How as the Ex-Raid Pass ruined Pogo in your area?
I have drafted a letter of recommendation to Niantic to get rid of the Ex Raid system with 37 reasons why it is ruining Pogo. After carful consideration of all 37, 1 of them sticks our as the most. The Ex Raid as killed raiding. My community no longer comes out to raid 5 or 4 star raids. The only raids they will do is at the park. The local pogo page fills with pictures of a 1 star raid at our park and dozens of trainers rush to it for a chance to get an ex raid. Yesterday there was 3, 5 star raids hatching withen 10 minutes of eachother. I posted but everyone said don't go to that and called me stupid because it wasn't the park and no one will do raids unless it's at the park... The game is dead here in my opinion with no hope of it getting better.
Answers
people here still do both ex eligible raids as well as ineligible ex raids. id say about 70% of our group of 100+ has received at least 1 ex pass. the number of players getting the ex has gone up in the past month thanks to the s2 cell thread on the silph road subreddit. although we are fortunate to have the system work to our advantage recently we still believe the ex system should be scrapped altogether.
We don´t have any Ex Raid Gyms in our town, so the focus is on regular T5s.
Luckily we had one Ex Raid during the test phase, were most players here got invited and had a chance to catch it.
I really don´t understand why they decided to spawn Ex Raids only at parks, why don´t give every Gym a very small chance to spawn those (possibly with a CD or something)? Of course, larger cities would have a greater amount of Ex Raids, but small towns like mine, that dont even have something close to a park would atleast have a chance, too + that would solve your problem, too, because Ex Raids couldn´t be predicted.
I imagine that this would also be better for Niantic´s purse since players would go back to raiding more randomly like some did back in the testing phase
...aside of that, this whole system sucks, but it seems Niantic wants to stick to it no matter what. I just wish we had a more direct way to communicate with Niantic - hell, I would do that job for pocket money.
- I know, I know, my english sucks :s
Your question makes what to me is an invalid presumption that the Ex-Raid Pass system has ruined Pogo. I do not believe it has, at least not in my area. As far as I can tell, despite the Ex-Raid Pass system, most players are still having fun playing Pogo and doing raids wherever the raid bosses pop up. The Ex-Raid Pass system is just a messed-up, broken part of the game, but it is by no means the central feature of the game. I agree that the Ex-Raid Pass system is poorly designed. I think it should be scrapped and simply have Mewtwo take its turn in the normal sequencing of legendary raid bosses. That would solve all your concerns.
The entire raid system is broken IMO. Players in my area drive around to raids and no one really plays by walking any more. Raids appear when niantic wants them to, completely out of the players control. The whole hour long egg hatching period is pointless for Tiers 1-4 because no one is going to wait around for up to an hour to see what hatches. I have given up on the whole Ex-Pass thing because the only sponsored gyms I know are out of tine wrong direction from where I live and not worth making a special trip. I do raid in parks but that doesn't seem to matter as I never get an Ex Pass. I have pretty much given up on raids because its just a big hassle to find a raid I want to do when I have time to do it. It's been a week since I used a free pass. The whole theme with the raids and the community day concept seems to be that Niantic wants to dictate when they want you play instead of making it to convenient to play when you have time to play.
I am the one "dislike". The entire raid system is not broken. That is an overstatement, but the raid system could use improvement. Why have to wait until the egg hatches to find out what the raid boss is? That serves no particular useful purpose. Right now, I like that way tier 5 raids are structured. You know what it will be when it hatches, except in the small time frame of when there is a transition from one legendary to another. Why not make it clear what is going to hatch when the egg of whatever pokemon of whatever tier hatches? Doing so would just give more time for players to organize raids they want to do. Why not do the raids that way?
That really sucks. Luckily that hasn't happened in my area.
Not saying we all go for every raid, but the EX system hasn't changed the way we raid much.
The only real change is that we now pick a gym so as to try and trigger an EX raid. But we still raid everywhere else as well.
I suppose that if there were two T5 raids at the same time, then we would focus on the one at the potential EX raid gym, but that isn't really anything special.
So in a way EX raids hasn't ruined anything, it has actually made us raid more. We do our usual raids (though less now because of bad/cold weather and many already have plenty of Kyogres) as well as do any raid (T1 or T5) at that specific gym.
It hasn't ruined it (until I got on the city Discord I didn't even know they existed in this area) but it has certainly driven a wedge between players - the haves on one side, the have nots on the others (I'm in a 3rd category ... the robbed. My only pass was taken away.)
The haves are happy, the rest of us feel bad every time people announce they got their passes (at least they shouldn't brag about it).
They should end this, or at least never make another legendary "exclusive", or I may need to find me another game :(
General comment: I think MewTwo jealousy is the saddest development in the game. More as a reflection of the players than of Niantic. While the Ex-raid system could be improved (i.e. making all gyms eligible, adjustments to trigger algorithms, amongst other things) it is RNG at its finest. It’s actually the one aspect of the game where spoofers can’t really gain much of an advantage. They have to raid sponsored/Park gyms and hope just like everybody else.
Getting an invite is winning a low stakes lottery. If someone else winning a lottery diminishes your life in any way, that’s on you. And it’s pretty sad.
Response: As such, expecting people who win this small lottery to not be excited and/or expecting them to hide their excitement for your benefit is far more self centered than their excitement. Just be happy for them, it’s a game.
EX passes are very plentiful in my neighborhood...having said that, I get tagged every time there is a raid at an EX gym, or somewhere kinda near one...I’m gonna raid more in a different area where there are 39s and 40s. They can get Sh*t done without tagging 10 people first. I less mind contributing to those better players success than people that were mid 20s a month ago. Spoofers here at least battle Mewtwo with 6 or less (we usually private group EX), people standing there do it with 13-16 when it takes 4 or 5. One time I might just go in with the spoofers
As long as spoofers feel like shelling out coin for passes, they can get from location to location much more easily than regular players, giving them an advantage. They soak up a hugely disproportionate amount of invites here. PoGo is very regionally imbalanced, so this doesn't hold true everywhere, but spoofers collectively do the vast majority of raids where I am. Rewarding cheaters does leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
Yeah, I agree. In my city, it is often hard to get one of the 20 spots in even Magikarp raids at the Starbucks gym over the course of 45 minutes, but to get another player to help out with a Kyogre at a gym 100 feet away is impossible since they all have their 100%. Starbucks and Sprint gyms are just filled with 20+ people hogging up 45 minutes of raids with their multiple accounts, hoping to get one ex pass.
In our town only one mewtwo pass was given to the player that spends 90% of all the money players have spent here, so I think that is the main way to force niantic to send you a pass. I believe the whole legendary raid system killed the game. After entei and moltres flareon and arcanine are just taking space. Same case for vaporeon and exeggutor. In time machamp will die too when fighting legendaries make into the game.
Niantic already knows the EX system is disliked.
The EX system will not be replaced until there is a better system for making money. Right now it's driving raid pass sales between new raid bosses.
This isn't a jaded or cynical statement. If Niantic isn't making money, the game shuts down. I want them to make money.
If you used a premium raid pass this weekend, was it at an EX gym? Was it because you needed a 17th Kyogre? If you haven't used a premium raid pass, then how can Niantic encourage you to spend money?
That is how you get rid of the EX system. You figure out a system that gives Niantic more revenue. If you post that, they'll jump on it. But pointing out problems doesn't do anything. Solve the money problem!
They know they've got a problem. They need someone to help them solve it! Maybe it's you!
Basically it is regional unfair system, Europe have ex-raid passes issued less than USA have per pogo player, small towns less than big cities, tourist towns less than industrial cities, no mention rural, rural people suffer the most.
If The Niantic simply establish T6 tier boss raid, it will be more fair, and sell the pass 200 coin for each, or people do more raids earn the special pass, therefore everybody may have equal chance at least and at last the Niantic still make money.
A pretty rare T6 Boss would be a good replacement for Ex-raids.
Also remove the 180/300s time limit so people may take a lvl 5 raid by themselves inside 45 min (to greater potion cost). It would boost raid pass sale in rural areas and among people playing on odd hours (like early in the morning). It would probably increase sale of full revives as well.
Maybe make a an extra (more expensive) raid pass that let you trigger raids at any (non-occupied) gym at any time. Either with equal chances to get each level or different types for each level.
Yes!!! Our city is a world heritage city with population of 400000, has a very long history, also a popular tourist town, so far we only have total 4 ex-passes. Some pogers have 3-ex passes, a few have multiple accounts, had a few passes on one boss. Now the whole pogo community are falling apart, people formal their own groups to concentrate on ex-pass Gem, some feel hopeless and start to spoofing and try to find ex-passes elsewhere. Myself is in Level 38, never have had a single pass, even I raid daily.
That's exactly what bothers me most about this stupid system. No one wants to do Kyogre, but as soon as a Wailmer Raid appears at one of the two possible Ex-Raid gyms in our area, 20 people rush there eagerly. So stupid and pathetic. I just participate in "good" Raids at this gyms and still got my pass; I probably was lucky though.
Short answer: It hasn't.
90% of us in my immediate area have resigned ourselves to the fact that we are NOT going to get an EX Invite under the current system in our area (a fairly poor part of town in the midst of gentrification, with comparatively few PoGo players.). Those of us who want an EX raid invite are making plans on doing raids in other parts of the city - one part of the city in particular has learned how to trigger EX Raids on a regular basis. I'm probably going to keep an eye on that part of town, and go do raids with them when I get a chance.
But for those who don't particularly care about getting a Mewtwo (which mostly includes me; I'm only going to do raids in other part of town when it's extremely convenient for me), we don't consider it to be part of the game. It's a joke we tell each other at raids.
"Did anyone get an EX pass?"
"*everyone laughs*"
"So, this Kyogre has Blizzard..."
it's basically killed our raid community. we got an EX raid back in September when they were still in the Beta process. unfortunately i didn't get a pass. after that we had a ton of people raiding hoping to get another. well, now, if you use the tool to look for eligible gyms....our town has 0 (even though we have 3 gyms in parks, they don't show up as eligible). people just kind of quit raiding... or travel to bigger city 30 minutes away to raid. with no chance of getting an EX raid, it just feels like people gave up.
