In the (almost) five years since Pokemon Go released, my interest in the game has gone through peaks and troughs. Right now, I’m at the point where I’m no longer glued to it when I’m out and about, but I still check in every day, usually just at home. That’s what happened this weekend, when I returned from a long, PoGo-less walk, and checked my phone to discover I had finally walked enough to hatch my 12km egg.
It was a Skorupi.
If you’re unfamiliar with how eggs work in Pokemon, in the base games you get them from daycare, after leaving two Pokemon of opposite genders who are compatible with each other. Under the watchful eyes of the daycare staff, your ‘mons get it on, before pushing out an egg for you to deal with. You then need to walk or cycle around until it hatches - this is a common method used by shiny hunters looking for a specific Pokemon.
Of all the things to crossover from the core entries into Pokemon Go, eggs are one of the most successful. They work slightly differently (you get a 2km, 5km, or 10km egg from spinning a stop), and you can’t force a certain Pokemon to be in the egg, but it’s the base game mechanic that puts the most emphasis on walking, so it’s the perfect fit for Pokemon Go. Certainly, compared to the unintuitive UI of the battle mechanics, eggs are a winner.
Over time, eggs with a shorter distance have become less useful to me. They tend to contain fairly common Pokemon, and I’m at the point where it’s only the rarer ones I need. They don’t take long to hatch, and I might get a shiny, but really, I’m not interested in an egg if it’s not 10km.
Then Pokemon Go brought out a 12km egg, one that you get from Team Rocket rather than from stops. You’d think I’d be happy about another long-distance egg in the game, but instead, I still think it’s the worst idea the game has ever had. I’m as convinced of that now as I was when it dropped last year.
If you’ve been keeping track of global developments, you’ll recall that the still ongoing pandemic was at its peak last year. That’s right, while everyone was stuck inside their homes, Niantic decided to introduce a new egg that asked you to walk even further. A lot of the Pokemon in the 12km eggs are rare ones that are worth working (or in this case walking) towards, but then isn’t that what 10km eggs are for? If Team Rocket gave you an egg that required something different (week-long catch streak, X amount of battles, purifying Shadow Pokemon), then that would not only highlight that these eggs are supposed to be something different, it would also make them far more interesting. Right now they’re just 10km eggs that ask you to walk another 2km, and what’s the point in that? When all you get is a Skorupi, no point at all.