Pokemon Go held its Summer Go Fest last weekend, and by all accounts it was a huge success. It was easier to play remotely than any event previously - even if pandemic updates will be rolled back soon - and brought better storytelling than ever before. The nature of the game means implementing a full narrative is difficult, and even last weekend’s event was some distance short of the best moments from the main series or the anime, but five years in, the game seems to have finally figured out its storytelling. The only issue is it still relies so heavily on raids.

Raids were one of the first updates Pokemon Go ever introduced, and they involve special, giant Pokemon taking over a gym for a limited time. They’re like Dynamax Pokemon before Dynamax was a thing. Considering the other ideas base games have swiped from Pokemon Go over the years, it wouldn’t surprise me if the success of raids had some influence on Dynamax as a whole. In any case, they involve you and up to 19 other trainers taking on this Pokemon in battle. You pick six Pokemon, but if they faint, you can either heal them up or swap them out. However, you will need to win the raid within a set time, so you can’t just brute force it - you need to be tactical with type advantages.

Related: Bidoof Day Proves Every Single Pokemon Is Worth CelebratingRaid bosses rise in difficulty, going from one star to five stars. This affects both the health of the Pokemon and its overall strength. Magikarp, for example, is a one star raid boss. If you have a strong team and get lucky enough to find a three stars raid boss with a double weakness, you might just about be able to win a three stars raid alone. Four stars and five stars are completely off limits to solo players, with five stars typically requiring at least three other trainers working with you.

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https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-04-09-pokemon-go-is-adding-online-leaderboards

Summer Fest, like most other PoGo events, relied heavily on five stars raids. Pokemon Go has always been ‘easier’, for lack of a better word, in the city. I’ve lived in a city, in a small town with an active Pokemon Go network, and in a small town without one. While home spawns have gotten better, Pokemon Go’s internal mechanics place more Pokemon and more stops in more heavily populated areas, so I caught more Pokemon - and by extension, more rare ones - in the city. Pretty much any four stars or five stars raid I wanted to do always had other random trainers nearby too, so I didn’t have to think about them.

I raided most often though in my small town with an active community. While I couldn’t just roll up to whichever raid I felt like, my Discord notified me of all the ones nearby people were planning to hit, so I could team up and beat them easily. I never spent real money on raid passes the way the most hardcore players did, but the Poke Coins I got from gym defence meant I was always topped up enough to do a few per day.

Now, I don’t really raid at all. I suppose this has always been a problem, but it’s one I’ve been immune to until recently, and therefore unaware of. In my small town with no cohesive community, co-ordinating on raids is impossible. Over Summer Go Fest, I saw several Legendaries, but only raided for one of them. I clicked on the various gyms around my house, and only once did the ‘Join Raid’ button indicate that other people were already queued. There were four of us in total, which meant Zekrom wiped out close to two full parties before we brought it down. The worst part? I didn’t even catch it.

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Via gamespot.com

The value of Legendaries has been a little lost in Pokemon Go - I wrote as much when I explained why Meloetta is the last great Legendary that will join the game. From my heavy raiding days, I have close to 20 Raikou. When I was doing three or four a day, it didn’t really matter that I could fail to catch a Pokemon even after nailing Excellent throws with a Golden Razz in place - mission failed, we’ll get ‘em next time. In communities where there is no ‘next time’ though, making you wait months until it’s viable that you might beat a Legendary raid boss, only to then have it run, feels like punishingly unfair game design.

From playing with a hardcore group, I know how much money Niantic must make from raids. These people did ten raids a day, five or six days a week, each time shelling out for the raid passes, as well as buying a full complement of incubators to always be hatching and always have dust. I moved away before the pandemic, so I don’t know if that affected my old raid group, and I don’t know how many of them picked it back up after a year-long enforced break. I imagine there was some drop off, and I imagine my little old raid group wasn’t the only one affected, so Niantic may be pushing raids even harder to ensure they get their returns on events again. Remote raid passes make it easier to raid from the comfort and safety of your own home, but they still need coordination and a sense of group play in order to work.

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Pokemon Go has some interaction with players, with gifts, battles, and trades all being added in various updates, but it is a solo game at heart. There’s no competition, just collection. However, raids require you to play with others in order to get the best out of it, and that creates a huge sense of inequality. Summer Go Fest was one of the best Pokemon Go events in years, probably the second best ever after the Clamperl Limited Research Day. It’s just a shame you needed to raid in groups in order to see the best of it.

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