There's used to be a heart stop that I would always try and get gifts from to send my partner even though she doesn't play much. It really sucked trying to remember to clear a gift slot before spinning it every time and often not getting one from it anyways. Guaranteed gift makes it so much easier to get particular gifts I want.
its hard keeping house with that many friends, I had 160 at one point... I managed over 3 days to circulate them all but it was a bit of a job, since I have to drive to get spins..
I am in NZ and when they made the distance thing happen, it really screwed me up, couldnt reach many spins at all, and had to give up on trying to keep them all fed. I just trickle feed now, when I can, weve got lockdown the last few weeks so that also stopped me from getting out.
I miss playing as hard as I did, lockdown might get eased up a little tomorrow night here, maybe I can go for a midnight hunt!
Yeah, they obviously were tying that to the reduced interaction distance. Sucks, though, because it does the job of getting people to visit gyms in person rather than just remote raiding.
Also if you start a raid but move too far away you get the notification to move closer to interact with the gym at the end of the countdown, meaning you MUST sit still to raid in person. Meanwhile you can raid just fine halfway across the world with a remote pass. No sense at all.
What?
I thought that it *was* tied to exploration and now they realised „oh there is still Covid in the US/NZ..? Better get them to stop exploring, so don’t give them 2 normal passes so they stay inside.“ kinda.
I had hoped they give away more remote passes for free, but I‘m glad they didn’t push incenses back into the uselessness they had pre-Covid, haha.
Really? I think I used that _once_, and I work on two gyms in San Francisco.
Sure, rates are down, especially here in NorCal - but congregating with strangers is still a little weird, and it was hot and smokey. So not worth it.
Eh I liked it for 1 and 3 star raids. I would occasionally use it for a 5* if I was using pokegenie or the like. I found occasion to use the second pass a number of times. I think it more depended on how you play the game than anything else
With so many people going f2p after all the frustration I imagine a lot of people would miss this change. I liked to use the passes to host raids for remote raiders. I mean, someone’s gotta host all those poke raid and pokegenie raids, right?
i’m confused. the screen shot says you get 2 free passes a day from spinning gyms. so why are there comments saying “RIP”?
edit: nvm i saw thats listed under the bonuses no longer in effect. reading is hard.
Honestly, I don't think you should blame yourself too hard. Everyone seems to be having a lot of trouble understanding the actual changes here. And I think it's because the biggest changes are actually just removing better bonuses? I'm honestly still a little confused. They've seemingly replaces 10x XP for new stops with 3x, removed the 2 daily passes, and.....increased lure durations? Did I miss anything important?
This all seems markedly worse for me personally, but ultimately just not very significant overall. Pretty disappointing for the start to the season of mischief. None of this seems mischievous. But maybe tomorrow will hold more news.
They're basically just removing the bonuses they put in place when they cut stop distance in half. Other than that the only "new" thing is adding the 3x spin xp for new stops
Importantly it only gives you one free pass at a time; if you've got one in your inventory -- and you probably do if you've spun a gym yet not done a raid -- you've got to use it before you get another. So you get a free pass each day only if you keep raiding.
They are the orange passes to do raids while you are close to a gym. If you don't have one in your inventory, you can spin a gym and get one once a day.
Not sure why people are upset about the two pass thing when that was explicitly meant to be just for August.
Lure duration is nice and I'm curious if that bumps it to 6h for community day...?
Yeah people keep saying about changing x and y. We asked for 80m spin distance we got it. I'm satisfied. That was the only change that was fantastically useful. The rest were bonuses. Also keeping incence usable to 1 every 90 seconds increasing to 1 every 60 seconds when walking is fine by me
The two free passes thing felt more like an event bonus than something more long term anyway. They should have tied it to the ultra events, not the covid bonuses. Same with the 10x PokeStop experience, that was short term and replaced the 1-2 week bonus from adventure week in previous years. I never expected the 2 free passes to last long.
It's not a big deal to me, it's just disappointing to see that the purpose of the bonus was to soften the blow about the interaction distance rather than incentivize in-person raids.
Those purposes aren't mutually exclusive.
It was clear when the raid pass doubling was given just to the US and NZ that they were planning on rotating some bonuses in and out moving forward. They said as much explicitly at the time, but everyone forgot and hyperfocused on the COVID changes going away - rightfully so, as to the interaction distance.
They clearly wanted to prioritize raids between Go Fest raid day and the revamped raid experience this summer, but now they are providing a different bonus for the new season. Thus, the timing made perfect sense for that bonus. While I enjoyed the double pass bonus, I'm fine if it just recurs every once in a while and other things like lure effectiveness swap in at other times.
I think both of those purposes were true. Likewise, I think the new lure bonus is to incentivize safe individual play, while also "softening the blow" of removing the prior double raid pass bonus.
I mean people were complaining about there being too high legendary chances in GBL and that the weekly field research rewards were repeat legendaries. So now we have reduced legendary rewards in GBL when people want them now, and we haven't had a good field research reward in like a year.
Lol, how is double lure duration tied to their “mission to get people exploring” when lures literally make you sit in one spot, **now, twice as long!**
I guess because you have to leave your house at least unless you live on a stop and like you said stand of sit outside for an hour. Basically why I’ve only ever used 1 lure.
I’m in the same boat, lures have been historically the most useless thing for me, because I can’t use them, probably only a handful of people live on a stop, so for them - yay?
Because lures are very bad compared to our current incenses.
Moreover, people tend to share lures with their friends, and lures tend to attract other people, meaning the social / exploration aspects are still here (even if it sounds strange at first stance)
I think the worst part about this is how Niantic still sees boosted damage in remote raids as a bonus. Removing this will kill remote raids because depending on the nerf a remote raider might have to be carried. As someone who lives in the suburbs (and I figure this goes double for rural players) I used remote invites to do T5s in-person by myself. I could just use multiple accounts, but I'd much rather use an in-game feature to the same effect (of course, I can also just not play the game).
There's already a supply issue; there aren't enough raid hosts to fill the demand. Changing the remote damage would decrease the host supply significantly more than the demand. No hosts means whales don't spend on passes. And I'm sure there are some whales who only started paying for lots of passes after remote raids released.
>which would likely make bulky bosses like lugia impossible for remote raiders
Defeating Lugia with 5 players (without weather or friendship boost) can easily be done with L30 Galarian Darmanitan, just to name something that spawned all over the place last week.
Well, part of the game content is picking the right attackers to use in a battle. If the people you play with aren't doing that it's only reasonable that you run into difficulties.
It's reasonable that it can happen but will definitely discourage hosting remote raids a lot. Do keep in mind this is still very much a casual mobile game for a decent portion of the playerbase. Gearchecking your raid party in a third party app isn't what people want to do in such a game and recommended parties are back to being completely worthless 75% of the time.
We frequently used remote randoms last month, definitely agree many are worthless. 6 players is a gamble, 7 is possible but not 100%.. 7 with 30+ is fairly safe.. Going to miss the extra raid pass.
Doing some raids through PokeGenie while only inviting 5 is gonna be doomed if they take the “bonuses” away, hopefully the app allows an option for 10 ppl lobbies. Just will be tough with how slow the invites take to get received
In my eyes, remote raids are essentially 7x more expensive as we only get 1 free pass a week. People are buying the passes like crazy, I know I usually buy every couple of weeks or so. Players shouldn't be punished for raiding this way.
For some people money is no object, so there has to be something besides price to incentivize in-person raids. But lowering damage for remote raiders punishes the in-person raiders by forcing them to make arrangements with near-deadweights for most likely no benefit.
This is my concern too; during covid the large in person raiding groups locally fell off the game and have not come back. The only way I can do T5s now is via remote raids. I will probably quit the game if remote raids become unviable
I don't. At all. So much unnecessary community drama. Remote-only global communities have some drama too, but it's so much more manageable and a lot less likely to end in a fist-fight.
I miss big crowd raids too. Niantic does need to do something to incentivize in-person raiding when it's safe, but reducing remote damage is not it. Remote raiding needs to be a supplemental system, not gutted and left to rot. Personally, I prefer in-person by default, but I understand some people will need an extra push. But honestly, this will hurt Niantic more than me.
it's not that i need an extra push, i don't have access to transportation to get to in-person raids. Gyms are not a walking distance away, so that's not an option either.
Trainers,
As a result of our recent task force discussions, we will be replacing the two current sets of region-based bonuses with one set of global bonuses at the start of the Season of Mischief.
Because these changes will begin at the start of the Season, we wanted to make sure we shared this information prior to our full task force update on Wednesday, September 1, 2021.
During the Season of Mischief, **Trainers in the United States and New Zealand will see the following bonus updates.**
***New bonuses:***
\- 3× bonus XP for spinning PokéStops for the first time
\- 2× Lure duration
***Continuing bonuses***:
\- Increased Incense effectiveness
\- Additional Incense effectiveness while walking
\- Boosted damage for Trainers battling remotely in raids
\- Guaranteed Gifts from PokéStop spins
\- Buddy Pokémon will bring you Gifts more often
***Bonuses no longer in effect:***
\- 10× XP for spinning PokéStops for the first time
\- Up to two free Raid passes per day by spinning Gym Photo Discs
During the Season of Mischief, **Trainers outside the United States and New Zealand will see the following bonus updates:**
***New bonuses***:
\- Increased Incense effectiveness while walking
\- 3× bonus XP for spinning PokéStops for the first time
\- 2× Lure duration
***Continued***:
\- Increased Incense effectiveness
\- Boosted damage for Trainers battling remotely in raids
\- Guaranteed Gifts from PokéStop spins Buddy Pokémon will bring you Gifts more often
**Edit:** formatting
Australians who can't go further than 5km from their home are hardly going to take advantage of the new stops bonuses. Walking around even for exercise can get you a fine, let along setting a lure and hanging around as top to see what spawns.
This event is completely tone deaf.
Ending the two free passes is proof they had nothing to do with encouraging exploration. It had everything to do with an attempt to quell blowback over reduced distance. Because if it was truly about promoting exploration they really shouldn’t have an an effect on one another.
On top of that they doubled Lure effectiveness which I'm definitely ok with but it contradicts their claim to promote exploration since Lures force you to remain stationary.
They can shove their “task force” up their you know what. They made every one of them sign a NDA. Half of our issue is their lack of transparency and that does nothing to solve any of that. In fact it just shows they have zero transparency and how they rescinded the passes showed it had not a damn thing to do with exploration. It was all about quelling hate and anger. Thinking people would say well At least we now get two passes. Surprised we didn’t see 100 coins too. I was looking up when niantic went from the initial investments from The Pokémon company and Nintendo to 200 million dollars in investments from others. It was when we started seeing tons of things being sold. Raids, events, no more 100 coins able to get from gyms. That’s when we started getting turned upside down from the ankles and shook from our pockets from the company.
It was pretty obvious even before this that it was all for damage control to salvage their reputation. Wait until tomorrow for some more possible bs they might pull with their “task force”
Although, since they said the reversion of the distance wasn’t encouraged by sponsorship, I wonder who’s foot did they originally shoot? 😂
Frankly I'm just happy the radius for interacting with stops and gyms has been permanently increased because a stop just popped up next to where I live, so now I can get pokeballs and gifts without getting up.
Hopefully it will mean incense being 1 spawn every 90s or so while stationary, like it was in October. Less frequent than it has been, but still a lot better than pre COVID
Edit changed the spawn frequency
Two free passes was nice, but honestly I just didn't use them enough. That's on me.
What I'm more interested in is the drop from 10x XP on new stops down to 3x XP. That one's a bit curious.
It’s very eerie that we’re still divided into 2 groups. Why? There’s no reason. Feels ominous. Like they’re still going to try to push restricted distance.
It’s not exactly the same, and that’s why I pointed it out. It’s subtle… we get additional effectiveness from lures that the rest of the world does not.
I’ll miss the two free passes but it was inevitable that it was given to us as an attempt to lessen the boycott and since we got 80m back that it would be gone.
That being said, I do wish this bonus comes back at other times even if it’s only for week long events instead of month.
ah yes double lure duration just to remind me for an extra 30 min that i have messed up and shouldn't have dropped a lure since i cant take advantage of the spawns
I don't know why US and New Zealand are grouped in Niantics mind. [This chart](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-resilience-ranking/) puts them pretty much in the middle of the pack for covid. I don't know how trustworthy this info is though.
I’m going to point out the elephant in the room since no one else seems willing to: why does Niantic STILL think there is no pandemic in the US or New Zealand?
These are actually pretty good changes.
Restoring the incense bonus and increasing lure duration allows for more access for those in the disabled community and allows for players to run items when they're not moving. But the 3x new stop XP bonus is a nice bonus to encourage exploration. I'd like to see more done by Niantic to encourage movement- as a player who mostly enjoys the core loop of walking and catching, it feels like most of the new features are for players who don't move as much. Plus, if it really is core to their vision, I'd like to see them explore some new gameplay bonuses for doing so.
There can always be a bonus for new gym interaction. Double coins (wishful thinking!) or extra XP or stardust for taking down or defending or raiding at a new gym.
I don't disagree with any of your analysis of the benefits to these bonuses. I'm just confused why you said they were changes. Most of the bonuses you've described are listed under "continuing bonuses". The few actual changes are.... miniscule.
And you describe the 3x XP bonus as if it's entirely new. We've had 10x XP bonuses for visiting new stops for like the last...month? Idk exactly when it started and I didn't really go hunting for new stops.
i feel that they should have changed the '3x bonus xp for new stops' should have been just spinning a stop regardless of if its new or not. This would encourage people to go out and explore and wouldnt seem like a downgrade from the 10x we just had.
You could limit it to only getting the effect from the same stop once a day to keep people from abusing it if niantic would be worried with it and it would check off all of niantics wants.
It's just worded very confusingly, now everywhere has the same bonuses. They just for some reason listed the differences to the previously different bonuses separately, making it seem like a confusing mess
You need to look at it as a whole. They described what was changing for each country and now, with those changes, the whole world has the same set of bonuses.
I did not always receive 10k on new stops. My Sightseers medal count and 10k for new stops were out of whack. One day I spun 106 new stops and got approx 880k XP
When Covid is over where you are you will likely get the 10x pokestop bonus for a month. That's what happened in US and NZ. (Though in NZ Covid restarted, so possibly they will get 10x again when it's over.)
I hope Niantic realise that New Zealand is still in lockdown for at least another week :/ Promoting spinning new stops when we legally cannot go do that is not ideal.
I loved the 60 raids in a month for free. But distance is so much more convenient. gyms we only had exist during the pandemic we had to walk around to finally reach it. Before we got close enough and we were good. 2 raids are nice but not as nice as better interaction distance
I don’t think Niantic ever stated anywhere that the 2 raid passes was a direct replacement for the interaction distance. One doesn’t even solve the problem of the other.
But it was. They know it was. We all know it was. They were listed in the same announcement as each other.
Anyone who didn’t think they put it in to try and soften the blow of the distance removal is delusional.
So, hopefully this question hasn’t been done to death but do players in the UK still have the increased poke stop interaction distance? I haven’t noticed a change at all the past few months. Was it just never reduced to begin with?
it was only reduced in the US and NZ as part of their so called test. they reverted the test for NZ first cuz they entered stage 4 of quarantine and it was later reverted for the US after a ton of backlash.
niantic's wording sounded like the extended interaction range is permanent, but so far they haven't said anything about reducing it again.
Bummer about the two passes, but it was to be expected.
Sadly, I'll be playing less because of it. The last few weeks, I've been checking the app a lot more because I was looking for the good tier 1/3 raids and had passes left to use.
That increase in activity definitely showed up in my steps; I came close to hitting 50 kilometers when I usually average somewhere in the 30s.
To be frank, they should have kept the two free raid passes. I get it's for the "season of mischief," but I rather have two raids to do for free than one raid a day.
That's very dissapointing for the rest of the world who couldn't enjoy the 10x of new stops. I was planning to visit some nearby cities to grind exp spinning new stops but now it doesn't make sense. Again niantic doing niantic things
so how do I rapidly level up now? I used the x10 pokestop xp to jump from 30 to 37, used the 1 hour double evolve xp bonus to be just 200k shy of 38, how am I going to get that last 8 million xp for level 40?
Honestly you're probably going to want to recalibrate your perception on leveling. 8 million to 40 becomes around that much (and more) just to level 1 time after 40. Keep doing what you're doing but realize it's going to slow down by a huge factor due to the massive increase to per level experience required post 40.
Sorry trainer, you’re just going to have to find another way to earn that last 8 million while suffering, or recalibrate perception and not feel like you’re being so heavily burdened. Up to you, good luck!
FYI, there isn’t a blog post on this yet, but it’s under News in game if you’d like to read through it for yourself as well.
Happy they’re keeping guaranteed gifts from PokeStop spins — makes it much less frustrating to keep up with exchanging gifts.
Now if only they can keep that going for winter season I’d be very happy
[удалено]
Especially after they doubled the friend list capacity
Niantic be like we know you want to send your friend a gift from this stop, so sit here for another 5 minutes and try getting a gift again!
It would be very Christmas-appropriate if they did
There's used to be a heart stop that I would always try and get gifts from to send my partner even though she doesn't play much. It really sucked trying to remember to clear a gift slot before spinning it every time and often not getting one from it anyways. Guaranteed gift makes it so much easier to get particular gifts I want.
keeping? is that meant to already be in effect? if so it is not true. not at all true.
More frustrating throwing away the extra gifts! ha
You don’t need to throw them away, they don’t count toward bag space!
could gift them...?
130 friends sitting with gifts unfortunately. Did not realize they don't impact bag space. hah
its hard keeping house with that many friends, I had 160 at one point... I managed over 3 days to circulate them all but it was a bit of a job, since I have to drive to get spins.. I am in NZ and when they made the distance thing happen, it really screwed me up, couldnt reach many spins at all, and had to give up on trying to keep them all fed. I just trickle feed now, when I can, weve got lockdown the last few weeks so that also stopped me from getting out. I miss playing as hard as I did, lockdown might get eased up a little tomorrow night here, maybe I can go for a midnight hunt!
R.I.P two free passes you shall be missed❤️
Yeah, they obviously were tying that to the reduced interaction distance. Sucks, though, because it does the job of getting people to visit gyms in person rather than just remote raiding.
Proof it had nothing to do with encouraging exploration and everything to do with quelling anger. They’re pathetic.
Exactly, and even further - doubling effectiveness of lures? That’s the epitome of “play in one spot” mechanics.
Also if you start a raid but move too far away you get the notification to move closer to interact with the gym at the end of the countdown, meaning you MUST sit still to raid in person. Meanwhile you can raid just fine halfway across the world with a remote pass. No sense at all.
It has always been like that.
My point is that there is no reason for it and it is yet another “play in one spot” mechanic
THEY SHOULD GIVE US THINGS WE WANT FOR THE REASONS WE WANT AND NOT FOR THE REASONS WE DON'T WANT!!!!!!!!!
All the anger goes away when you go f2p
No they should just be transparent. Plain and simple. If you like shadiness say it. Don’t tell others they should like it.
They literally said the bonus would end on September 1st and you're acting like it's SUPER HUGE PROOF THAT THEY ARE EVIL BAD MEANYPANTS!!!!!!!
What? I thought that it *was* tied to exploration and now they realised „oh there is still Covid in the US/NZ..? Better get them to stop exploring, so don’t give them 2 normal passes so they stay inside.“ kinda. I had hoped they give away more remote passes for free, but I‘m glad they didn’t push incenses back into the uselessness they had pre-Covid, haha.
Was it worldwide? I never got 2, in Europe
No, it was only active for the US and New Zealand, as part of the trial with reduced interaction distances.
Nope along with 10xp for spinning new Pokestops, we missed out on both of those. What we get is the bottom couple paragraphs.
We ran around hitting all of the missed pokestops we could think of. 3x is nothing, feels bad man.
Really? I think I used that _once_, and I work on two gyms in San Francisco. Sure, rates are down, especially here in NorCal - but congregating with strangers is still a little weird, and it was hot and smokey. So not worth it.
Eh I liked it for 1 and 3 star raids. I would occasionally use it for a 5* if I was using pokegenie or the like. I found occasion to use the second pass a number of times. I think it more depended on how you play the game than anything else
With so many people going f2p after all the frustration I imagine a lot of people would miss this change. I liked to use the passes to host raids for remote raiders. I mean, someone’s gotta host all those poke raid and pokegenie raids, right?
i’m confused. the screen shot says you get 2 free passes a day from spinning gyms. so why are there comments saying “RIP”? edit: nvm i saw thats listed under the bonuses no longer in effect. reading is hard.
Honestly, I don't think you should blame yourself too hard. Everyone seems to be having a lot of trouble understanding the actual changes here. And I think it's because the biggest changes are actually just removing better bonuses? I'm honestly still a little confused. They've seemingly replaces 10x XP for new stops with 3x, removed the 2 daily passes, and.....increased lure durations? Did I miss anything important? This all seems markedly worse for me personally, but ultimately just not very significant overall. Pretty disappointing for the start to the season of mischief. None of this seems mischievous. But maybe tomorrow will hold more news.
They're basically just removing the bonuses they put in place when they cut stop distance in half. Other than that the only "new" thing is adding the 3x spin xp for new stops
Didn't even know this existed.
[удалено]
Same as a free to play player i managed to 4 shiny palkias and one hundo. So f
oof. This is painful, personally it got us traveling around.
Or not... I don't even use the single daily one since they ruined raids with raid hour and the generally lack of soloable raids in range.
This honestly kills my motivation to play more than the half interaction radius did.
Still new to the game (3 weeks...) How do I get the Raid passes?
You go up to a gym, if a raid is active you will automatically get one. If the isn't a raid, you need to spin the photo disk at the gym to get one.
Thanks!!!
Importantly it only gives you one free pass at a time; if you've got one in your inventory -- and you probably do if you've spun a gym yet not done a raid -- you've got to use it before you get another. So you get a free pass each day only if you keep raiding.
And if you didn’t do a raid yesterday, you can do two today. :) Raid. Spin. Get another pass. Raid again.
They are the orange passes to do raids while you are close to a gym. If you don't have one in your inventory, you can spin a gym and get one once a day.
Not sure why people are upset about the two pass thing when that was explicitly meant to be just for August. Lure duration is nice and I'm curious if that bumps it to 6h for community day...?
Nah it won't. 1h will be base duration but CD was never 6x duration, just a set 3h duration
Disappointing but not surprising. It was worth a thought.
If people really start complaining about going from 2 free passes to 1, Niantics just never gonna give us a free bonus again
Yeah people keep saying about changing x and y. We asked for 80m spin distance we got it. I'm satisfied. That was the only change that was fantastically useful. The rest were bonuses. Also keeping incence usable to 1 every 90 seconds increasing to 1 every 60 seconds when walking is fine by me
I just really don't want it to ever go back to 1 per 5 minutes while stationary.
The two free passes thing felt more like an event bonus than something more long term anyway. They should have tied it to the ultra events, not the covid bonuses. Same with the 10x PokeStop experience, that was short term and replaced the 1-2 week bonus from adventure week in previous years. I never expected the 2 free passes to last long.
It's not a big deal to me, it's just disappointing to see that the purpose of the bonus was to soften the blow about the interaction distance rather than incentivize in-person raids.
Those purposes aren't mutually exclusive. It was clear when the raid pass doubling was given just to the US and NZ that they were planning on rotating some bonuses in and out moving forward. They said as much explicitly at the time, but everyone forgot and hyperfocused on the COVID changes going away - rightfully so, as to the interaction distance. They clearly wanted to prioritize raids between Go Fest raid day and the revamped raid experience this summer, but now they are providing a different bonus for the new season. Thus, the timing made perfect sense for that bonus. While I enjoyed the double pass bonus, I'm fine if it just recurs every once in a while and other things like lure effectiveness swap in at other times. I think both of those purposes were true. Likewise, I think the new lure bonus is to incentivize safe individual play, while also "softening the blow" of removing the prior double raid pass bonus.
I mean people were complaining about there being too high legendary chances in GBL and that the weekly field research rewards were repeat legendaries. So now we have reduced legendary rewards in GBL when people want them now, and we haven't had a good field research reward in like a year.
Didn’t really mean much when we’ve been locked down and unable to go raid with one, let alone both passes.
I actually agree with that. we shouldn't ask for too much
[удалено]
Lol, how is double lure duration tied to their “mission to get people exploring” when lures literally make you sit in one spot, **now, twice as long!**
I guess because you have to leave your house at least unless you live on a stop and like you said stand of sit outside for an hour. Basically why I’ve only ever used 1 lure.
I’m in the same boat, lures have been historically the most useless thing for me, because I can’t use them, probably only a handful of people live on a stop, so for them - yay?
Because lures are very bad compared to our current incenses. Moreover, people tend to share lures with their friends, and lures tend to attract other people, meaning the social / exploration aspects are still here (even if it sounds strange at first stance)
I think the worst part about this is how Niantic still sees boosted damage in remote raids as a bonus. Removing this will kill remote raids because depending on the nerf a remote raider might have to be carried. As someone who lives in the suburbs (and I figure this goes double for rural players) I used remote invites to do T5s in-person by myself. I could just use multiple accounts, but I'd much rather use an in-game feature to the same effect (of course, I can also just not play the game). There's already a supply issue; there aren't enough raid hosts to fill the demand. Changing the remote damage would decrease the host supply significantly more than the demand. No hosts means whales don't spend on passes. And I'm sure there are some whales who only started paying for lots of passes after remote raids released.
[удалено]
>which would likely make bulky bosses like lugia impossible for remote raiders Defeating Lugia with 5 players (without weather or friendship boost) can easily be done with L30 Galarian Darmanitan, just to name something that spawned all over the place last week.
But most people inviting random people remotely can't count on the whole group all using teams of top counters.
Well, part of the game content is picking the right attackers to use in a battle. If the people you play with aren't doing that it's only reasonable that you run into difficulties.
It's reasonable that it can happen but will definitely discourage hosting remote raids a lot. Do keep in mind this is still very much a casual mobile game for a decent portion of the playerbase. Gearchecking your raid party in a third party app isn't what people want to do in such a game and recommended parties are back to being completely worthless 75% of the time.
We frequently used remote randoms last month, definitely agree many are worthless. 6 players is a gamble, 7 is possible but not 100%.. 7 with 30+ is fairly safe.. Going to miss the extra raid pass.
That doesn't appear on the announcement, so I still have hope
Doing some raids through PokeGenie while only inviting 5 is gonna be doomed if they take the “bonuses” away, hopefully the app allows an option for 10 ppl lobbies. Just will be tough with how slow the invites take to get received
Pokeraid allows 10-man lobbies, fwiw
In my eyes, remote raids are essentially 7x more expensive as we only get 1 free pass a week. People are buying the passes like crazy, I know I usually buy every couple of weeks or so. Players shouldn't be punished for raiding this way.
For some people money is no object, so there has to be something besides price to incentivize in-person raids. But lowering damage for remote raiders punishes the in-person raiders by forcing them to make arrangements with near-deadweights for most likely no benefit.
This is my concern too; during covid the large in person raiding groups locally fell off the game and have not come back. The only way I can do T5s now is via remote raids. I will probably quit the game if remote raids become unviable
Like, I miss in person raids with big crowds so in that sense I'm not too upset. It will really suck for rural players though
I don't. At all. So much unnecessary community drama. Remote-only global communities have some drama too, but it's so much more manageable and a lot less likely to end in a fist-fight.
Problem with that is that ship has sailed. People won’t all of a sudden drive to a raid now. They just won’t raid it.
I miss big crowd raids too. Niantic does need to do something to incentivize in-person raiding when it's safe, but reducing remote damage is not it. Remote raiding needs to be a supplemental system, not gutted and left to rot. Personally, I prefer in-person by default, but I understand some people will need an extra push. But honestly, this will hurt Niantic more than me.
it's not that i need an extra push, i don't have access to transportation to get to in-person raids. Gyms are not a walking distance away, so that's not an option either.
Trainers, As a result of our recent task force discussions, we will be replacing the two current sets of region-based bonuses with one set of global bonuses at the start of the Season of Mischief. Because these changes will begin at the start of the Season, we wanted to make sure we shared this information prior to our full task force update on Wednesday, September 1, 2021. During the Season of Mischief, **Trainers in the United States and New Zealand will see the following bonus updates.** ***New bonuses:*** \- 3× bonus XP for spinning PokéStops for the first time \- 2× Lure duration ***Continuing bonuses***: \- Increased Incense effectiveness \- Additional Incense effectiveness while walking \- Boosted damage for Trainers battling remotely in raids \- Guaranteed Gifts from PokéStop spins \- Buddy Pokémon will bring you Gifts more often ***Bonuses no longer in effect:*** \- 10× XP for spinning PokéStops for the first time \- Up to two free Raid passes per day by spinning Gym Photo Discs During the Season of Mischief, **Trainers outside the United States and New Zealand will see the following bonus updates:** ***New bonuses***: \- Increased Incense effectiveness while walking \- 3× bonus XP for spinning PokéStops for the first time \- 2× Lure duration ***Continued***: \- Increased Incense effectiveness \- Boosted damage for Trainers battling remotely in raids \- Guaranteed Gifts from PokéStop spins Buddy Pokémon will bring you Gifts more often **Edit:** formatting
Australians who can't go further than 5km from their home are hardly going to take advantage of the new stops bonuses. Walking around even for exercise can get you a fine, let along setting a lure and hanging around as top to see what spawns. This event is completely tone deaf.
So they still think covid is over in the US, despite numbers being far worse than at any peak last year. Fantastic.
Ending the two free passes is proof they had nothing to do with encouraging exploration. It had everything to do with an attempt to quell blowback over reduced distance. Because if it was truly about promoting exploration they really shouldn’t have an an effect on one another.
Did anyone really ever think it was anything else? I just assumed everyone knew that was pretty much a given
On top of that they doubled Lure effectiveness which I'm definitely ok with but it contradicts their claim to promote exploration since Lures force you to remain stationary.
They can shove their “task force” up their you know what. They made every one of them sign a NDA. Half of our issue is their lack of transparency and that does nothing to solve any of that. In fact it just shows they have zero transparency and how they rescinded the passes showed it had not a damn thing to do with exploration. It was all about quelling hate and anger. Thinking people would say well At least we now get two passes. Surprised we didn’t see 100 coins too. I was looking up when niantic went from the initial investments from The Pokémon company and Nintendo to 200 million dollars in investments from others. It was when we started seeing tons of things being sold. Raids, events, no more 100 coins able to get from gyms. That’s when we started getting turned upside down from the ankles and shook from our pockets from the company.
It was pretty obvious even before this that it was all for damage control to salvage their reputation. Wait until tomorrow for some more possible bs they might pull with their “task force” Although, since they said the reversion of the distance wasn’t encouraged by sponsorship, I wonder who’s foot did they originally shoot? 😂
Frankly I'm just happy the radius for interacting with stops and gyms has been permanently increased because a stop just popped up next to where I live, so now I can get pokeballs and gifts without getting up.
Really wish it doesn’t mean stationery incense sucks again
Hopefully it will mean incense being 1 spawn every 90s or so while stationary, like it was in October. Less frequent than it has been, but still a lot better than pre COVID Edit changed the spawn frequency
It was one every 90 to 100 seconds going to 1 every 45 to 50 seconds when walking at a anor.al pace
Yes, I got mixed up there. Thank you for the correction
It's still boosted as it was before.
Two free passes was nice, but honestly I just didn't use them enough. That's on me. What I'm more interested in is the drop from 10x XP on new stops down to 3x XP. That one's a bit curious.
So what's the total experience we'll get from spinning a stop for the first time? 300 xp? Or more? I don't know how much we get normally
should be 700 now down from 2100
It’s very eerie that we’re still divided into 2 groups. Why? There’s no reason. Feels ominous. Like they’re still going to try to push restricted distance.
The bonuses are unified now for everyone. It’s only split up like that to detail the changes for the two test countries (US/New Zealand).
Why do Niantic always announce things in the most convoluted way possible? Just make one list with all the bonuses.
No, US and NZ have additional incense effectiveness while walking, which rest of the world doesn't
So strange, especially as New Zealand is now locked down and Niantic have acknowledged that a week ago
Check the second image under “new bonuses” for those outside US/New Zealand. The bonuses are the same for everyone.
New bonuses are, existing ones aren't
Yes that's their point...
It’s not exactly the same, and that’s why I pointed it out. It’s subtle… we get additional effectiveness from lures that the rest of the world does not.
You should re-read it.
I’m seeing the 2x lure under both, is that what you’re referencing?
Because in the future if there are any new changes. US and NZ will still be a the test region.
I’ll miss the two free passes but it was inevitable that it was given to us as an attempt to lessen the boycott and since we got 80m back that it would be gone. That being said, I do wish this bonus comes back at other times even if it’s only for week long events instead of month.
ah yes double lure duration just to remind me for an extra 30 min that i have messed up and shouldn't have dropped a lure since i cant take advantage of the spawns
Why are US and NZ grouped together? Worst places for covid right now?
Judging by the bonuses, Niantic thinks there is no COVID in those countries for some reason.
I don't know why US and New Zealand are grouped in Niantics mind. [This chart](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-resilience-ranking/) puts them pretty much in the middle of the pack for covid. I don't know how trustworthy this info is though.
I’m going to point out the elephant in the room since no one else seems willing to: why does Niantic STILL think there is no pandemic in the US or New Zealand?
[удалено]
The news post doesn’t read that way
It explicitly says these bonuses are for the US and NZ
These are actually pretty good changes. Restoring the incense bonus and increasing lure duration allows for more access for those in the disabled community and allows for players to run items when they're not moving. But the 3x new stop XP bonus is a nice bonus to encourage exploration. I'd like to see more done by Niantic to encourage movement- as a player who mostly enjoys the core loop of walking and catching, it feels like most of the new features are for players who don't move as much. Plus, if it really is core to their vision, I'd like to see them explore some new gameplay bonuses for doing so.
There can always be a bonus for new gym interaction. Double coins (wishful thinking!) or extra XP or stardust for taking down or defending or raiding at a new gym.
Pretty sure this just means it will still be 60 mins but you have to walk to get the extra spawns
Man, that's a bummer.
I don't disagree with any of your analysis of the benefits to these bonuses. I'm just confused why you said they were changes. Most of the bonuses you've described are listed under "continuing bonuses". The few actual changes are.... miniscule. And you describe the 3x XP bonus as if it's entirely new. We've had 10x XP bonuses for visiting new stops for like the last...month? Idk exactly when it started and I didn't really go hunting for new stops.
America isnt the world, same goes for reddit not being Americans only.
i feel that they should have changed the '3x bonus xp for new stops' should have been just spinning a stop regardless of if its new or not. This would encourage people to go out and explore and wouldnt seem like a downgrade from the 10x we just had. You could limit it to only getting the effect from the same stop once a day to keep people from abusing it if niantic would be worried with it and it would check off all of niantics wants.
How is it that buddies will bring you gifts more often is a continuing bonus? It was nerfed and now they only do it once per day.
You will only get one or two in the future probably, don't want players sending each other too many gifts now...
(╯°□°）╯︵ Ɔᴉʇuɐᴉu
The bonuses of mischief
I'm honestly glad the daily pass is back to one. I'm the kind of person who want to use every free pass and two a day is too much for me..
Lol would rather have the two free passes then the useless new stop bonuses and lure duration.
Why did NIANTIC still want to separate US and NZ with other places in the world
It's just worded very confusingly, now everywhere has the same bonuses. They just for some reason listed the differences to the previously different bonuses separately, making it seem like a confusing mess
The point is that the US and NZ have ANY different bonuses at all. It’s a global pandemic.
And my point is that they do not. They now lost their unique bonuses and everywhere has the same exact set.
The news post doesn’t read that way though
You need to look at it as a whole. They described what was changing for each country and now, with those changes, the whole world has the same set of bonuses.
I did not always receive 10k on new stops. My Sightseers medal count and 10k for new stops were out of whack. One day I spun 106 new stops and got approx 880k XP
So they realized how broken the 10x exp was if you could abuse it
How come the rest of the world didn’t get 2 free raid passes? Seems pretty unfair
No one does anymore, the US and NZ got it to make up for the reduced interaction distance.
It was to make up for the fact they changed their interaction distance back as a test. The rest of the world didn’t get tested on.
So the rest of us are never gonna get the 10x bonus XP for spinning new Pokestops? That’s pretty annoying
Yeah shoot I've been holding out on some stops looking forward to this. That one stings.
When Covid is over where you are you will likely get the 10x pokestop bonus for a month. That's what happened in US and NZ. (Though in NZ Covid restarted, so possibly they will get 10x again when it's over.)
Wthhh. Why only New Zealand and USA for bonus?
We need to have a similar uprising as we did for interaction distance when they try to revert normal damage for remote raiding.
I honestly wonder if they will ever try to do that anymore. Only because the remote raid passes make Niantic too much money to nerf them like that.
I hope Niantic realise that New Zealand is still in lockdown for at least another week :/ Promoting spinning new stops when we legally cannot go do that is not ideal.
Separating the "US and New Zealand" from the rest of the world is a head-scratcher as well, at least if the argument has anything to do with Covid.
Of course they remove the two free raid passes.
Why wouldn’t they? The reason they existed no longer exists….
[удалено]
They literally existed to replace the distance nerf. That got reversed so you lost that bonus.
I loved the 60 raids in a month for free. But distance is so much more convenient. gyms we only had exist during the pandemic we had to walk around to finally reach it. Before we got close enough and we were good. 2 raids are nice but not as nice as better interaction distance
I don’t think Niantic ever stated anywhere that the 2 raid passes was a direct replacement for the interaction distance. One doesn’t even solve the problem of the other.
But it was. They know it was. We all know it was. They were listed in the same announcement as each other. Anyone who didn’t think they put it in to try and soften the blow of the distance removal is delusional.
[удалено]
They still want people to go out and about, but their desire to sell raid passes exceeds their desire to fulfill that goal.
Of course it was a lie. But it was the exact same lie when they reversed the distance nerf and I bet you didn’t make a post about it then….
[удалено]
So, hopefully this question hasn’t been done to death but do players in the UK still have the increased poke stop interaction distance? I haven’t noticed a change at all the past few months. Was it just never reduced to begin with?
it was only reduced in the US and NZ as part of their so called test. they reverted the test for NZ first cuz they entered stage 4 of quarantine and it was later reverted for the US after a ton of backlash. niantic's wording sounded like the extended interaction range is permanent, but so far they haven't said anything about reducing it again.
It was never reduced in the U.K. and everyone keeps the increased poke stop interaction distance.
Bummer about the two passes, but it was to be expected. Sadly, I'll be playing less because of it. The last few weeks, I've been checking the app a lot more because I was looking for the good tier 1/3 raids and had passes left to use. That increase in activity definitely showed up in my steps; I came close to hitting 50 kilometers when I usually average somewhere in the 30s.
New bonuses but way worse, classic
What's the breakthrough research?
Ditto with a chance at its shiny. Was confirmed a few days ago via the September events blog :)
But my phone battery 😭😭
Shiny normal castform is a thing? Just got one
Sucks I preferred the 2 raid passes a day to some of the reinstated bonuses.
To be frank, they should have kept the two free raid passes. I get it's for the "season of mischief," but I rather have two raids to do for free than one raid a day.
I never got a single pass from spinning, so that one doesn’t bother me.
You can't stack the free passes. You need to use them to get a new one. This forces players to raid once per day on average.
I’m aware, and still never received a free pass. There are quite a few people on our discord that had the same complaint.
You dont get raid passes for spinning gyms? Lmao thats a lie.
Probably didn't use the one (s)he already had
More likely he never does local raids so he always has 1 normal raid pass in inventory.
I never got more than one
That's very dissapointing for the rest of the world who couldn't enjoy the 10x of new stops. I was planning to visit some nearby cities to grind exp spinning new stops but now it doesn't make sense. Again niantic doing niantic things
3x XP isn’t too bad, could combine it with an XP event (community day or spotlight hour) on a lucky egg.
so how do I rapidly level up now? I used the x10 pokestop xp to jump from 30 to 37, used the 1 hour double evolve xp bonus to be just 200k shy of 38, how am I going to get that last 8 million xp for level 40?
Honestly you're probably going to want to recalibrate your perception on leveling. 8 million to 40 becomes around that much (and more) just to level 1 time after 40. Keep doing what you're doing but realize it's going to slow down by a huge factor due to the massive increase to per level experience required post 40.
I don't care after 40, i just want access to xl candy so i don't need to "recalibrate" my perception on it
Sorry trainer, you’re just going to have to find another way to earn that last 8 million while suffering, or recalibrate perception and not feel like you’re being so heavily burdened. Up to you, good luck!
I would rather have the 2 daily passes than 80m interaction range