danmaruschak (72) in #gaming • 7 years ago
Several months ago Niantic implemented a “Raid” subsystem in Pokemon Go. Periodically a powerful pokemon will “take over” a gym, basically altering the way the gym combat minigame works. Somewhat like a boss fight from other games, instead of bringing your team of pokemon into battle against the pokemon placed in the gym by players from other teams like normal, you take your team of pokemon up against a single powerful oversized pokemon placed there by the game. If you win the battle then you get a chance to throw special pokeballs at an instance of the pokemon you defeated, which is the only way to capture some pokemon such as the legendary pokemon that don't spawn in the wild but do periodically show up as raid bosses in gyms.
(I'd like to catch a Kyogre, but there's not much chance I'll be able to)
In addition to getting the chance to capture the raid boss pokemon you also get some other rewards from defeating a raid, notably Golden Razz Berries, Rare Candies, and Technical Machines. Technical Machines are one-time-use objects that let you change the moves on one of the pokemon you already have. This is the only way to do this in the game, and you can only get these by winning tier 3 or 4 raids. Because it's the only way to get some of these things the game creates a strong incentive to win tier 3, 4, or legendary raids. However the primary obstacle to winning the fight is the timer. The raid boss pokemon often have so many hit points that it is mathematically impossible for a single player to defeat them in time even if you bring an optimal team of pokemon against them, you need a group of people all attacking simultaneously. Some tier 3 raid bosses are soloable, but I find that doing so is more of an exercise in seeing if you can do enough damage before the time runs out – it feels more like a fight with a software user-interface than engaging in the virtual world of the game.
Having to fight as part of a group might be workable for people who don't play in pre-established groups if raids were more of a “destination” and people gathered from the surrounding area to take part in this rare opportunity, but raids seem to be active in so many places so frequently that there's no reason to think that one nearby raid is more likely to attract other players than another. Furthermore, even though you can see which raids are active from some distance away, you can only see if someone else is fighting a raid if you're close enough to the gym to fight it yourself. Regardless, at the times and places I play the game I rarely if ever encounter other players (which, honestly, is how I prefer it – I don't play Pokemon Go for social interaction, I'm in it for the motivation to walk for exercise).
(I could use a chance at a Golem with good Rock moves, but I don't have a team with me)
Niantic obviously wants to create an incentive to engage in social interaction with other players. Even though that's not what I want out of the game I can understand that being their priority. However, by putting desirable content behind barriers that can only be overcome via group play I think they're making the incentive curve too steep. In contrast to the way they've successfully avoided making this free-to-play game a pay-to-win game, I think they've tried so hard to get people to do social interaction that they've made this aspect of the game social-to-win. That's not a good fit with everybody's circ*mstances or style of play.
The game already has the concept of private raid battles and multiple types of raid passes. One possible way to address the raid issue for solo players would be to make something like a “Challenge Pass”: this would be a raid pass that operates with no time limit (or at least a long time limit) that would put you into a private raid group that no one else could join. This way you at least have a chance at the big raid bosses, even if it would take a long time to win and cause a lot of your pokemon to faint in the process. Currently I regard tier 4 and legendary raids as reasons to avoid gyms, not to seek them out. But if I had the backup plan of the possibility of solo-ing one of these raids then I'd be more likely to treat them like useful destinations for me. This might even cause me to organically run into other players and engage in the standard multiplayer raid gameplay. Having a fallback option of being able to solo raids if a player needs to would make the incentive structure look more like “being part of a group works better” rather than “being part of a group is a requirement”, which I think is a better way to design incentives anyway.
While this post has been critical of the Raid subsystem, there are other recent developments in the game that I like a lot. I'm still enjoying the weather subsystem, for example. I also think that the way they've decided to stagger the rollout of the Gen 3 pokemon has been good at keeping things feeling fresh (and more are getting released today).
(However, tier 1 Wailmer raids are very solo-able, I do like it when I see them pop up)
