Massively on the Go: Pokemon Go’s Max Finale maximized profits, minimized pokemon

Pokemon Go’s Darkest Day Go Fest Finale showed not just the potential future of the game but where gaming may end.

The official infograph lacked any hard information, and the announcement of 100 player lobbies scattered smaller communities to the winds as the fear of missing out continued to be a deathblow for casual, small-scale drop-in play. The bloated candy costs and walking out of raids without anything to show for it other than grinding materials really made the main event feel like a grind and everything else a waste, except for players who needed to catch up, ultra casuals (from whom I heard complaints when they “wasted” particles on non-Eternatus raids), or whales.

And don’t forget, this was all built on content that the POGO live team just won’t issue refunds for, and I heard several people complain about it again thanks to bugs, poor communication, and people ill-prepared for the content. So as usual, Massively on the Go is here to look at what happened on the ground – and also to try to get to the dark heart of the problem.

The light before the darkness

Let me try to start things out with the good because this wasn’t as bad as, say, Go Fest 2017. Well, for some playstyles. For very new or lapsed players with deep pockets and/or people who play ultra casually, it may have been good. There are players who called it great, but they’re few and far between. Despite what I may write here, I’m actually constantly accused of being overly optimistic about the game in meatspace. I try very hard to give players who enjoy the game space to express those opinions, both for my mental health and so the few POGO fans who read this don’t feel drowned in the doom and gloom that seemingly constantly washes over the game.

While the above thread has more naysayers than proponents, there are some solid points made beyond the limited scope I mentioned above. Admittedly, I finally met an online “friend” whom I wouldn’t have met if I hadn’t gone out to play the game. The massive amounts of stardust were pretty nice too, as was double catch candy if you found something worth catching this week and the fact that stuff was easier to catch. It would have been more fun with traditional raids and pokemon raid rewards, but I’ll get to that later.

For the devs, not releasing new, cool pokemon or encouraging more raids meant they didn’t have to get new servers to handle expanded player storage (which we still need, but at least the event didn’t add to that). Among the stuff worth raiding outside of the Max ‘mon were the Legendary Hero Dogs, which personal experience has shown me are worth using outside of that content and to shortcut through some very, very annoying Max quests, if you’re patient and/or hoard resources from them.

Also for the devs, they made a ton of money, thanks to the whales who’ll spend money constantly doing whatever their heart desires no matter how meaningless it may be to not just the meta, clueless players (I heard several, “I don’t even know why I’m raiding this” about a few ‘mon), and the power players who spent upwards of $200 this weekend trying to max out even bad IV Etneratuses (which we only got one of, despite it only being a Legendary, the devs treated it like Mythical). With the amount of money they made, every dev’s kid and dog should be able to go to college – you know, if the company doesn’t keep laying off employees like its former parent company did right after the sale announcement.

Yes, the devs really were the winners here. Of course, new players who really want to get into the Max Battle system got tons of support in the form of spawns basically only being of Max-able families, but with essentially only 4-Gmax raids possible for free per day if you didn’t play ahead or wanted to use particles so you wouldn’t be dead weight in the raid, even I went home early, and after a week of a more “bleh” event than I was expecting.

Failure to properly prep

Let’s start with the prep event. Again, the lead-up week on paper seemed like a good idea: Every Dmax pokemon ever released back in rotation at the same time with extra candy and every pokemon was easier to catch. Not bad. The problem? Those of us who didn’t really need/want any of the repeat Max ‘mon were asked to raid every day to grind capped Battle Pass levels. I really didn’t want to and admittedly didn’t get the full points a day or two. I’m fine, but a new player could be different.

While new players could raid to build their armies in terms of species and possibly IVs, the “battle pass” only progressed if you did raids (normal and/or Max Battles depending on the day), which meant preparing for the event by raising pokemon (which, again, uses the same currency as actual Max battles) put them at a disadvantage. Veterans like myself have little to no motivation to participate in these kinds of events other than the battle pass coercing us to do them, and that’s a bad sign, especially because the pass stifled play options. I could have spent some time leveling stuff up with my particles but didn’t, and that sadly worked out for the best, as some quests needed you to do that.

Of course, some people enjoy the Max system, but I’ve noticed my local communities’ participation massively drops when there’s repeat Max content. Tons of people came out for the original Kanto starters, and then again for the repeat, but aside from Charizard, people just don’t care about them anymore. It’s the same with the legendary birds, Beasts, and Eon duo. There’s rarely any significant daily Max activity in my local community, with normal raids barely being more active when there’s a new ‘mon, but the difference for the Max Battles isn’t just more drastic but more damaging. We’ll get to this more later, though.

It also is never fun min-maxing how to acquire particles for these things in the first place, let alone using them for raids. Figuring out how to maximize battlepass progress, which is gated content, while also doing what you really want to do (if you even want to do something other than wait for the event proper) was super unfun. I grossly underestimated how unlikable the prep period was. Having the option to do content sounded good in theory, but once again, the actual Max system feels tedious particularly because of the awful way particles function.

Normal raids, even in their early release days, were designed for 20 people but now can be done with two or three people or less in some extreme cases. But those are done with Pokemon we’ve been using for years. There’s not much of a limit on the content they can do besides being locked out of the Max system.

DMax Battles, on the other hand, ask us to recatch and rebuild and are capped at four people. Few vets want to bother with these unless they have deep pockets or play sporadically, especially when they know there are Gmax versions of the same species that immediately outclass the Dmax version. The Dmax battles that are worth doing can’t be reasonably soloed without spending cash, aside from Chansey, who is just an annoying slog. In these small groups, you can often feel when you’re carrying someone. That pits players against each other, which is worse in meatspace than online because it can cause real-life confrontations.

Most people I know are good about avoiding violence or shouting, but moochers and slackers are often bad-mouthed and avoided (if possible) instead. It happened during the prep period, and I heard more than a few stories told about this during the event itself. Not separating particles into the raiding variety vs. stat-raising variety will push most players to act selfishly and delay/ignore raising pokemon to instead simply mooch off of those who are already invested in the system. I’m not saying the players who do this are faultless, but I am saying the devs reward them for this selfishness.

Gmax Battles are several times worse, though, and the devs making the cap 100 people seems like a major red flag. Whereas my raid community used to maybe get 40-60 players for normal raids before this, there are times where we’re lucky if we hit 20. The disinterest is real, and the fact that my Gmax community is basically made up of several communities that were practically forced together by a streamer “stealing” members for their own paid content speaks volumes. Again, it’s something I could do a whole article on, but let me stick to the major focus: The particle system rewards selfishness, the devs push huge content onto the playerbase, and those two things are at odds with each other. I’m fortunate to have some helpful players in my raid community, but even the Gmax one pretty much left people high and dry during the prep period.

The highlight of prep week was the (crowned) Zacian and Zamaxenta raids, which brought a decent number of people out to play but not necessarily “out.” I tried hitting up a community I used to do stuff with during COVID (or, you know, what was possible during that time), and out of the maximum of 19 accounts in the raids I with, I was the only person not raiding in my car for multiple raids. My main raid community did have a strong showing, but that’s also the community that’s been torn asunder by the Gmaxes.

For the event proper, though, it was decimated. It wasn’t like we were all funneled into another community; people were nervous about getting anything done, especially with Eternatus being so expensive candy wise and being the debut pokemon for the 100-player lobbies. Previous Gmax event failures already pushed some of us away, but this just had people scattered, with 20 players being the max at the start.

And we weren’t alone. I heard similar stories from communities around the city. In fact, The Pike in Long Beach, California, one of our hot spots when the game launched, was 40-25 people. It turned out the content wasn’t quite that hard, but the announcement and FOMO hit everyone hard enough to kill the fun and many communities in one short event. If the devs think their content is bringing people together, they really need to expand where and when they play.

Horrors from the front line

Let’s start with my initial thoughts on how the event would go from the early-preview people in Anaheim saw a week before the event proper:

“After looking at the results of the early release of Eternatus at Anaheim, it may be hard to appreciate what Niantic is doing here. On the one hand, they are trying to make sure this is content that people can do for a while. Outside of the largest spenders, follow-up event participation probably won’t slip too much because most people will need resources for quite some time. On the other, though, it’s whaling on a scale that far exceeds anything we’ve seen to date. It’s hard enough when Megas or Fusions have limited access, but the grind is often manageable once you’ve unlocked the Mega, or you can hoard access resources to evolve something later. Missing an event isn’t exactly the end of the world. Eternatus, though, is a single ‘mon you have to live with and you can only reasonably power it up via events. It’s a new level of FOMO that really shouldn’t exist for a game that’s largely played in person, with real life constraints, and that charges a high premium for those who can only particpate remotely. It is powerful, it does have comparable power to another Pokemon with slightly easier access (but just barely), but the other options don’t feel as restrictive as this is looking. It may be a good plan for the devs, but it looks greedy and lazy to many players, especially those who are unable to look at things from the devs’ POV.”

The first part about the devs trying to make long-lasting content feels true, as does the massive whaling. It felt like tons of people started grinding Eternatus and then got bored, either going home or doing anything else with the money burning a hole in their pocket. The word “boring” was said frequently enough that it felt like the event’s theme song.

But the whaling was worse than I’d imagined. Remember, high-end Max battles cost about $1.50 per raid, compared to $1 for normal ones. Remote regular raids are about $2, but remote Max battles are $3.50 each, as you need the particles and remote pass. I know someone who spent over $200 maxing out their Eternatus this weekend, and it wasn’t even a good one, and yes, they used remote passes and apparently always took the 200 coin option to double their reward in order to cut down on time/costs. There are decent phones you could buy for that much!

And the thing is, I imagine lots of rural players had to pay that. I’m lucky enough that I have to drive only 30-40 minutes to get to my GMax location, followed by maybe a 10-minute walk if I don’t want to pay for parking (I don’t), but I feel like one of the lucky ones. Not luckiest, since I know there are cities where people can hit multiple gyms/power spots from their apartment, but it does really drive home the “rural player tax” this game has.

It’s also a good reminder that Jurassic World Alive’s system, where you just need to click on the raid you want to do and get put into a queue, is much more consumer and community friendly. I haven’t seen any players in meatspace since launch, but doubling the in-person rewards instead of asking us to pay for them could help fix that, as I imagine the Scopely devs still trade player data with Niantic.

And through it all, no one I spoke to wanted to give the devs credit for trying to make content they could repeat later. The post-event announcement hasn’t exactly gone over well in either. People seemed done with Eternatus at the start, not of each day, but in general. The Day 2 crowd is usually smaller, but almost immediately we couldn’t hit the full lobbies we had hit on Saturday. One person I overheard couldn’t understand why people would keep doing Eternatus if you couldn’t catch another or swap the old one out. I don’t mean she didn’t approve of it or was judging people; she literally couldn’t process it, trying to figure out what she was missing that would make anyone want to put effort into the raids for their rewards, which again, did not include any catchable pokemon.

That lack of a catchable reward really took its toll on people. The FOMO people trying to do as many Eternatus raids in were at odds with those who wanted to shiny/IV hunt Gmax ‘mon or just do any raid for an interesting pokemon, as wild spawns were just candy-fodder and the promised increase in Dmax wild spawns was imperceptible. Certain pokemon, like Gengar and Inteleon, caused people to branch off the group, and as we had no strong leader, everyone got scattered, even those of us in groups. I understand that people were frustrated with the lack of ‘mon catching after an Eternatus raid, but seeing people do Gmax Butterfree, an event we barely got 20 people for after the first raid or two, spoke volumes.

Those hours were painful because everyone wanted the zerg to help them with content, but we went from maybe 130 people strong at the very start to less than 100 total but with groups of maybe 4-15 spread out. Yes, you can use paid consumables to make content easier, but that shouldn’t be the answer, especially with multiple event tickets, month-long tickets, and per-raid premium reward options.

I do understand that there is kind of a precedent for not catching a pokemon after a raid. The main series did it too in the last two generations, but the difference is vast. First, there are other items you receive: rare cooking materials, rare TMs, materials for crafting TMs, and various leveling/stat altering items. These don’t all translate well, but honestly? By comparison, it would have been better if instead of bloated costs for Eternatus, the battles rewarded higher amounts of stardust (which, admittedly 25k per battle was pretty good), rare candy, rare candy XL, and Elite TMs.

Now, I can almost feel Scopely clutching its wallet in pain, but hear me out: It would have helped build the community’s collective collection, decreased distrust in the company, and increased player successes, especially among newer players. FOMO is real, but a deluge of Elite TMs would increase their use, as I know many people who hoard them (including myself). Same with the rare candies. If it’s suddenly raining down, the Slakoths I’ve been saving for the MIA-for-5-years-Bodyslam attack could be evolved and used after gathering dust for years. The rare candy could be pumped into fun and/or rare pokemon, like the recent Frosmoth, which is a hatch-only 400-candy-evolution-plus-friendship-trophy-‘mon, not useful for just about anything.

I say this not in the sense that “maybe it would happen” but as someone who recently started hitting surplus levels that encouraged me to make some use of these supplies. It’s made various aspects of the game more fun. What isn’t fun, though, is having the devs build an event around FOMO in a system that’s expensive, non-refundable, and buggy. Not just the normal bugs, like raids not appearing, randomly getting dropped (and unlike normal raids, you can’t reconnect after that), raid lockout, or myriad others, but a newish one: no access to your Max moves. That means healers that can’t heal or tanks that can’t tank.

Maybe this was why the lobbies were increased to 100, so that instead of fixing their game, the devs could just let content be zerged down. The problem, though, is that the bug stood out more and more as the day went on and people went home. I prefer smaller content I can do with a few friends, but I don’t want to pay for premium items to do it, especially when so many bugs can hit, and again, especially if I can’t get a refund.

Instead of hunting for regionals or getting lots of legendaries like we did for Go Fest proper, we got a buggy event that everyone knew was trying to milk us. Sadly, a lot of people who knew this still gave the devs free rein over their wallets. That’s going to greenlight a lot of similar content but also content that slowly gets worse, as the devs constantly show that they start generous and then slowly switch out the good stuff for the junk. Look no further than the research breakthroughs through the years, or even just the Go Fests. Hopefully the 10th anniversary one will be an exception, as the 5th year was great, but even then, I noted that “Niantic far too often plays with damaging its own community in search of how much pain it can inflict in their search for profits.” The company hasn’t improved at all since then, and this Finale may indicate that they’ve gotten significantly worse.