that lives in the area if you see a raid and hope to get their attention in time.

In a word: yes

As if the 45 minute window for active raids wasn’t bad enough, at least we could see what’s coming up and plan. Now we’re forced to split up and drive around and, if someone sees one, hope we can all get to it in time.

It has PROBABLY trashed my area as well. But my area is an Urban Suburb (ie: within walking distance of the Downtown, but is full of the working-poor, immigrants, retirees and people who can't afford the average rent for my city) so generally the excitement over Legendary's dies down once everyone in the normal raiding circle has got their Dex entry.

However, we were successful in triggering 5 EX raids in January, February and March by focusing on specific those specific gyms. Since the scanners have gone down, this has entirely stopped. I used to see 3-4 posts about raids at those gyms every day, even in the middle of the day, and now I only see posts on weekends or after 5pm. So it seems like the organizers were watching those gyms on the Scanner and alerting people to the raids. Now that they can't do it, it isn't being done, and we haven't had an EX Raid triggered in our area since the Scanners were kicked out.

I'm pretty sure it's because the Scanners were kicked. Part of it might be the cyclical nature of our raiding (once people get their Dex entry, they're less likely to want to do another Legendary raid, so the crowds go from 15-20 per raid to 5-10 per raid after a week or so) but I'm pretty sure we'd be doing more if we didn't have to rely on other players in the area posting raids when they saw them. I know that when I get home, I'm generally not paying attention to my Pokémon Go while I'm making dinner, or helping my kids with homework, or taking a shower or going shopping or the like, so I'm not posting raids very often. Pretty sure others in my area are quite similar.

The suburb where I live mostly relied on live reports even when maps worked so that hasn't changed much, but in the city I can see a huge difference. People are raiding less.

Of course this has coincided with Latias being the legendary raid boss and it's not exactly the most motivating boss to raid for. I expect to see a decent upsurge of interest when we get Latios.

I think another factor is that Latios, Latias, and the Regis are not as desirable as Kyogre and Rayquaza, so there's a bit less interest in them in general. I suspect there will be a short uptick in raid numbers after the Lati twins change continents, and then back to the current status quo for a while.

Personally, I'm a bit more excited about which legendary will be the next field research breakthrough, although I'll keep hitting Latios, and then Latias, for the RC.

Small town, not much difference.

Low rush hours - less activity due to less reporting
Rush hours - lots of reports and people are checking them regularly and show up.

Less people driving around in a full car raiding by themselves, which actually may be an advantage for the community.

Luckily don't need a crowd to beat Latios, Lugia was just too much for 3 or 4 to comfortably beat...however maybe, Latias will be closer in difficulty to Lugia than it is to Latios?

Yes.

Both in terms of people on discord, and what I call "Pick Up" Raiding and when you get a dedicated group together hopping from one to another "Organized" Raiding.

Pick up raiding has dropped by 1/2 or more in my area.
Organized Raiding when a group sets up for 8 hours of raiding is getting about 20%-25% less raids done ins ame 8 hours.

Since scanners have been down, I've only used daily raid passes, oftentimes waiting until the following day. I've been doing mostly on T2-3 raids, a few T4 when I have seen them and had a couple other people show up, and a few T1 when I got to the end of the day and still hadn't used yesterday's daily pass on anything worthwhile. I've maybe done about one Latios per week in all that time.

Previously I would use daily raid pass almost every day (not waiting till the next) on at least a T3 or T4, and used at least three premium raid passes a week. Overall about half of my raids were T5.

I really hope Niantic is even bothering to look at these activity numbers. They really need to either ease up on bots or create their own official raid map.

I don't think the raid crowds have declined much (if any) in my area. We have a couple of Messenger groups to organise raids, so as long as we know a raid is coming, people are usually keen on doing it.

But as we now have to rely on people actually seeing raids and can't just have a look on their phone to scan all gyms, we do have fewer raids.
Luckily people seem to be keeping an eye out, both when they are passing gyms and also when they have a Pokemon in a gym and if they see that a raid is coming, they tend to tell everyone else about it, even if they themselves won't partake in the raid.

Yesterday at the gym opposite my house, there were only 14 players in the first lobby right after the egg hatched, but only thanks to many players around with several phones. No more players after that, not counting second accounts.

The egg appeared on the gym with only 28 minutes timer. While this meant that I did not have to defend the gym against gym control fighters (my pokemon was in the gym), it probably also contributed to the lack of raiders.

I think it all depends on how active your local discord/social media network is. The discord groups in the area where I work have the same level of activity as they did before the scanners went down, and raid-wise nothing has changed (except no one is posting the moveset of the raid boss before the battle).