Why Niantic has it all wrong.
The concept of Exclusive raid passes is completely wrong. The point of Pogo is being inclusive, working together, community and teamwork. Instead, they roll out 'exclusive' raid passes? 'Exclusive' means to 'to exclude'. A game that promotes the exclusion of other people? Not my thing.
Niantic, I'm close to giving up on this game as are many people in my area. The lack of key features (battle rework, pvp, etc) and poorly thought out decisions by your strategic and marketing teams give me little to no hope for this game.
To Gamepress users, I'm not telling you to quite, but Niantic, you are about to lose players including myself, who've spent $500, $1,000, $3,000 dollars on this game.
Answers
If you've spent that much on the game, perhaps it is a good idea for you to quit. Personally, I've spent $0, I'm level 39, and still enjoy the game and embrace the changes when they happen, rather than complaining & threatening to quit, as though anyone would care.
As far as EX raids go (they are not "exclusive raids," so that whole rant of yours about the definition of the word is irrelevant), do you want every level 20 player to have an army of Mewtwos? They can either make Mewtwo easy to get, or they can make him hard to get, and people will complain either way.
So many people in this game are worried about what someone else gets. There aren't even many level 20 players out there.
But yeah, if everyone getting a chance at mewtwo means that every level 20 (who raids constantly but somehow remains level 20) gets 6 mewtwos, I am completely comfortable with that.
EX does mean exclusive, that was the original name for the passes.
I do agree with you on one thing. If you spent $3k in this game, you should quit or at least send me some of that easy money!
No, EX doesn't mean exclusive. If it did, they wouldn't have needed to change the name. They didn't like the connotation of the word "exclusive," so they gave these raids a new name before they were ever rolled out.
How do you know how many level 20 players are out there? But anyway, OK, that was an exaggeration, but it was based on the fact that many people complained that they worked so hard to get a Tyranitar, blah blah blah, and then when raids were introduced, suddenly a lot of lower level players had an army of high-IV Tyranitars, without having to work for them.
Everyone wants a Mewtwo, I get it. And everyone will get their chance, eventually. Will it kill you to wait a few weeks, or even a month or two? Do you want Mewtwo to be something special, or do you want everyone to basically be issued multiple "participation" Mewtwos? And regardless of your answer, bear in mind that your opinion does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the overall player base.
I'm afraid EX still means exclusive, as in "John was granted one but Jane wasn't, even though they both met the same criteria". The problem is Niantic is still treating these like they do everything else in the game: through RNG. And it's one thing for RNG to give one player a 10k egg and another a 2k. That's random. Same with IVs on raid bosses; they're randomized at encounter. But these are passes that Niantic explicitly bestows on specific people. It's making camps of Haves and Have Nots based on no identifiable criteria. Think Platinum/Titanium credit cards. Those are exclusive to people who have EARNED the right to have one. Credit card companies don't randomly distribute them to people on the street regardless of credit score.
I'm not opposed to making the uber-tier legendaries (like Mewtwo) be hard to obtain. But there should be a level playing field for everyone to earn a chance at it. As others have said before, the ideal way to do this is to make the pass a reward for completing a certain (high) number of raids. You're then given an EX as your nth raid reward, and you can use once at any upcoming EX raid.
But this random invite crap needs to stop. In the current system, no one has any kind of guarantee of ever being invited, while they have friends who are going to their 5th or 6th. And that is going to turn even more people away from the game.
Tyranitar is definitely not a right example. At least everyone got the same chance to get Tyranitar from Raid. But Mewtwo is not. While some people already got four Mewtwo but some others have never even seen a Mewtwo's tail, that's the unfairness. And even some one was asking weather the time on Exclusive Raid Pass is local time or not - You know what does that mean? Niatic has never been fair, with so many events occuring in japan, south korea and America in which you can catch so many special mons so easily while other country has noting. How if you buy an iphone and only in japan they have buy one get one free? How if Apple is sending out something for free which can make your iphone runs better but only the user in America can get it? What do you feel? Niatic did lots of wrong things. Complaining is nothing wrong.
How can you be sure everyone will get a chance?
There is nothing to suggest this, and so telling people not to complain about a flawed system because you are sure (based on zero evidence) that we will all get a chance makes no sense.
You can not know that....so to tell us to be patient based on your unfounded guess is at least flawed, and borders on delusional.
For the record, what do you think 'EX' refers to?
In a way, all legendary raids are exclusive as they discriminate against players who don't, for various reasons, have enough others available to do them. I'm one of them and yes, it bothers me. EX(clusive) raids do the same thing to players who have the necessary numbers but don't get the invite.
The whole legendary raid system is very flawed :-\
They should have made it so that every player could only own ONE of each type of legendary. You catch another? You have to drop one. That would make more sense with something being legendary. You aren't happy with your 96% Raikou? OK, keep buying passes and try to get a 100%. Then nobody would stress that some people have 6 Mewtwo while most players have never even been invited to an ex raid.
The thing is no one knows what exactly they're testing. There have been 3 EX raids at one of my local gyms. For the first one, 40 were invited. For the second one, about half that number from the same pool were invited. For the third one, about half that number (again, from the same pool) were invited. So what are they testing? Is it to see how far we're being willing to be led by the nose? Because if it was either a load test or to see how many are willing to show up at a given time and place, then it'd make sense to double the number of invitees, not halve it each time.
How long can a test last before we can say it is in game?
How long has the game been around?
How long have players had Mewtwo?
....trust me, Mewtwo is in game
When content has been played in a live game for more than 10% of the games existence, I feel it is acceptable to talk as if it is in game already.
Calling it a test for months doesn't stop it from being a part of the game that many are actively targetting....damn, we are even paying for the chance with real money.
The moment Niantic accepted money for players trying to achieve an EX pass is the moment they lost the right to claim it isn't part of the game yet.
Yep, it's a senseless system that is making many people to quit. I couldn't cope any longer with the same unresolved flaws and have been enjoying a competitor's game for 4 weeks now. In my case, spoofers camping free in my neighbourhood (after having video proof reported dozens of times) plus being one of the most active players in my city that never got a EX invitation after 3 rounds...have been the straw that breaks the camel's back. I hope to come back when gen 3 is released, but so far there is no incentive to play PoGo.
Do you remember the ads for the game when it first came out? Hundreds/thousands of people fighting a Mewtwo at once? They made it out to be a massive community effort and like you said it's now about excluding. Imagine a gym with a much larger radius that could have up to a few hundred players battling at once (not all the pokemon would have to be shown whilst fighting). They could announce the raid to everyone within a certain distance and have it 'pinned' on the nearby raids tab with a countdown. But no, instead they completely go back on what the ad was conveying and make it so barely anyone can get a Mewtwo :)
