Pokemon Go

Fair point. I guess we'll have to see. I suppose in the very least, they'll have to do something to make it up to Japan, because that's a portion of the player base they really don't want to permanently piss off.

Okay, I did some more testing, because I kept getting that excuse of 'it's just your connection' or 'get a better signal' when doing Pv P where I lose due to cheating and hacking. You know that after you become Ultra friends with someone, you can battle them across any distance, right? Well, I reached back to several of my friends in America (I'm in Europe now) and we did 10-15 battles with multiple people across that vast distance and no issues. No problems. No 'weak connection.' Then when I do Pv P and it is CLEAR I am winning, SUDDENLY, I get 'weak connection' which ultimately leads to my loss. Utter bullshit.

Someone probably has found a more subtle way of manipulating the connection. The Airplane Mode Glitch proved that people were inexplicably able to influence peoples' connections to them in a way that penalized the other person. This suggests a serious vulnerability in Niantic's net code that likely wouldn't be fully fixable without a rewrite. I wager they only bandaided the Airplane Mode Glitch and that there's still an underlying issue people are finding ways to take advantage of (Hey, Niantic, the 2000s called and want their X-Box Live disconnect exploit back).

Just saw an announcement that Genesect will be the next Ex Raid Pokemon, and that it will have a paid special event where participants can catch one before it arrives in gyms.

Ugh, super frustrating experience this morning. Actually got four other people in a raid (super rare for me) and still failed (Registeel, for reference). Would have been my first raid legend if it succeeded.

I feel you. I did a Registeel raid today where the Registeel was constantly attacking and knocking away my Premier Balls. Unsurprisingly, it got away.

I'm not too bummed out since I already have a pretty good Registeel from a Research Breakthrough, but it still kind of stings.

Oh well, at least I got some Cresselias, which was the Legendary I was aiming for since I missed out on getting her when she first showed up.

So, I imagine everyone has heard, but Niantic is taking major steps in regards to the pandemic.

First and foremost, Abra Community Day is canceled - globally. They'll presumably reschedule it, but no word as to when.

Second, to encourage players to stay relatively local, they instituted a few changes:

1. A one-time box purchase of 30 incense for one coin. Even if incense isn't a regular item for you, this is definitely worth it (a single incense is usually 40 coins - a pack of 30 for one is over a 99.9% discount).
2. For the time being, incense lasts for one hour. I just did a neighborhood jaunt, and it seems that they also did an unannounced boost to how often incense spawns trigger (it was less than 60 seconds between spawns in my experience).
3. Gifts spawn more regularly from stops. I didn't bother to count how many I sent/received, but I think they also increased the limit of how many per day you can send/receive.
4. All incubators are at double effectiveness.
5. Increased spawns and habitats. I definitely noticed the former on a 90-minute neighborhood jaunt; for the latter, I think they're just making some of the stuff that usually only spawns in a given area under the right weather more likely to appear (I saw a lot more of the foggy spawns than I usually do outside of that weather, though not as much as the partly cloudy spawns that followed with the current weather).

At the moment, I honestly anticipate that the next two Safari Zones are in high likelihood of postponement/cancellation as well. Liverpool, perhaps less, as they're still operating as normal there. That said, even if it does go forward, attendance will undoubtedly be down, and it wouldn't surprise me if Niantic offered refunds regardless. Philadelphia, however, has banned gatherings of over 1,000 people for the next 30 days - in theory, that could be lifted in time for the Safari Zone, but I'm not sanguine at the moment.

On a personal note, I will note with some irony that my first encounter after all of the above was announced was a shiny Seviper.

Damn that's probably the most generous I seen them be.

Yeah, oddly generous, though kind of feels hilariously half-assed as a crisis response. All the shiny raid event stuff is still going on, so there's likely to be people going out for those. They also haven't done a worldwide distance cost negation for GBL, so people are still encourage to run off to do that, especially if they're obsessed enough to want to do the seven sets.

I tried two Incenses out last night just to see how much the rate is raised. It's an impressive rate, for certain, but also really serves to highlight how trash random wild spawns generally are. Nothing particularly worthwhile showed up, so I guess I got a bit of dust. If I end up running more, I'll probably hoard red balls in advance and use the Pokeball Plus to quickly force clear undesirable spawns.

So standing still with incense will now spawn more than usual?

Yes. Old rate was about 1 Mon per 5 minutes. Current rate is 1 Mon per about every 50-70 seconds. Sometimes there's longer periods of down time, which typically leads to 3-5 spawning in near rapid succession. Only one Incense spawn can be in play at a time, though, so you have to either catch it or let it despawn (which can take a while).

I had the luck of running into two shinies during my time with 1-hour incense (Seviper and Seel), but that might have just been due to the fact that most of the things spawning in the local weather were potentially available to be shiny, so volume alone suggested one or two would be found. Beyond that, though, not too much worth noting. I think the two Dwebble I found were the most exciting spawns of the evening.

The situation with how they're handling legendaries in the current situation does heavily smack of tempting fate. I could see two much better ways of handling it, depending on just how player-friendly they wanted to be. One, and the more likely option, would be just to postpone all of the legendary raids they have planned. Heck, maybe even cancel all raids above three stars, just to be sure. The other, which they almost certainly wouldn't do, would be to suddenly make the legendary raids 3-star raids, putting them into solo clear territory. Yes, the idea of soloing a legendary raid is Niantic's nightmare scenario in most cases, but it's for the greater good.

Edit: Wrong topic.

Edited by Anomalocaris20 on Mar 13th 2020 at 3:42:35 PM

I definitely don't see them demoting it. Postponing the raid events it probably as good as we can hope for. Looks like they're also pushing ahead with the other ticketed content.

I think the most eyebrow-raising part is their overall lack of consistency. They're paying lip service to the pandemic, while simultaneously trying to entice people to go out and shell out cash for the limited shinies and other exclusive crap.

EDIT: Preseason rewards are out. 3 of each TM, a Premium Pass and 50k dust for a (Rank 9) 3225 rating finish. They dropped me down to 1672 rating in Rank 8 for this next season. Looks like a bit of a steep grind.

Edited by KuroiTsubasaTenshi on Mar 13th 2020 at 2:10:59 AM

To be fair, in the absence of highly dense cities, you can do most if not all raids while maintaining the 2 meters of space from each other.

That same argument could be made for Community Days (less so the ticketed events like Safari Zone, but some of those are still scheduled to move forward at the moment) or other events. Mind, I guess anything they do is technically meaningless when people are inexplicably congregating at super markets to make useless panic purchases.

Well, if you're going to buy stuff in expectation of not being able to go outside for some time, of course congregation at supermarkets will be necessary just because that's where all the stuff is. In any case, given that quarantine and lockdowns are still the ultimate method of controlling spread, prepping stuff is generally a good idea. Even the toilet paper - it's one of those things that's really easy to forget you're running low of but is also necessary because you use it every day and there's not really a lot of good subsitutes for it. I've been accumulating bits and pieces all throughout the past couple of weeks weeks, so grocery shopping today was relatively uneventful and mostly just picking up some more canned goods and UHT milk and freeze dried meals. Although for some dumb reason I keep forgetting to buy nuts...

Canceling community day likely has the effect of making it so that there aren't large numbers of people people spending a bunch of time outside, then decide "hey, I'm in the mood for a boba", then "I should pick up XYZ on my way home", then "let's call up my buds for happy hour at wherever". Feel like much fewer people are likely to be out in the public simply because Giratina and Timburr now have a miniscule chance of being shiny. Whether any individual person will get a communicable disease from doing community day will really depend on where they do it. Downtown or some outdoor mall? No Good. The 3-mile loop around my neighborhood where I see like 10-15 people tops usually? Probably fine as long as no one decides to be a creepy and jog right next to you breathing into your face.

Canceling the ticketed events, though, that's the main one that will actually help.

Considering how much people are flipping their shit up here, I'm not convinced they're thinking it through that thoroughly. But if people want to be counterproductive to not perpetuating the infection, not like I can do anything to stop them.

In any event, looks like Niantic decided to get rid of EX Raids. Kind of a weird choice to just those over all T5s. Nothing on the ticketed events, either, though I guess if lock downs happen, they'll have no choice but to comply.

Back to funnier things: looks like Niantic managed to screw up the season ratings recalc not once, but twice. Nothing like starting the new GBL season by having it down for maintenance for nearly half of the first 12 hours. I guess they at least did one thing right by reducing the distance cost to play to zero.

Well I got a Metagross today from PVP so that's something

So Tundurus is gone?

I haven't heard anything about that. I assume it's still in there, but RNG decides if you get it. Because it's a new season, I assume your first encounter is fixed and then it's RNG after.

Thundurus is still around in T5 raids, but GBL appears to have swapped it out for Giratina-A for the time being. That should revert once its raid weekend is over.

Oh, and as for the set encounters, there's more this season: Metagross at Rank 1+, Beldum at Rank 4+ (don't ask me why the Metagross comes first), Rufflet at Rank 7+, and Pikachu Libre at Rank 10.

Edited by KuroiTsubasaTenshi on Mar 14th 2020 at 3:27:18 AM

Talking about the PVP thing

How come it isn't showing up on the "list of possible encounters" in tall grass for PVP?

Fucked if I know

I guess it's possible that Niantic forgot to put Thundurus in the list. Tthat's how it went for the first 3-4 days where Thundurus was initially available in PvP before they finally fixed it. I wouldn't put it past Niantic to have updated an outdated list. If they didn't completely screw it up (not the most confidence-inspiring, I know, given that they dropped the ball on the rating conversion twice—arguably thrice—in one day), though, then Girtina-A is likely replacing Thundurus until its event ends.