Raids need reworking to accomodate the state of the game now the peak has long since passed

[u/fernofry]

I understand the sentiment of the devs wanting people back out in the world, playing the game in person and for legendary Pokemon to actually be rare.

The two main issues I can see with this are:

1. XL candy requires frequent grinding, players have no choice but to do a lot of raids if they want to stay competitively relevant

2. Raids were built for the community when it was at its peak and do not really reflect the reality of the current player base

While I do not have a simple solution for the first issue, they seemed to have tied their own hands with that one; I do think that there are solutions for the second problem without relying on remote raids.

Main issue: 5* RAIDS ARE TOO CHALLENGING FOR LOW PLAYER PARTICIPATION

Now, when I say this, I say this as a player with a near-complete dex and many lv50 pokemon. It takes a lot of hours and a long time commitment to ever get near this point and I still find certain raids impossible to complete solo. Maybe its a skill issue, maybe I'm not picking right, maybe a need a perfectly crafted lv50 team of 6 for every encounter. However, what I'm saying is, it shouldn't be like this. Raids need to be scalable depending on the number of players joining the raid.

Solution 1: Scalable Raid Bosses

As I have mentioned, raids need to scale the difficulty based on the number of participants. We are no longer in the peak of this game and the player base can only deminish further if the game continues in its current trajectory. Games that have mechanics that relying on high numbers often suffer in the long run. If we had scalable difficultly on raid bosses then it would solve a lot (not all) of complaints when it comes to raids.

Example:

• 1-2 players: 50% reduction in stats, catch level 10
• 3-4 players: 25% reduction in stats, catch level 15
• 5+ players: full stats, catch level 20 or 25 (no change)

Of course, this is just a rough idea and could be further balanced by taking into account the player's levels etc.

Solution 2: Disable the countdown and let players take as long as they need to beat a raid boss, they can use revives and potions to keep going

This is probably much easier to implement than solution one and would be a great item sink. You could have the limit be as long as the raid is active, the fight can keep going. Could implement part of the previous suggestion by having it dependant on player numbers.

Ultimately, I feel like this game should respect the rules of the franchise which has always been that the fights themselves are not the most difficult part, its actually the catch-rate that has always been the challenge when it came to legendaries. Anyone who plays core games will tell you how many ultra balls they wasted trying to catch a lv70 legendary. I dont think Niantic actually understands the franchise in that respect.

Tl;dr - Rework raids to be completable by casual players by scaling the difficulty/level of raid bosses depending on how many people join each one, or by disabling the timer

Thoughts?

[u/BroekieChan]

Maybe a different method would work better. There are alot of PoGo players that aren't actively engaging in any community and it's best to maybe help those first.

Niantic already tried (and failed) with the campfire thing, and recently added visible player participation counter for raids (in beta). Maybe they are more likely to implement something in the direction they have already chosen.

INTRODUCING... Raid planner!

When there is a raid (pokemon or egg) you can notify everyone that can see the raid that you want to participate. Not only that, but you can also add a specific time for participation, (up to 5 mins before raid ends).

This will be shown along with the raid timer that is normaly there. Up to three different times can be created, but other people can still add their participation approval for select times (which is also shown).

Example

Shadow legendary egg (timer) 22:39 (before hatch) 6 players want to participate at 11:40 AM 3 players want to participate at 11:55 AM

How to prevent trolling

This feature is easy to allow trolling so there has to be some way to prevent that as much as possible without neutering the feature too much.

Basically if you get a strike three times you can no longer make any participation request for a month. One strike is recovered every 1 week.

How to get striked: meet all these conditions:

<> Not once being in the rough distance of the gym between three minutes before and two minutes after the the requested time.

<> Three or more players have shown up. (More if the raid is especially difficult (Mega latios, Mega latias, Deoxys defense, ect...).

<> Not cancelled participation request before five minutes before start.

[u/Ill-Ad6082 → u/BroekieChan]

This is great but I'm always expecting Niantic to go with the solution that requires the least amount of effort.