Worst. Raid. Experience. (To date)
So I join a Zapdos raid with 9 other aholes. The lobby is full of Valor players. (I'm a Mystic player) I see that there's 10 people in the lobby. I'm like, great, this is going to be a piece of cake! (I've taken down Zapdos with a lobby of 6) So the battle starts, I look down at the Pokemon, and of course I see Blissey. I see a few Golem, Rhydon, etc. The majority of the battle, I have my eyes on my charge bar. (My team consists of 4 Golem & 2 Rhydon with SE. Up to this point, I have NEVER lost a Zapdos raid with my team. I've wasted precious stardust powering these guys up) So half way through the battle, I look at Zapdos health bar and I'm like, wow this is going to be a close one. I noticed the health bar wasn't going down as fast, but didn't think too much of it. Now it's under a minute left and my last Pokemon, Rhydon, is out there. I take a look at Zapdos health bar, it's still yellow! I'm there like, wow, how can that be? There's 10 people...looks at how many people are in the battle and sees only TWO people...it's only me and this ahole with a Blissey battling Zapdos!!!!!!!! I'm like woooooow! So these idiots aren't joining again because they don't want their damage bonus to go away. YOU CAN'T USE THE DAMAGE BONUS AND GET EXTRA BALLS IF THERE ISN'T ANYTHING TO CATCH!! So my Rhydon finally dies around the 50 second mark. I get mad, and I'm like, there's no way I'm reentering the battle. The 50 seconds expire and so does that battle!
We did end up beating it the next time around because 2 more people joined and I saw better Pokemon and all 12 people in the battle.
I was soooooo furious! I feel much better now that I got that off my chest.
Answers
There is actually a bug that it only shows 2 pokemon when more maybe actually battling...
Even if you see 2, there could be a lot more battling so I wouldn't be upset if you only see 2...
I've been in groups of 12+ and only see two...I peek at other people's screen and they are still madly tapping and fighting...
Like on any battle, even in a group of 20, you only see at most, 6 or so I think.
I also think if you see people not coming back in, then I agree with you and let's just all LOSE then...(sitting on 300+ potions, I can redo battles endlessly if people want...). We should ALL get our damage bonus I feel...
Eventually, people will rejigger their team to do better and honestly, I don't think people are PURPOSELY LOSING. If you talk to people, people simply DON'T KNOW what is good...The system tells me to use Blissey and I see EVERYONE putting Blisseys in gyms...Blissey MUST BE AWESOME!
Ideally, I think everyone should just make a team lasting the whole battle...if that's Blisseys for you, so be it...Swapping on some phones can take long and I know mine, has a minimum of 30+ seconds to leave the battle early and come back...If I try to heal, we're talking like 55+ seconds now.
Also, team is irrelevant. All team have jerks...
One of the interesting things about higher level raids is you have to sus out the raid group's capabilities and attitude. A group where everyone just wants to do the minimum, and/or are pretty low level, will need to be larger than a group of high level trainers who give it their all. You can try to get the group to change its color, wait for more trainers, or accept the situation and minimize your losses.
I knew rejoin battle may reduce your DAMAGE Bonus but still rejoin previously. However there are couple of times, the game GOT errors as following, and nothing was caught.
1st case: Win the battle and get the items, but can not go to caught screen (Articuno);
2nd case: Win the battle, get items and enters to catch Lugia, but none of balls can be used. what the HELL!
3rd case: Win the battle, get items enters to catch Motress, can throw balls, but none of barriers can be used! Wasted.
After that, my friend told me the errors mostly happen during rejoining battle while the battle is going to complete. So he suggested that tried not to rejoin if the battle is going to end (eg. less than 60s), alternatively can to try to use more powerful/tanky mons and if possible, more people to avoid the problem.
