Why today was Niantics best community day.

Gotta agree the game has become ridiculously easy lately, 2 manning legendary raids community days with ridiculous shiny rates, handing out exclusive moves repeatedly till they are meaningless... it was nice to see an event that actually rewarded players that prepared and planned ahead instead of the constant pandering to rural and casuals

Counterpoint: Why it was the worst Community Day

-It was boring and tedious
-Almost useless for rural players except for a Feebas pokedex entry if they needed one
-Huge drain on the Pokeball stash
-No movepool upgrade for Milotic

I do agree with the sentiment that rewards are more satisfying when you work for them. But todays event was all about wasting pokeballs and selling super incubators

I was greatly unenthused. Part of the issue is only being able to hold 3 time consuming quests at a time.

I got way more satisfaction out of trioing solar beam Groudon instead of hunting down yet another quest. I think wild spawns might have diluted it, but I also think 10 nice throws/5 great/3 excellent would have kept it moving faster.

I agree and disagree.

These tasks were absurd, but if they were standard CD odds, they'd be more satisfying to me. I did 43 tasks, walking around in about 6 inches of snow, and got no shiny. I feel like this was well intended, but the tasks being not hard, but simply time consuming, and the reduced odds made it less satisfying. Its like fighting certain opponents in video games that are absurdly powerful to the point where beating them is RNG, its not by skill but luck, and those are the least satisfying wins. I knew someone who did around 40 or these tasks, and got 7 shinies, I do not think this was a well executed community day.

It wasn't a challenge as much as it was artificially tedious. I don't mind not having obtained a shiny since I got two hundos and 3 98%ers, which are objectively way more valuable; but not even halfway through I was already bored out of my mind. There was no synergy between the tasks and it was basically a drain hole for my pokeballs. We did not work hard for our rewards, we just worked slower (what's so hard about landing great throws?). So no, it's a complete 'nope' for me. Hope this event failed hard and is never repeated again without some major adjustments. Like, a complete overhaul would be grasping at straws.
In fact, this format was nothing but a normal day of completing research tasks for free Pokemon but with a time limit and incredibly slow-to-complete tasks. I do that every day without having to stress about times and with the possibility of much better rewards. There was nothing satisfying for me about getting so many good Feebas because the road leading there wasn't just bumpy, it was unnecessarily curved and loopy.

2/10 too much water

Weather was too nasty today where I am - didn't go out. So can't say.

I do like the general idea of this kind of extra community day and i don't mind these shinies being a bit harder to obtain compared to the traditional CD --

But the rate was frustratingly low - might have just gone unlucky but i managed to complete 36 tasks which was quite a lot of work and i ended up with 0 shinies and 0 100%'s. The only good thing was 1x 98% but not getting any shiny after trying so hard for 3 hours in the cold was really frustrating and the result didn't feel rewarding at all. I will blame it mostly on being unlucky this time as i heard of others with a bit more shiny luck but yea not the best experience for me~

It was meh. After grinding for 3 straight hours I was zero for 20 on getting a shiny. It was good for getting a higher IV feebes but for the effort I was hoping for more.

Played about 30 minutes, left the egg tasks after 3 of the great throws, so I’ll check tomorrow what they are. I noticed way too early that this was a total waste of time if played CD style hardcore. Of course, no shiny, but how can I complain? Anyway, low profile event is better than no event.

I'm going to agree with what most others have said here. The one big upside to this event is that its potentially a new avenue for introducing shinies of Mons that wouldn't fit the community day mold. Apart from that, however, there were a lot of factors about this event that weren't all that well thought out.

• Shiny rates were too low, overall. Yes, I realize that some people think CD shinies are too abundant, but when you have a limited-time event, people who are actively participating and working hard at it shouldn't go home feeling entirely defeated. I know many people who completed between 50-70 tasks and didn't get a single shiny. I can appreciate the sentiment of having to work for something, but when there's a layer of RNG on top of that, it's a recipe for disappointment.

• The event didn't really reward "hard work," and it certainly didn't entice people to walk (if we're talking about truly trying to make the most of the event). To the first point, tedious work is not hard work, and tedious is exactly what this event was. To the second point, for players who truly wanted to get the most out of it, you drove around hitting clusters of stops and spawns. You didn't walk around. You got 3 tasks (usually the catch tasks), you caught as many things as fast as possible, claimed (and likely stacked) the encounters, and then moved to the next spot. That was the only way to "ideally" tackle this event.

• The tasks were not well-suited for a 3hr event. Outside of areas with large spawn clusters, the catch tasks were hardly ones that could be completed quickly. Given that the event had such a limited time window (and low shiny rates), the task requirements, should have been reduced so that they could be completed in a more timely manner.

• This event was not at all friendly to rural players. I realize that many aspects of this game are not. Unlike a CD event though, if you're someone who lives in an area with very few Pokestops, then you were completely out of luck for this event.

I sincerely hope that Niantic makes some QoL changes so that if/when they decide to do another event like this, it's a more enjoyable experience that isn't quite as tedious.

Totally agree.

People were complaining how hard it was and I asked them if they’d rather Niantic just automatically deposit a dozen shiny’s in their account so they wouldn’t be bothered to have to accomplish something.

I like the idea, I don't like the execution.
The hatching quest was indeed purely a way to sell more incubators. And if you were unlucky, you had to walk multiple kms for the next hatch and there's no way to dump your eggs.
Might have been fine and all if only the shiny rates were slightly higher. Finished twenty quests by walking in the cold for three hours, not a single shiny.
This wasn't worth the effort.

It was a different CD, I give them that. It did make you move around in that your odds of getting a shiny depended on how many unique stops you spun.

After reading here (from the European reports) that the shiny odds weren't that boosted and that shinies weren't locked into stops (like with the squirtle day), which made quest maps unhelpful, I decided to only spend a minimal amount of effort and just do the quests I spun on the way for a haircut and back. Did 9 in all, no shinies, no good feebas, but no regrets. Saved one to open today to complete weekly research (and also in a hope to see that there was a glitch found to ensure a shiny reported here).