History ScrappyMechanic / PokemonGo

** This feature was meant to be utilized in Pokéstop Showcase, which rewards players whose showcased Pokémon set the record for height and weight. The problem is, upon launch the showcases were limited to a single designated Pokémon per event and players were limited on how many times they could enter a showcase per day. For extra frustration, the more players enter a showcase, the higher the chance your own Pokémon would slide from first place to a much less rewarding position, losing out on any big rewards if they're knocked out of the top 3. All in all, it's a pretty underwhelming feature considering how long Niantic was working on it.

** This feature was meant to be utilized in Pokéstop Showcase, which rewards players whose showcased Pokémon set the record for height and weight. The problem is, upon launch the showcases were limited to a single designated Pokémon per event and players were limited on how many times they could enter a showcase per day. For extra frustration, the more players enter a showcase, the higher the chance your own Pokémon would slide from first place to a much less rewarding position. All in all, it's a pretty underwhelming feature considering how long Niantic was working on it.

''VideoGame/PokemonGo'' may be arguably both the most popular AlternateRealityGame as well as the most popular game of the entire ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' franchise, peaking at around 20 million players in its heyday as well as managing to revive interest in it. However, this doesn't mean Niantic's efforts worked well the first time... most of the time. Here are some of [[ScrappyMechanic the most notorious screw-ups]] that led to frustrating experiences as well as Niantic losing nearly three-quarters of that playerbase:

* Elite Raids were jeered from the moment of their announcement. The way they work is that the egg for them appears 24 hours in advance. Once it hatches, players have 30 minutes to complete the raid. What REALLY caused ire is the fact that these raids are exclusively local, meaning you can't use your remote passes for these. This can result in you finding one but having nobody to partake in it with you. This is especially bad since these raids are five stars, meaning they're basically impossible to take on alone and win.

* The weather system, which adds bonuses to specific types. While it works as intended, it can be extremely inaccurate in tracking the exact weather hitting the player's area (as it uses its own weather-tracking system instead of the player's phone's arguably more accurate weather forecasts). Such examples include giving the "Windy" weather during a rainstorm or during very weak/mild winds, "Cloudy" while it is snowing, or even "Clear" when it's completely overcast. Furthermore, it only tracks the current ''active'' weather so players hoping to snag some Ice or Steel types following a snowstorm will be out of luck unless you stick to indoors play.

** This feature was meant to be utilised in Pokéstop Showcase, which rewards players whose showcased Pokémon set the record for height and weight. The problem is, upon launch the showcases were limited to a single designated Pokémon per event and players were limited on how many times they could enter a showcase per day. For extra frustration, the more players enter a showcase, the higher the chance your own Pokémon would slide from first place to a much less rewarding position. All in all, it's a pretty underwhelming feature considering how long Niantic was working on it.

** Meltan. You can only get one in-game via its own dedicated mission chain; afterwards, the only way to get more is to transfer a mon to ''VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndLetsGoEevee''. This way you unlock a "Mysterious Box" that is a glorified incense that attracts only Meltan. Also, this Meltan has the same issues as other reward Pokémon: underlevelled at lvl15, and a base IV floor of 10-10-10, which means you cannot get a PvP-ready Meltan for Great or Ultra League, and the resulting Meltan may have lackluster stats. If you don't own a UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch and either game, or know someone who does? Tough luck, you're stuck with that one.

* The Go Battle League's cycling. PVP players had settled on using the Great League as the main competitive tier for a ''year'' prior, due to the expensive costs of preparing teams and the required legendaries for Ultra and ''especially'' Master League, so finding out that all three were essentially required to be prepared for did not tide over well with most players.
** On that note, the Master League in general. The Great and Ultra Leagues were capped at 1500 and 2500 CP respectively, keeping equilibrium between most Pokémon and amplifying accessibility. The Master League, however, has no such cap: leaving the only way to even compete to have Pokémon at maximum level (requiring several hundred candy and several hundred ''thousand'' Stardust per Pokémon) and ideally with perfect [=IVs=], along with the entire metagame being overcentralised around limited-time-availability Legendary Pokémon such as Dialga and Giratina. Many PVP players were understandably irate when they learned it would be necessary for PVP.

** February 2020 introduced the sequel to Flower Crown Eevee by having Woobat as its Research Breakthrough reward. Needless to say, granting 13 candy on catch and being a new species was not enough to cheer fans up regarding the breakthrough being a Pokémon essentially useless for both PVE and PVP players. Not helped by the fact that you have to walk with it in order to evolve it.

* Unlike in the core series, the gender markers don't appear immediately on HUD when you encounter a Pokémon, only shows up later when the Pokémon's caught. This can be [[LuckBasedMission challenging or a pain in your ass]] if you're trying to catch a Pokémon whose [[GenderRarityValue species are of seven-males-to-one-female population]], especially if it's a starter Pokémon (excluding Pikachu, but including Eevee) and has good [=IVs=]. Even you live in areas where Eevee are common, unless you're lucky, finding a female Eevee with high [=IVs=] can be a pain in your ass.

* The game's announcement to hatching eggs. A nice surprise if you forgotten about your eggs. What's not not nice is how the game will stop you from what you were doing just to show you that one of your eggs is hatching (luckily it can't interrupt battles). Doubly worse if you got multiple eggs hatching in a row and you being forced to watch the animation multiple times.

* Unlike in the core series, the gender markers don't appear immediately on HUD when you encounter a Pokémon, only shows up later when the Pokémon's caught. This can be [[LuckBasedMission challenging or a pain in your ass]] if you're trying to catch a Pokémon whose [[GenderRarityValue species are of seven-males-to-one-female population]], especially if it's a starter Pokémon (excluding Pikachu, but including Eevee) and has good [=IVs=]. [[SarcasmMode Even you live in areas where Eevee are common, unless you're lucky, finding a female Eevee with high [=IVs=] can be a pain in your ass.]]

* The Pokémon Go Plus and Poké Ball Plus accessories when it comes to catching Pokémon: They will only use regular Poké Balls and it only has ''one'' chance to catch anything. If it fails, the Pokémon will make a guaranteed escape. You also cannot apply the Razz or Pinap Berries to make the catch more likely to succeed or award more Candy respectively, and the device is a guaranteed PressStartToGameOver. If you run out of Poké Balls, the device will refuse to use your Great or Ultra Balls, making it a glorified paper weight while it keeps buzzing at you to remind you that you have no more Balls left.

* The dates and times of Community Days. Despite the name, they only last a few hours each as the signature 'Mon spawns in great numbers on the overworld (with an extra three hours to evolve the Mon to their final stage and gain their special move). Moreso, not every player may be able to go out and partake in the Community Day for one reason or another due to having some sort of event to attend (public sports and conventions as an example) or not having a ride to a location with a large number of spawns during the duration of the event. There do exist weekend Community Days, though they are rare and usually reserved for December's Community Day. The Mudkip Community Day of July 2019, in particular, was criticized for being held very late in the afternoon (4pm to 7pm local time) on a Sunday, a time when most people and families would be busy getting ready for the first day of the work week or having dinner. This issue was somewhat rectified by having Community Day last six hours from 11am to 5pm local time ever since April 2020, although that was mainly because of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and was reverted back to three hours after Spheal's CD.

** The actual duration where the community day's Pokémon spawns for was reduced to three hours, spanning 11am to 2pm local time; reduced from the 6 hours of spawns that community days previously had. As one could guess, the reduced window of spawns makes it a lot harder for players to participate in if they are busy with other things that day, and the people who can participate for the whole time have less time to catch the Pokémon for.

* In May 2021, Sylveon was introduced to the game, with the evolution requirement (aside from the naming easter egg) being that you have to make an Eevee your buddy and earn at least 70 hearts with it before evolving. The problem is that it isn't (yet) retroactive, so any Eevee that already had 70 hearts beforehand can't be evolved into Sylveon unless another 70 hearts are earned. It doesn't help that there's no counter for how many hearts you've earned with your buddy overall, only per day, so it can be hard to keep track of how many more you need. The worst part is that this was temporarily lowered for Eevee Community day in August 2021, but the evolution requirements for any buddy Eevee were accidentally reset when it was raised back up, meaning those who were currently in the process of earning hearts for Sylveon and missed their chance to do so during the Community Day would have to start over.

** Reaching level 44 requires you to win 30 battles in every league and 20 battles in the GO League. While you can rig the game with a friend to let you win every time, it's still grind heavy. No such luck for the GO League since that requires you to win against random players.

** One task to hit level 50 asks you to make 999 excellent throws. Another requires you to beat a GO Rocket Team Leader 3 times using only Pokémon whose CP is 2500 or less, which means you're handicapping yourself against a team of Pokémon whose CP is extremely high.

* The dates and times of Community Days. Despite the name, they only last several hours each as the signature 'Mon spawns in great numbers on the overworld (with an extra hour to evolve the Mon to their final stage and gain their special move). Moreso, not every player may be able to go out and partake in the Community Day for one reason or another due to having some sort of event to attend (public sports and conventions as an example) or not having a ride to a location with a large number of spawns during the duration of the event. There do exist weekend Community Days, such as with Eevee's, but that particular Community Day would be the only one of its kind (and are still restricted to three hours of spawns on each day. The Mudkip Community Day of July 2019, in particular, was criticized for being held very late in the afternoon (4pm to 7pm local time) on a Sunday, a time when most people and families would be busy getting ready for the first day of the work week or having dinner. This issue was somewhat rectified by having Community Day last six hours from 11am to 5pm local time ever since April 2020, although that was mainly because of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and was reverted back to three hours after Spheal's CD.

* The alteration to Community Days starting with Deino in 2022, which managed to consolidate multiple problems together:

*** The raids are 4-star difficulty, which makes them incredibly hard if not impossible to try and solo. Non-urban players will have to rely on the unreliable possibility of gathering a group of strangers together to participate with just 30 minutes' notice before the raid egg hatches.

* Elite Raids were jeered from the moment of their announcement. The way they work is that the egg for them appears 24 hours in advance. Once it hatches, players have 30 minutes to complete the raid. What REALLY caused ire is the fact that these raids are exclusively local, meaning you can't use your remote passes for these. This can result in you finding one but having nobody to partake in it with you. This is especially bad since these raids are five stars with the first one being Hoopa Unbound.

[[folder:Region-or-Lifestyle-Induced Availability Problems]]

* There are mons with a ''huge'' candy cost in order to get [[MagikarpPower their most powerful formes]][[note]]namely Magikarp, Wailmer, Swablu, Stufful and Wimpod[[/note]], but the requirement is offset by these lines base formes being {{Com Mon}}s as well as having a required walking distance of 1km per candy generated. However, some of the mons are ''much'' more problematic than that:
** The Gen VI and Gen VII updates added the Noibat line, which evolves into Noivern by getting 400 candies. However, the line has a required walking distance of ''5km'', usually reserved for more powerful mons such as the Beldum line. And unlike the other examples, the line is ''not'' ComMon.
** Meltan. You can only get one in-game via its own dedicated mission chain; afterwards, the only way to get more is to transfer a mon to ''VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndLetsGoEevee''. This way you unlock a "Mysterious Box" that is a glorified incense that attracts only Meltan. Also, this Meltan has the same issues as other reward Pokémon: underlevelled at lvl15, and a base IV floor of 10-10-10, which means you cannot get a PvP-ready Meltan for Great or Ultra League, and the resulting Meltan may have lackluster stats. If you don't own a UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch and either game, or know someone who does? Tough luck, you're stuck with that one.