Since lockdown began, Niantic has done their part in looking after players at home. From free items in the shop, extended Community Days, Remote Raids, and everything else that we'll be discussing today. In this article, we will be examining Niantic's changes moving forward, from what we're keeping, losing, and what is staying for now; and also what that means for us players.
Keeping
- The maximum number of Gifts you can carry in your Item Bag at a time will remain 20.
- You will continue to receive three times the Stardust and XP for your first Pokémon catch of the day.
- Incense duration will remain at 60 minutes.
So far these are all fantastic. Being able to carry more than 10 gifts at a time is definitely a quality of life improvement. Being able to hold on to 20 instead of 10 really makes the day to day grind easier by allowing us to stop less frequently to send gifts to our friends. The three times Stardust and XP bonus for that first catch of the day isn't essential but is still a great thing to have in the game. The most crucial one of these has to be the Incense duration. Besides Remote Raids, the increased duration and effectiveness of the Incense has been my favorite change to the game. I personally never used Incense the way they were originally but they became essential to my gameplay. From Community Day, Spotlight Hour, and even just my walks around the neighborhood; Incense has become a must-have item in my bag. We have only mentioned duration and not effectiveness but we will get to that later.
Losing/Modified
- Hatch Distance will return to normal for Eggs.
- The increased effectiveness of Incense will now apply only while walking.
- Your Buddy Pokémon will now bring you Gifts only when you have nearly run out. This will happen only once per day.
- You will still have a higher chance of getting a Gift when you spin a PokéStop. However, you won’t be guaranteed to get a Gift.
Now unfortunately we did have some things taken away. First off we have the hatch distance for eggs returning to normal. This was expected but still disappointing. Eggs are a polarizing feature among trainers. For the most part, people are against hatching eggs with Incubators because the investment isn't worth the reward. Hatching eggs is kind of like gambling in the sense that you buy Incubators for your 10km eggs but you aren't guaranteed to get that Pokemon you want, instead you hatch Throh which you can find in the wild everywhere. Finding 10km eggs is difficult to begin with. The only guaranteed way to get them is the reward for walking 50km in a week. If we compare using your money for buying Incubators to something like Raid Passes then this gets more depressing. In both situations, you are buying an item in exchange for a Pokemon. Your Incubator for whatever hatches from your egg and your Raid Pass for whatever the Legendary Raid boss is. However, these are not actually equal. With the raid, you are virtually guaranteed to get a Pokemon that you want, and even if you want to play the other side and say that new players don't always catch the raid Pokemon, that is true, but you can improve on that and gain the throwing skills to catch the Pokemon. You can't learn how to hatch better from eggs. Also, that Pokemon is a legendary every single time, when 10km eggs have a mixture of rare Pokemon not so rare Pokemon. Eggs are a fantastic feature but not at the normal hatch distance.
The Incense effectiveness will only be a problem if the walking speed required to get the Pokemon is as bad as it was before the changes. Incense spawns used to appear only when you were walking, but the walking speed required was way faster than the average walking speed. I have yet to test out the new Incense effectiveness but until I know for certain I am going to assume that Niantic is going to make it appropriate. Niantic has always made it clear that their vision for the game is to have people being active while playing it so I totally respect them making changes like this to support that. As long as they make the changes to the effectiveness appropriate then Incense will continue to be a staple of my gameplay.
The changes to how we collect gifts is totally okay with me. The once a day bonus from your buddy is good enough, especially after you send out all of your gifts for the day and then this can help you restock. A pretty harmless change if you ask me.
Now before we finish up I do want to address some language issues I had in the article from Niantic. Having remote raids and the entry changes for the Go Battle League being described as changes that "will remain implemented for the foreseeable future" troubles me. I was under the impression that these were permanent changes. I understand that remote raiders could lose their attack bonuses at some point but the Go Battle League worries me. The article from Pokemon Go back in March did say it was a temporary change but I was excepting the changes to be permanent. Also, the mention of extra Incubators appearing in the shop could be read as something to worry about. One way is that they are offering Egg Incubators to incentivize players to buy them because Hatch Distance is returning to normal. That is a problem because most players know that they are not worth investing in, but if people are willing to buy them despite that then Niantic should keep selling them. My main worry is that Niantic will put more of them in bundles while taking away from some of the other items like Star Pieces, Lucky Eggs, and Raid Passes. That is what Niantic has done in the past so hopefully, history doesn't repeat itself.
With all of that said, thank you for reading today's article! Let us know how you feel about the temporary changes update in Pokemon Go. Head over to our Youtube Channel for our Pokemon Go vlogs and leave us a comment! Head over to our socials to stay up to date with all of our content and join the fellowship!
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