Pokemon Go

Today was a good day. Not only did I manage to hatch an Ash-hat Pichu, one of my goals for the event, I also aquired my first perfect IV pokemon! Unfortunately it's a Togepi, which means it won't be particularly viable until Togekiss is added in Gen 4, but still!

Nice. My "accomplishment" of the day was finding a 2100+ CP Ursaring and catching it on the first throw. It's not great IV-wise, but its stats are high enough that it can occupy gyms for me well in the current meta.

The game has been updated to v0.69.0 for Android and v1.39.0 for iOS, and it's a biggie.

Official patch notes:

• Pokemon now have an icon that shows which pokeball they were caught in or which egg they hatched from.
• You can now spin gyms for items after a raid is finished.
• You can now remotely send berries to your pokemon in gyms, though this is less effective than if you were there in person.
• You can now feed berries to pokemon even if their motivation is already full.
• The search function has been expanded.
• Various bug fixes.

Data mine:

• There is now a way to check in at events, possibly involving the QR scanner they added.
• Event-exclusive stops and gyms, that you cannot interact with unless you've checked in.
• There's an exclusive badge for those who attend Go Fest in Chicago.
• "Exclusive Raids", involving a special pass. There are messages congratulating you on being invited to one, details including time, and even a link to directions on Google Maps.
• Legendaries.
  • Pokemon now have a "IsLegendaryOrMythic" flag.
  • Raid Bosses now have a "IsEventLegendary" flag.
  • A new warning message for trying to transfer a legendary.
  • A new error message for trying to put a legendary into a gym (whether they are restricted or outright banned is unclear at this stage).
  • New image assets for legendary raids at gyms, including a different victory banner.
• Various other fixes, including tweaks to PoGoPlus connectivity, a new healing animation, badge icons now being separate images rather than a single spritesheet (possibly allowing them to add new badges server-side), and changes to the way health bars work.
• A new sponsor, codenamed "Whisk".

I figured that updates showing "ball used" were coming, because otherwise there'd be precious little reason to add Premier Balls at all.

The post-raid spin is huge for me; that was driving me bonkers.

The note about remote candy feeding is interesting. It might make some gym takedowns take four runs (sure, they can keep feeding, but each berry has less of an effect until a cooldown happens), but nothing too strenuous, I bet.

I'd probably be more excited about feeding full Pokemon if the candy spawns were less rare. I think I've gotten two, maybe three candies from gym feedings since the new gym system launched.

I'm curious about what about searching has expanded.

Do we know if any legendary flags have been assigned yet? So far, I'd only anticipate 11 (the legendary birds, the legendary beasts, Mewtwo, the tower legendaries, and the event-only legendaries), but I'm curious if that's actually shaking out that way.

"Whisk" is an interesting codename for a sponsor. I can't think of a national company that prominently features a whisk in their imagery, and it's such a common element in baking that I could see any number of companies getting the designation, anywhere from Carvel to Williams-Sonoma.

The new flag applies to individual pokemon. Species have always been assigned as Normal, Legendary or Mythic.

Search now supports &. That's all I can see so far.

I thought they were going to go with the looming silhouette of Mewtwo at the end, but I suppose the flyby similar to the original anime opening ain't bad, either.

edited 20th Jul '17 11:02:37 AM by Anura

I won't be seeing Zapdos taking residence in gyms? Nice.

Eh. What's the point of having legendaries if I can't show them off? Some of them are useless except as defenders. Suicune, in particular, is worse than Vaporeon in every possible way.

I mean, it really makes sense to not have Legendaries in Gyms since the majority of them would probably be too strong to knock out. You put Lugia in one, and he's probably going to stay there until you forget to keep his motivation in check.

Lugia's overall tankiness is lower than Blissey, it's more like a Snorlax with more weaknesses. The only truly tough one is Mewtwo, and a decently levelled Tyranitar still can take it one-on-one unless it has Focus Blast, in which case TTar still takes 75% of Mewtwo's HP with it. As for the rest... the birds are all weak to Rock, double weak in the case of Articuno, Moltres and Ho-oh. Zapdos, Entei and Raikou are decent enough, but not enough to warrant a ban. And as I mentioned, Suicune is just a worse Vaporeon.

Really, the reason they're doing this isn't for balance. It's to preserve the mystique of legendaries. If they're not seen everywhere in gyms then they feel more special, as rare as they're supposed to be in the lore. Not to mention that if you never battle them outside of a raid setting you never realize that most of them are actually weaker than the pseudos, Dragonite and Tyranitar. And that just feels dishonest to me. I'm used to seeing legendaries as just another pokemon, so I don't like them being given special treatment that they don't really deserve.

edited 20th Jul '17 2:42:31 PM by Anura

Might be worth emphasizing this:

And from the Nintendo email:

We're only getting one legendary this weekend. Presumably there'll be other events later on for the others. Speculation abounds as to which one, but the main candidates are:

• Lugia: Prominently featured in the legendary trailer and (what we think is) the legendary raid badge. Seems to be the symbol of legendary raids in general. Also, as the master of the three birds, it's a good symbol of the three teams working together.
• Mewtwo: Possibly the most iconic legendary of all, and featured in the original trailer.
• Mew: The common ancestor of all pokemon. I personally think that mythicals will be obtained in a different way from legendaries, so I don't think this is likely.

edited 20th Jul '17 4:50:56 PM by Anura

@1985 On the flip side, I can appreciate that they're setting people up to have dedicated attackers so that players can take more advantage of the current gym meta.

@1987 There's a couple things though with all that.

One, of course, is that not everyone is sitting around with a large number of solid Rock attackers. For all that I have a pretty solid attacking team, I've only really got one (a Rhydon with Stone Edge). Two, saying something is "less tanky than Blissey" is like saying someone is "less rich than Bill Gates" - okay, sure, it may be true, but you can be pretty damn rich and that still qualifies. It'd be nice to not have "near Blissey" levels of tanking in everyone's hands (not least of which, that would definitely result in a stagnation of the meta).

Finally... push comes to shove, Nintendo has frequently treated legendaries with that level of elevation. It doesn't matter that only a newbie would pull out Articuno or Moltres outside of very niche builds in a competition; Nintendo long banned those two from official tournaments. It's part of the lore and world-building they put in - it feels like it's consistent on the development end.

As for there only being one legendary at launch... if nothing else, I long suspected Lugia because, among other things, the leaked badge for legendary raids features its face. It seems almost obligatory. That, and I suspect that they'll want to do team events for the legendary birds, and none of the legendary beasts has that level of cachet. Mew and Celebi are almost certainly right out - those two are always going to be reserved for something extra special, just like in the handheld games. Mewtwo, being what it is, is the only other one I could see being the legendary launch (particularly seeing as it's still frequently the legendary, plus its very brief cameo in the announcement trailer), but I think they'd want to get a feel for how to run these events before bringing that on board.

By the way, something completely unrelated... anyone know if there's a particular habitat where one might find Unown? I haven't even heard of a rumor of a nearby one.

Nintendo never banned Articuno or Zapdos.

Nowadays there is a "special Pokemon" flag, and species with that flag are banned from tournaments, the Battle Tower, and the like. Those Special Pokemon are, pretty much, Mythicals, version mascots (not Suicune), and Mewtwo. Meanwhile, other legendaries get the EXACT SAME treatment other Pokemon get.

Oh, and that division comes from as far back as the original Stadium, with rulesets where you could use the birds, but not Mewtwo and Mew.

Mewtwo is pretty much the equivalent of the mascot legendary for gen 1 anyway. But yeah, lesser legendaries were always tournament legal. The current VGC meta is dominated by the Tapus and their terrain wars. And I would say that Raikou especially would do the gym meta a ton of good, adding a good electric defender. The only one we have right now is Ampharos which, according to a recent Reddit poll, is the second least owned pokemon after Unown.

Speaking of Unown... I've seen anecdotal reports that it tends to show up in places that are inhabited enough to have spawn points but don't have any stops or gyms nearby. Like residential areas and the like. No hard evidence though; it's just really stupidly rare. It's the only pokemon that I'm still missing aside from regionals.

edited 21st Jul '17 1:12:23 PM by Anura

I still don't understand why the fuck is Mareep a 10 km 'mon. It was a common Pokemon just outside the first Gym city in Gold and Silver, for fuck's sake! And it is the only 3-stage gen II line outside of the starters and Larvitar, to add insult to injury.

Remember, in the original GS, Marill, Snubbull, Yanma, Dunsparce, Remoraid and Qwilfish were 1% encounters except under certain events; Murkrow, Houndour, Slugma, Sneasel and Misdreavus were quite rarely found in postgame areas, and Gligar, Mantine, Skarmory, Phanpy and Teddiursa were quite rare version exclusives. Oh, and Natu was common in the single patch of grass it appeared in.

The egg listings in the first gen worked pretty well, but they kinda dropped the ball in this one. Oh well, next 2 gens will be fun for this stuff, can't wait to see how they handle the regionals with Mime Jr. being a thing.

Well, I just logged back into the game after some time and have managed to fight two Raid Bosses (had to do them alone since no one else was in the area): a Magikarp and a Quilava. Magikarp was a hilarious fight, but anything that helps me get more candies to get a Gyrados is fine by me.

So how goes the thing in Chicago right now? Anybody following that?

It's a fustercluck of epic proportions, which may well have ended up damaging the Pokémon brand as a whole. I'm completely serious, I've never seen the community this mad before, and that's really saying something. Niantic have refunded all the tickets and given $100 of coins to everyone there, as well as making regionals and Unown spawn two miles around the park for everyone so that those who couldn't get in can still get something.

Great googily moogily, I just read the details, and all I have to say is...wow.

Good grief. I can't fault people for being mad. I really don't want to say this, but once word about this gets around, it honestly won't surprise me if this is the last straw for the playerbase and kills the game. (Or at the very least causes much of the playerbase to give up on the game.)

I sure do hope this debacle doesn't hurt the brand name as a whole. It'd be bad (and honestly kind of stupid) if the main series games were affected by the possible failure of a mobile phone spin-off.

edited 22nd Jul '17 1:27:45 PM by kablammin45

I highly doubt it would actually harm the main series, no matter how bad this thing is.

Yeah, saying this is going to be a major blow to the Pokemon brand is ridiculous. If Electric Soldier Porygon and the Jynx incident didn't do anything, a ton of cell phones causing interference with each other isn't going to do shit.

Still, I feel like this is something they couldn't really have prevented.

Yeah, something is telling me that this was something everyone should have seen coming, too.

On the upside, this probably means that we'll get the Legendaries regardless of the progress they make out there, right? Niantic's been attempting to save face in every other area.

Wait, what actually happened???