Things Niantic Can Do To Bring Back Trainers
During community day I ran into a lot of trainers I haven't seen in months. I was interested to see why they stopped playing and created a list of these reasons. Here is what I have found.
1. Make All Raids Be Able To Be Soloed: It sucks when your ability to progress in a game depends on other people. Especially when your so busy in every day life that waiting on people really throws of your schedule. Or when Toxic Admins or a Toxic Community bullies and threatens you to play raid the way they want it to be played and not the way you want to play it. One of my old friends even said he was bullied and harassed so bad from a toxic discord group at a Piloswine because he wanted to solo it and not wait for people that said they were coming that he had to leave. Another thing is they can have 1 raid boss at each gym that you can access within a 24 hour time frame at any time of the day. This will be very attractive for many trainers to return.
2. Make TM's Great Again: There was a lot of passion for this subject. It is extremely absurd that we trash TM's when they could be used right now! There is no reason for a Community Day exclusive move. Some people have to work during Community Day or have other events they must attend and can't log in. Look, A rare mon that spawns frequently, Increase chance for a shiny and walking perk is enough to get people out their house you don't need to add an exclusive move on top of that.
3. I.V. adjustments: This one was mentioned a few times but I gathered this from complaints that revolved around this. It sucks if you were playing since 2016, looking for your favorite perfect Pokemon. After 2 years and over 1000 hours played you still don't have it.. You start realizing your efforts are in vain and the solution is to stop playing. Niantic should introduce an item that you can add to 1 attack state. Should be a rare item but something for trainers to build on their favorite mons further.
Make Trading Better: Let's face it the trading system sucks. Only one special trade a day?? IV Rerolls??? STARDUST COSTS?? WHAT THE HELL!?! People barely even talk about trading and when it's brought up it's all negative comments. Cmon Niantic FIX YOUR TRADING SYSTEM!
5. I leave open for your. What are your thoughts that Niantic can change to bring back players?
Answers
I agree with #2.
I wholeheartedly disagree (respectfully) with #4. Trading should have high costs in time and dust associated with special trades, and IV rerolls prevent most of the issues associated with multi accounting and being a tool about it.
#3 I don't care much one way or the other - I suppose I'm slightly against the idea of improving what we have because it's another way to whale.
#1 - I disagree mostly, but I do agree that this situation that some/many/most communities have with exclusivity and toxic admin behavior needs to be addressed somehow. Unfortunately, Niantic has not yet provided a toolkit to do this with. I have never been unlucky enough to be in an awful community, and am well-pleased with the group I've met.
For trading, I'd like to see an increase of the limit on special trades from 1 to:
-1 general
-X extra with ultra friends or higher, depending on your number of ultra/best friends.
I have around 6 best friends and 12 more ultra friends. However my special trade goes with my girlfriend on 100% of days as we reroll legendaries.
I'm not going to tell my gf that she can't have my special trade today. It sucks to not be able to trade anyone else though.
Dynamic catch screen backgrounds would be nice. If I catch a Pokemon near buildings, I'd like to see a townscape. If I catch one near the coast, I'd like to see a coastal background, etc. I know I could use AR but it's just not practical
As for your TM suggestion, I think level 40 Pokemon should have their entire movesets become TMable, including CD moves. There's really no reason to bring a Pokemon to level 40 other than smug self-satisfaction right now.
1. This will never happen. PoGo was intended to be a social game, regardless on how well you think they've implemented it. Toxic admins admins absolutely suck, no one will disagree with that. That said, I don't think Niantic should have to babysit the player base and I already dislike the amount of babying they do as is, namely having raids quit spawning around 6 because parents are worried about kids being out at night or whatever.
2. Theoretical HM's are the solution to this in my book. Make them an item exclusive to CD's that can be spent on qualifying Pokemon. Made it out to Beldum day but missed Larvitar day? Use the HM's gotten on Beldum day to get in on the Smack Down Ttars you missed. Additionally, the ability to get these items would generate more interest for less exciting community days such as Chikorita day.
3. As far as stat buff items go, bottlecaps exist in the main series and would be a nice implementation to Go. By locking them to use on L40 Pokemon only would also give people incentive to max things out beyond showboating; For most cases the gain from L35 to L40 will barely be noticeable yet it costs more dust/candy than going form L20 to L30. By keeping them a L40 exclusive item you give people incentive to actually hit L40 since right now a L38 trainer can do everything a L40 one can. Give people a reason to reach the endgame.
4. Niantic actually offers their insights on why the trading limitations exist. Whether you agree or disagree with their rationale is another matter. I do agree with you about the limit on special trades a day, I have too many legendaries for this one a day nonsense:
https://pokemongolive.com/en/post/jundevupdate-trading/
Removing raid timers would give the slight possibly to solo, but instead have like only one re-enter or some other restriction so that it you don’t have unlimited time, but have time to maybe heal your team or something. I hate lagging when you are trying to swipe to get your team, only for your Pokémon to keep popping up like you are trying to change a team member.
HTM for exclusive moves and CD moves that are extremely hard to get would be a good think. Bottle caps to raise IVs would be great as well, that should be extremely hard to get.
To get these they can have like special research like “solo an Alakazam” or “solo a level 2 boss only using one Pokémon” or something like that.
I do not agree with the trading or stardust thing (leveling up). Both are restrictive enough so you have to dedicate yourself to the game. This gives hardcore players something to do, farm stardust. I make sure I do my daily spin, daily catch, daily raid, and daily research task everyday so that the seven day streak gives me extra stardust. I always use a Starpiece too.
I think to get a boost of revenue Niantic should sell a Super Raid Pass in the store for like 50000+ coins or something. This pass gives you unlimited raid passss (never goes away) and you get to attend one EX raid pass a month. I know a lot of people that would buy it. And it would boost Niantics bottom line.
1. the whole point of T5 raids is to get people to gether and play.
2.If all moves can be TM, then there will be no reason in attending community day.
3.Casual to hardcore player do 30 to 1000+ raids. If they can raise IV then all they have to do it 6 and they are done
4. The reason why IV is randon in trading and stardust cost is high is because of people selling accounts on ebay. If I carries IV stays the same and no strdust cost then people will start selling individual pokemon on ebay
That's moving the goalpost by adding another perk. He said if the ONLY perk was shiny Pidgey that people would flock (heh) to it. While it may initially be true many people would stop playing after getting a few shinies until spawns went back to normal. With Pidgey being as common as it it outside events some may not even bother.
If the only benefit to a community day was a non-meta shiny Pokemon, I could use incense while sitting in my house (and I have 3 spawn points within range of my house so I wouldn't even need the incense) and could get my shiny without ever leaving the comfort of home.
That's not the goal of community day. Niantic wants us out and seeing each other.
So like Mareep or Chikorita community day? They've already done CDs where you're pretty much done after getting one shiny and evolving one for the collection and the turnout was fine. Not as big as for Larvitar or Beldum, but it was fine.
Edit: 3 people would like to believe Meganium and Ampharos are meta-relevant.
Unfortunately they can be solo'd. There are an unfortunate number of people walking around my town with 2, 3,4, 7 accounts! Not only can they do any raid themselves, but they will sit there and golden raz gyms indefinitely until they get bored. The ones who do that and spoof are even worse. I think cooperative aspects are important however I know for a fact the people who give me the most trouble are only cooperating with their right and left hand.
I completely agree with #2.
For #1, we need a solution to toxic admins, not a way to solo even tier 5 raids. We need official alternatives to the now-broken raid maps and relying on Discord groups that Niantic has no way to monitor.
Trading is the way it is to limit abuse.
Persistent glitches are the main reason why I no longer spend real money on coins.
One of the reports you can make of another player: "A player is exhibiting poor behavior in the real world and/or interacting with other players while playing Pokemon GO"
Directly from the report form. So yes, toxic community managers fall squarely into that description and should be reported for their abuse.
I'm actually surprised that 2 people downvoted your comment. I guess there are some Admins on here who realize that they're Toxic, and are afraid that people will support your position.
Guy who runs 6 accounts to hold a gym 24/7 is at least as toxic to the game as an Admin who abuses his position to force players to play the way he wants them to play. Both should be reported, and both should be dealt with by Niantic.
You can report them but unfortunately they have their community in their pocket. They conform all the casuals and collude the pros into doing what the admins want them to do. Then with that power they bully the people who don't want to be part of their group. So nothing Niantic can do except allow in game communication so their followers don't need to rely on their social media pagers to find people to play with.
1) No. Just no. They're already addressing this slightly by making Legendary's Research Rewards, which is.. nice? Making any raid Soloable is recipe for disaster when "Solo" players find that they can Solo that Legendary... but it costs them 24 Revives because that Mewtwo had Focus Blast and one-shot all the Tyranitars that had to be put in on the 3rd team. And we all know how hard it is to get Revives most of the time - even for those of us who are spinning 25-50 Pokestops and Gyms every day.
Hell, I went 4 straight 7 Day Streak spins without getting a single Revive (none on Gold Gyms because I didn't want to get so many items that I couldn't spin Pokestops for Research Quests, true). I did my 7 day spin today on a Gold Gym and got... 1 Revive out of 32 items.
The other downside to this idea is that it will greatly encourage multi-accounting. On a personal level I don't mind multi-accounting, but it is against the Terms of Service so I don't endorse it. But if you're a Solo player and EVERY raid becomes Soloable if you have enough Potions and Revives, you're going to make a second account to raid with. The benefits are too great to resist when you know you're going to win anyway. Then level up the Friendship, get more balls to catch, make it easier to raid in general (more damage), trade Pokémon between the accounts (and get some decent Lucky Pokémon), etc. Just be smart about it (like don't have FandangoGhandi and FandangoGhandi01, play on separate devices, etc.) and don't be a jerk in the Gym defense scene and it's highly unlikely you'll get caught.
If you need 5 players to take down a Raid Boss and there's only you (or just 1 other player), there is less of an incentive to create a forbidden second account because you won't win the raids anyway.
2) A Community Day exclusive being ONLY available on Community Day is not very useful. A Community Day Exclusive that is Guaranteed during that Community Day, but then is available like any other Move after Community Day makes more sense. A "Special TM" that can learn a Community Day move outside of Community Day probably is the best of what the Players want and what Niantic wants.
3) I'm still more in favour of actually TRAINING a Pokémon to become better, not simply using an item to raise its strength. I'd be quite happy to battle, say, 140 times with my Attack 14 (Pokémon) to raise the Attack to 15. It would certainly shake up the Gym Defense meta, knowing that Machamp would be a useful defender because you know that someone is going to try to sweep a gym with a Tyranitar to raise it's Attack IV. But that would take a complete rework of the Gyms... something the game needs.
4) Special Trades restriction needs to go away. The exorbitant cost for Special Trades needs to be trashed - if I go to Europe to visit family, I'm not going to be there long enough to trade a North American Regional to them for a European Regional. It's just too expensive in regards to Stardust. As for IV Rerolls, I don't mind them so much, I just wish that the range was much narrower. Where it only dropped a Pokémon by 1 "Level" at most. (So an 82%+ would only drop to a 67%+ at most, a 67%+ would only drop to a 50%+, and a 50%+ could drop even further) AND that it would happen for both Traders; my worst trade was when I traded a Tyranitar with my wife and the one she traded was a 50%+ that turned into an 84% while the 67%+ I traded to her dropped down to below 50%. (It was a Smackdown for Smackdown)
5) More varied Spawns. I don't need to have Larvitar or Shinx or Beldum or Bagon spawning everywhere, but it gets extremely boring when you look at the Nearby and it's all "Common" Pokémon. We have 3+ Generations now, yet I'm still seeing Spinarak, Weedle, Seedot, Hopip, Sentret, Pidgey and Ratatta everywhere.
6) Raids:
6a) In-Game Raid scanners. I should be able to tap on any Gym I have a badge for and see if there is a Raid going on there.
6b) Go back to the 15min Countdown Timer and 90min raids.
6bi) Have the Eggs show what is going to be hatching in some way. It's aggravating to be waiting for an hour on an Egg, only to find it's something you don't want to raid. It's even more aggravating to leave that area (like... go back to work after lunch) only to find out that the Raid was something you were looking to do.
6c) Extend Raids to end at 9pm instead of 7:30. WTF, Niantic? WTF?
^^^^^
6a) In-Game Raid scanners. I should be able to tap on any Gym I have a badge for and see if there is a Raid going on there.
6b) Go back to the 15min Countdown Timer and 90min raids.
Yes Please! And also some way to flag interest in a raid without it costing a raid pass, so can see from the lobby if there will be enough (if you quit the raid before it begins you are not "charged" the pass?)
Also more folders / stars etc to quickly organize PKM collection - a "trading" folder or marker that defaults open when trading is initiated, instead of going back to the main screen each and every time.
The arrow icon on the Friends list should show if the friend is eligible to be sent a gift.
Basically, more time-saving interface design. They've made steps in the right direction, just need more!
Your #1 and #2 already have a solution in game: namely trading (your #4). Ask someone in your community to catch and save for you an extra version of the featured pokemon to trade it later on. Sorted!
As for trading is so perfectly balanced that I can barely believe that Niantic came out with the idea. It's a robust system, fair for both sides and unexploitable.
Since #1, #2 and #4 are already implemented, #3 might be the one they could work towards implementing in the future.
IMHO this whole post is a bit of a whining crisis that we get every so often on this Q&A (speaking of toxicity...). PoGo is probably at its best health in its history. My perception is that many people are coming back rather than stopping playing. People are collaborative and friendly in most cases. Most people embrace the social aspect as well as enjoy some private gameplay as they see fit.