While Pokémon GO is hardly the most competitively-minded series entry around, Niantic is taking steps to kick things up a notch by changing some mechanics. If you’re the min-maxing sort of Pokémon trainer, this might be right up your street.
Pokémon GO’s third anniversary arrived earlier this month, and if you’ve been around since the early days, you’ll know that it’s been one heckola of a ride for Niantic up to now. A shonky, glitch-ridden launch started things off in less-than-ideal-fashion, and bad press followed the app around like a bad Koffing-stench. A supposedly-triumphant Pokémon GO Fest in July 2017 saw Niantic’s CEO viciously booed by "fans," which tells you a whole lot about how many of us felt about GO in the early days.
Still, even the snarkiest of us have to admit that Niantic has certainly been doing its best to make the app better. With huge and significant additions like raid battles, friends lists, trading, PvP, and quests, the game almost unrecognizable now. Yes, a lot of those things should’ve been available much earlier, but heck, let’s go with the glass-half-full train of thought for once around here.
The next big thing on the way to GO is the villainous Team Rocket. Before that, though, there’s another interesting little update on the way, and it’s going to change that aforementioned PvP.
There are two tweaks coming to GO soon, which Niantic have dubbed "feature revamps." Firstly, the Appraisal system is getting an overhaul, which will give players more details about their Pokémon’s stats. Needless to say, this information is paramount for competitive players, so that’s certainly going to be welcome. “
The new Pokemon GO Appraisal now breaks down and ranks your Pokemon into three main stats (ATK, DEF and STA) and ranks each one of those in a bar-like simple fashion,” Pokémon GO Hub reports, which sounds a-okay by us.
Aside from that, the tweaks to the PvP will see a new UI implemented, which will show the CP of both active Pokémon alongside other little changes. Most significantly, the way the Charged Attack mechanic functions will be changed, as Niantic has stated on Twitter:
This is another minor-yet-significant step in the right direction for the app. Now, bring on Team Rocket!