For so many years, so many people have been lamenting the disastrous state of Pokémon GoMonthly community days. What should be events that encourage players to fill local parks for a series of fun challenges have become repetitive, offbeat events that can be completed almost effortlessly. And now their price doubles!
The only thing that could be said about a community day was that it was cheap. Each month, developer Niantic would choose a Pokémon that evolved twice, then ask it to take over the game on a Saturday or Sunday. (Previously, the duration was six hours; then in June 2022, in an act that seemed solely attributable to self-sabotage, it was reduced to just (3rd stage.) Players have three stages of tasks to complete, which are almost all based on —or inevitably completed by catching 15 of the given Pokémon Along the way, you are rewarded with more of the same Pokémon to catch, and finally a fully evolved version with a good chance of having decent stats and not. big something else. But it was only 99c.
There were, apparently, intrigues, effortless nothings, gesticulations on the part of the character my son simply calls “Professor Blah-Blah” whose declarations, full of vague language and overly long words, are impenetrable for children, but even those are gone now! The raid hour that followed the three-hour event was also recently lost, once added as an easy way out when Niantic mindlessly cut the length of the day in half. The challenges never change, the rewards are never new, and in reality the only reason for anyone to participate—the motivation to be there when you meet other players—is because of the increased chances of catching shiny versions of Pokémon. A successful Community Day is one where you catch at least three shinys, so you can have a copy of each evolution.
January Community Day was revealed in December to feature Generation IX’s starter Pokémon, Sprigaito, but what turned out to be a surprise was the price of a ticket to the event from January 5. As Eurogamer spottedit will now cost you $1.99 to participate, an increase of 100 for nothing new.
The only additional reward revealed for this price doubling is a single Premium Battle Pass, a ticket that allows you to participate in online battles for slightly better rewards than you’d get with the regular Battle Pass, and something the game hands out for free all the time anyway. You can get two a day for free right now, for example. I have nine in my inventory right now, and although the in-game store charges the equivalent of a dollar to buy one, you’d be stupid to do that.
Niantic may have some surprises, new changes to the Community Day format, or other, more exciting rewards that it’s keeping quiet about, but what’s rather crucial is that we don’t know any of this yet, and yet, tickets are already sold out for the event at their new price. Come late Saturday, when New Zealand swings first into Sunday’s event, everything will become clear. But given everything that has happened since the game was improved for CovidI won’t hold my breath.
I don’t have data, but it seems very unlikely that community days can be as popular as they once were, given how worse they have become and how little effort is being made to make them varied or interesting. So this is probably an attempt to make up for losses, hoping that people who are desperate for better chances of finding a brilliant Sprigatito will still pay. Maybe a better idea would also be to double the rewards, quests, and fun to match the price?
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