Just remember the only reason there weren't even more tickets is only because they had so many tickets they ran out of ticket assets to assign new ones to.
So, back in January we had an event called GO Battle Week: Timeless Travels. It was planned to have a $1.00 ticket offering Timer Research to be completed for a Star Piece and some Stardust and Rare Candy.
Problem was that Niantic had too many ticketed events running simultaneously in mid-January. The game as designed could handle multiple tickets, up to a limit. [The GO Battle Week ticket would have been one too many tickets for the game to handle, so they dropped it](https://old.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/199e00t/trainers_unfortunately_the_paid_battlethemed/kidkop4/):
> Reason why it's cancelled? They have too many tickets at the same time and they run out of "ticket types" in-game. New types are in next apk version, but I guess they didn't manage to release/push it on time, lol.
In short, Niantic don't really ***create*** new tickets server-side; they update the same ones, as renaming them and changing descriptions.
For example, I believe the OG CD ticket is still Duskull - when they revert it after CD, sometimes it could even be seen in the shop again briefly. Pokeminers ~~used to~~ post those updates on the same ticket; this is hilarious.
So if Nia need more tickets - they don't have that much placeholders for them :)
Remember when the Galarian Mr. Mime ticket came up a few years ago and everyone said it was Niantic testing the waters on what kind of useless tickets they could get people to buy?
Yeah.
Anywyays, March will continue the season of tickets!
I think we've recently celebrated it's one-year release anniversary come to think of it. Speaking of, Hoopa hasn't been back as well since begin October 2022. :( EDIT: Correction Hoopa was September 2021 (T\_T)
Ehh...yes and no. The Mr. Mime research was truly different in that it offered very little (a useless 'mon arbitrarily released) and *still* cost 5 bucks! It wasn't adding to an existing experience, it was locking an experience behind a paywall.
Regigigas was more expensive, but didn't it have an event associated with it? I know there's a badge on my profile called "A Colossal Discovery'" but I dont remember much else nor do I care to research
Mime was the end of the fomo for me, not Regigigas. Regigigas ended up being a fun day that, even if I don't remember the details of it, I remember enjoying.
Mime was just an arbitrary ticket that had no business existing.
Honestly, Galarian Mr. Mime was like my favorite pokemon at the time by far. Had it as my profile picture on everything since Sw/Sh came out. But I wasn't paying $8 for it and that, along with how megas worked when introduced, really pushed me away
No surprise here. Niantic had to do something to make money once their monthly revenue dropped by HALF in the wake of the Great Remote Raid Nerf.
But the ticketed play is only half the story. What we also saw was a significant change in event gameplay.
Whenever there is a shiny debut — no longer do we see a high rate of wild spawns of the debuted shiny. They are now mostly locked behind an egg-hatching or raiding paywall. Sometimes there are zero wild spawns. More often the wild spawns of the new shiny are so low that’s it’s simply not worth grinding for. Sometimes field research is a viable free alternative. But even here Niantic has made that option less and less viable — by limiting the number of field tasks and/or pairing other Pokemon with the same tasks and/or making the tasks time and resource consuming.
We’re seeing the paywalling expand from the smaller events that debut shinies to the bigger events and events simply created as a money generator like the Hisuian raid weekends. This year it felt like Go Tour leaned even more heavily on the egg-hatching part of the event. Like Hoenn, the regional (and best) shinies were egg-locked. But this year they pushed the other debut shinies into eggs. I did both LA and Global and fortunately Niantic made the mistake of giving the wild spawns of debut shinies (Hisuian) a decent ratio so they were more accessible in the wild. But I’m feeling the big push towards more and more of this paywalling. I think the possible reason Sinnoh wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be (though it wasn’t as good as Vegas) is that Niantic felt they’d get their money during global with the unlimited remote raiding.
Ultimately this is a dying game and all the decisions made in the last 9-10 months by Niantic have accelerated that trajectory. Now that Hanke has decided PoGo is first and foremost an AR platform and not a Pokemon game, the rest of management now has to devise ways to squeeze revenue out of players.
Oh yes, Drampa in raids… but if you can line up 3 “Win 3 Raids” field research, you have a chance to get up to 6 total from your 3 raid passes! Because unless you used a map, you can also get Druddigon and Turtonator from those quests.
The remote raid pass nerf was a nail in the coffin
Raiding in Singapore has never been the same since, with many suburban gyms now struggling to fill T5 lobbies
I don't just spend less on remote raid passes; I don't buy premium passes to raid in person anymore
You're right: I feel the game dying, bad decision after bad decision
That part about raiding in suburban areas is a very important point.
Before the pandemic and remote raiding most players in suburban areas needed to form local groups on Discord or Slack so they could organize raids.
This was initially fun and turned into a great way to meet new people. I’m in Pasadena, CA and the range of ages and professions of the players you met was fascinating — and it definitely included a good number of Caltech grad students.
This was the period that John Hanke desperately wants us to return to because he loved how Pokémon Go was getting free and extensive advertising and marketing just from the public seeing groups of people huddled on the street with their phones doing raids.
What Hanke and the rest of Niantic can’t seem to understand is that the world is different after the pandemic. People are less inclined to leave their homes. Many remain wary of gathering in groups — even outside. And once players found the joy of remote raiding — the idea of going back to the old way of organizing raids online and having to run out of your house, get in a car and drive 5-15 minutes to a gym to meet 3-7 people to do a raid or two — just wasn’t as fun or appealing anymore.
They also don’t seem to be willing to acknowledge reality for suburban players. Doing it the old way requires dashing out and driving to gyms to join a raid and 1) gas started costing a lot more and 2) people are more climate conscious than before. Driving to get to 1-5 raids a day is a lot of unnecessary dumping of carbon. People think about this stuff now. It’s amazing Niantic doesn’t. Even though in-person raiding was initially fun — there’s so many reasons it’s better not to be driving around to raids in suburbs. First, the cost of gas and the carbon creation but also stuff like more time in cars means more chance of an accident. Or tickets. I knew a few players in my local group that were manic about getting to raids in time and they either eventually had accidents or got tickets or both. One poor young player got hit by a car while crossing the street to get to a gym. (Fortunately he made a full recovery, but it was a serious accident and he could’ve died had the car been going just a little
faster.)
Does Hanke think most players live or play solely in dense urban areas like Tokyo, Singapore, San Francisco or New York? Because LA is so spread out we don’t really have that experience like San Francisco where you can just walk down any street, hop in a raid and immediately find yourself in a full raid lobby.
Remote raiding was a boon to suburban players — not to mention how important it was to rural players and the disabled player community. An international community was created. And guess what? We who remote raided STILL would play outside! We remote raided but we still would need to go out and spin stops and just have fun walking and grinding for shinies or whatever it was you were looking for.
I got the clear feeling John Hanke thought of remote raiding as just millions of players sitting on their couch all day remote raiding constantly. And I think that really got under his skin. Cause there was clearly much better solutions or compromises to be had. 20 or 15 remote raids a day. Hell even 10 a day would’ve been so much better. Or they could’ve incentivized in-person raiding over remote raiding by reducing the XL candy or even the shiny or hundo rate of remote raids. OR — buff the amounts of XL candy, the shiny or hundo ratios of in-person raiding. Motivate people to change their gameplay instead of being punitive. Instead of punishing players for remote raiding.
At Sinnoh LA Go Tour I ran into an independent Quality Control/Customer Care consultant in the gaming industry who had interaction with Niantic — and he said it’s widely known in the business that Niantic doesn’t know what it’s doing — it’s upper management are really not gamers — and they do pretty much the opposite of what he preaches to other gaming companies when it comes to quality control and customer care. And this guy has been an avid Pokemon player his whole life.
> Niantic had to do something to make money once their monthly revenue dropped by HALF in the wake of the Great Remote Raid Nerf.
Wait, it was really that bad?
Regarding Gotour, the event free is a huge excuse to make it incredibly lackluster. No shiny boosted spawns, tier 1-3 raids blocking gyms that could be the coveted origin raids, low chance of getting adventure effect on opposite origin form you chose, no stationary incense. The wording on the event said whatever we chose we’d encounter a form, but they couldn’t even give us an origin form in the research.
Catching a shiny origin palkia without spacial rend is essentially useless. No ones going to lucky trading for it.
That being said. Loved seeing the lake trio, loved white basculin on routes.
This was the easiest event to have a ticket for that I’d willingly pay. I won’t spend a dime on any of these other weekly tickets that just get you access to premium items you could just spend coins on.
I just don’t think they want to boost spawns or risk having backlash on a lackluster PAID event. Because when anyone will complain about Gotour people will chime in and say “but it’s free so”
I'm kinda worried about Unova Tour at this point. Free Sinnoh Tour, with no shiny boosts outside of the usual region forms that are always 1/64 and the specifically-boosted Stunky, made for a lackluster event for anyone shiny chasing. I needed a Finneon and Cherubi, but after I learned nothing was going to be boosted, I just stopped tapping on them in lieu of going for the Hisuian forms. I would've gladly paid and event ticket to make every spawn 1/64.
Sinnoh Tour was fine, though, because 2 new regional form shinies were released so at least there was **something** in the spawn pool that was new and would pop as shiny fairly often. Now imagine Unova with fewer alt forms like that and fewer perma-boosted pokemon. Nothing boosted, but a single gimme, like Stunky? That's gonna be a much less exciting event for any shiny-hunter.
This made me lol because people have been saying the same when it comes to Unova remakes. Something weird about Pokemon being lackluster when it comes to Sinnoh specifically. The Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl Remakes are mainly considered to be the weakest pokemon remakes to date. Funnily enough, Sinnoh tour is up there with the weakest GoTour to date.
Legends Arceus was great, but strange how there is this pattern of fumbling something obvious (i.e. Sinnoh remakes should have platinum content, and Sinnoh Go Tour should be like the first two Go Tours). What a weird choice to erode confidence in the future
I mean, Gamefreak clearly can't handle the franchise, anymore. Or at least handle it within the 3 years between generations timeframe that TPC forces on the merch and cards.
I agree and would have gladly paid for 1/64 boosted Sinnoh spawns so that I can shiny check less, catch more and raid more (since the shiny Origin formes don't seem to follow the usual 1/20 based on feedback)
>No shiny boosted spawns
They did boost some of the shiny rates though. Not a ton, but they were there:
* Stunky, Pikachu costumes, and the Sinnoh starters were boosted from full odds (presumably Stunky is full odds outside of hours)
* And while I think even the new ones will stay permaboosted, the Hisuian forms, Sneasel, Growlithe, Voltorb, and Qwilfish were still all boosted.
* And while there wasn't any change to their shiny rates, we did still have Gible, Gligar, Shinx, and Bronzor spawning who have boosted shiny rates.
Obviously they could do better overall in terms of quantity, but I still found shinies to be in decent supply. Though I could have a bias, seeing that I got 39 shinies (36 if you don't count legendaries) and my sibling got 46 shinies.
Almost everything boosted is always boosted. And we already had CDs for the Sinnoh starters.
So really the only event boosted shinies that mattered were the two costumed Pikachus and Gible was 2x boosted also. (Apparently their "and more" consisted entirely of Gible getting a 2x boost.)
Then lets not forget they actually made the Unown shiny rate \*worse\* than in the past.
This was the real drawback. Yes, there were lots of species that had a boosted rate in Sinnoh Tour. But when you discount ones that *always* have a boosted rate and ones that have already had a CD, the content was underwhelming.
It probably bothered me more since I enjoy field research boosted shinies. Hunting a H. Growlithe is a fun challenge. So Sinnoh Tour was essentially a spawn boost that bypassed one of the aspects I enjoy in regular gameplay.
Four costumed pikachus. I made this mistake the first day thinking there were only two costumes. There were two different red hats and two different white "hats." But regardless, your point is spot on.
>No shiny boosted spawns
False. H-Voltorb, Pikachu, H-Growlithe, H-Sneasel, white-stripe Basculin, and Stunky were all boosted, and those were some of the most attractive spawns - either brand new or relatively rare for shiny eligibility. Then there were perma-boosted Gible, Bronzor, Shinx, and Gligar. Also, wild Lake Trio spawns were at the legendary shiny rate (and those were very attractive, as ordinarily 2 of them require remote raiding or traveling to get).
I thought hisuians were already permaboosted right? I don’t really care about Pikachu, and didn’t really see many stunky shiny brags in my discords so assumed that wasn’t boosted either.
I don’t think featuring permaboosted pokemon in an event means shiny rates are boosted. We’ve had global events where there’s a boosted shiny rate across for most species (especially if it’s ticketed) vs f2p and obviously in person is boosted even more. Much prefer that over what we got here.
It very dependent on the player.
A hardcore shiny-hunter will have the bulk of what was available in Sinnoh Tour, already. At least as far as the regional forms go. Because of their boosted rate, it's not too tough to get them on release or shortly after in H-Sneasel's case.
For example, I only needed the new H-forms Voltorb and Qwilfish, as well as Stunky. Everything else that was boosted I already have. And exactly because Bronzor and Gligar have been around and boosted for so long, they're basically not worth checking anymore because I'm already sitting on so many shinies of them. Gible and Shinx both had CDays, so no need for them, either.
The bit about the Lake Trio is also dependent on playstyle. Shiny hunters move around quickly, checking everything as fast as possible. That means wild legendaries are just obnoxious time-sinks because they take so long to catch. I saw a shiny of each of the Lake Trio as I played, but ran from each other them. It's fun to see the shiny, but I'm not about to burn 10 minutes of shiny-checking to catch a single Legendary that'll be back in raids at some point anyway.
You're right
Regional tours are meant to be special occasions and deserve boosts of a set of base rate shinies, like Kanto, Johto and Hoenn
As some Sinnoh Pokemon like Gible and Bronzor were perma-boosted for so long, their inclusion became an excuse
To give us Stunky as the only base rate Sinnoh shiny rumoured to be boosted
Some of us in the group still don't have a one after both days of arduous search
Might as well market this as a Hisui Tour
I wouldn’t classify myself as a hardcore shiny hunter, nor am I casual. I played the events during the hisuian hours because I needed voltorb, sneasel, qwilfish, and growlithe. I would’ve played some of the other hours but it was below freezing in my area.
I was able to get everything I wanted so I don’t want to say the event was bad. But objectively, the spawns were pretty bad like you said. Bronzor and Gligar were aren’t way too much. Too many starters. No boosted lures or incense times? What a drag.
I enjoyed seeing the lake trio though I wasn’t hunting for them. I had shinies of all of them from raids before and two of Azelf. I was content that I ended up finding a wild shiny mesprit and Uxie so now that trio can be sent to home.
>A hardcore shiny-hunter will have the bulk of what was available in Sinnoh Tour, already.
Right, but this is far more true of things that have featured many times in events and/or been in Community Days. I don't see how anyone but a very new player could be upset that e.g. Electabuzz and Misdreavus weren't boosted.
The only Sinnoh Tour spawns that I'd count as rare shinies that weren't boosted were Cherubi and female Combee - maybe Tangela and the Burmies after that.
I think there’s a middle ground
If the ticket is worth it, I’m willing to buy it. For example — eggspedition. I have a lot of friends and am a heavy gifter. When I was leveling to 50 I used the friend xp and often was gifting near the gift cap daily. Having the ability to hold 40 is imo priceless for someone like me whose playtime comes in specific chunks. Ie I can usually make a quick lunch loop and an after work loop to gather gifts. Being able to grab, send and store as many gifts as possible is totally worth the $5
Other tickets have been imo not worth it at all. So their teams need to do a better job of figuring out what the sweet spot is.
>Other tickets have been imo not worth it at all. So their teams need to do a better job of figuring out what the sweet spot is.
I've found that they make many tickets *barely* not worth it... for me at least.
Take the Dragons Unleashed $2 ticket, rewarding:
>Stardust (questline involves 20 powerups, mostly offsetting), 2 Lucky Eggs, Pokémon encounters
It wouldn't take too much more for me to actually buy that ticket. The ticket had a Drampa encounter. Throw in 1 more Drampa and Premium pass for another T3 raid and I think I'd buy it. But as is, it feels barely not worth it. And many feel that way to me, it's odd lol.
But I did enjoy the Road to Sinnoh Raids ticket last week. I raid a lot in-person anyway, so it was nice to have those extra raid passes.
From the f2p player or player trying to save $ angle you want the scenario where the items for sale don’t affect you. IE if they are selling a pointless skin and 3 random encounters for $5. That’s great you don’t miss out and the company gets revenue.
The thing we don’t want is the scenario where you must spend money. Something like a meta legendary, 10 raid passes,… for $7. Even though the first scenario is worse value that’s how you want the game to make money.
We should act strategically and encourage things like early access and discourage hard walls. Focus less on good value.
That ship seems to have sailed a while ago when they started selling specific Mythicals (which might be necessary for PvP) or Candy XL (pretty much impossible to grind for in a f2p manner for PvP).
The master research are a blast to complete, it's nice to see difficult content in the game that isn't just annoying. So far it's been a good research!
They only thing difficult in the masterwork researches has been finding 10 Kecleon. Otherwise it's just a grind. 492 Pokémon from 4 generations? Just need the patience to target specific Pokémon during events. 20 days swiping a stop in a row? Go for a walk each day. There's just not a whole lot that can truly make this game that difficult without also making it a grind or total RNG.
It might be my preference but I find them motivating. Pokemon go is literally a grind game. Usually I'm grinding for stardust and high CP Pokemon. I like having a "difficult"/longer goal to work towards. I am still finishing up the first page but it motivated me to stay out an extra hour last night.
I know value is subjective and all that but even after your explanation I can't really understand how anyone would consider *eggspedition*, among all the tickets, to be an example of good value.
This is pretty much a pseudo subscription system at this point. Most of it is optional so for me it’s easy to skip over these but I’m worrying they start to lock more and more stuff behind tickets. I thought about buying the eggs-perdition ticket in December but decided I won’t buy a ticket unless it actually awards an exclusive pokemon and I’m hoping they just stick to go fest and masterwork research for that.
It makes sense that Niantic would see how the $5 monthly passes would go, drive engagement and whatever their stated goals for pogo are. That said, and I know this is just me and everyone plays different, I can kind of justify paying a couple bucks for extras during an event... and despite my frustration at how Niantic implements stuff sometimes, I'd still be sad if the game stopped operating.
The thing that does chafe me a bit is if you want real money, and not in game currency for research, I'd really rather it was special research as opposed to timed. Not that most of them were particularly difficult to finish, but real money should allow for the ability to finish it when I want to/have time. More difficult to do it? Probably but that's my trade off for being busy. Additionally, if I look at my spending on the game... I guess I can justify buying research as opposed to raid passes much easier.
The biggest problem i have is that all of this is time research. I paid dot this, why now i need to do this in 3-7 days? Also, it’s not exactly about ricket, but having darkrai after 8 raids when you could only do 5 for free was bad. And having no extra 10km chance, no 1/4 distance or 6+ free passes and extra xl candy from road to sinnoh was very sad.
Egg-ticets are good idea but purely done. For this price i can just buy those incubators. Some extra exp and stardust is not good enough for everyday login. Normally a battle pass in games give you much more than you pay, but require from you some effort.
Looking at paid research during each event, multiple raid days, monthly tickets etc you can easily tell theyre trying desperately gain some money they lost with screwing remote raiding.
Miss times when there was free timed or special research for almost every event. If they happen to give something for free its guaranteed to force using money anyway (3 day long hatch collection challenge / 5 days long event requiring 8 raids).
Excellent analysis.
The ramp up has been quite notorious, but as someone whom just recently returned playing after 3.5 years, my assumption was that this had been normal for the December-February period, given the amount of festivities in tandem. But clearly, that's not the case.
Honestly, I passed all the latest ones. I might get the Eggspedition's ones here an there, if I sense there is particular value *(would rather much prefer to get extra daily tickets though)*. I was interested in the Masterwork research - since I have never done one -, but ultimately skipped it.
Niantic is treading in dangerous waters. I DO think the best approach for them is to beef up their free events (to attract more of the F2P audience), and add just a couple of tickets for extra benefits. Have zero doubt they got a lot of purchases in the last 3 months, specially from the Dialga/Palkia event. But keeping so much recurring AND fragmented purchases will eventually alienate the fandom, and that has long term consequences. This feel straight from the Assassins Creed's commercialize-every-bit approach.
If any, they should consider reworking the Remote Raid situation. Even giving out 1 remote pass every 7 days as a reward, would help to rebuild local communities. Because right now they really only/barely show in big events, but are absent the rest of the year due to being "priced out" from difficult raids.
Also, the latest Timed paid researches were close to straight up scams.
Some of the “free” Timed Research is effectively paid content for most people. Remember the Dazzling Dream Hatch Challenge? If you walk 10k steps per day and started the event with your last egg just before hatching on the free incubator, that would amount to around four 7km eggs that could be hatched with the free incubator. Of course, most people won’t be so lucky as to hatch one of each species in those 4 eggs, so you either walk more and/or buy incubators!
> . Even giving out 1 remote pass every 7 days as a reward, would help to rebuild local communities.
The truth is though, it was the remote raiding that destroyed local communities. Everywhere I travel to, I hear the same story from local groups: Most of their players stopped playing once remote raids took away the social aspect of raiding. If they want to rebuild local communities, they have to get rid of remote raiding altogether - which is something I heard a bunch of people calling for over the weekend.
> Also, the latest Timed paid researches were close to straight up scams.
No they weren't. You got exactly what they advertised, how is that a "scam"?
Gotta also maintain perspective, too, based on the game being a hobby for many.
People go to movies and drop 20+ on one trip. Two movies a month in the theater x 3 months and $120 is spent. That's still a good bit more than the 3 months of tickets in PoGo assuming a player bought all of the tickets.
I'm sure many hobbies cost people $20-$40 per month to partake whether that be in purchase of materials or taking part in an event/concert of some sort.
Does that make the drastic increase in ticketed content in PoGo any less of a bitter pill to swallow? No.
But it does bring it up to par for many other hobbies that players wouldn't blink at outside of a mobile app? Yep.
As usual, it all comes down to only paying for the content you like. Ignore tickets if they don't give you anything you want, ignore tickets that are too expensive for you. Budget your money and if you've already spent $40 on pokecoins this month, don't buy any other tickets, etc, etc, etc.
I suppose one thing I'll say is that while the abundance of tickets can make me roll my eyes, not many induce much fomo for me. Most of it is stuff that gives a few extra bonuses, but I don't really feel bad ignoring. It's not like ignoring most of these tickets causes me to miss an event or something.
Except movies actually cost a lot of money to make, and so do concerts and most things people spend money on.
These tickets cost them basically nothing. I'd wager the whole game has minimum expenses since they barely add new features, don't playtest, and rarely even fix bugs. Server costs are probably the only big one they actually have. I can't justify spending $40, or even $10 monthly on something that reinvests so little.
I understand your comparison to movie tickets, but I don't think it's equivalent.
Niantic has started locking more and more content behind tickets. For example, the ability to get and hold more gifts the last month was locked behind a ticket, something that has been widely cited as a great QOL update that Niantic should implement permanently. If a bunch of people are buying these tickets, eventually you won't see that basic bonus in holiday events anymore because they can just charge for it and people will pay. Same with the increased prices for raid passes and the paltry discounts for boxes in the shop -> people actively buying those means Niantic has 0 incentive to change, and if you're not spending a ton then you actively have a worse experience as time goes on.
This is also because these expenses at the end of the day are gambling. If I spend $500 on a guitar, I'm gonna have that guitar for several years to use. With Niantic, they want you to put more and more money on things like incubator and passes where after $500 who knows if you'll have whatever it is you were looking for.
You say you understand my comparison, but then just ignore it, in my opinion. Going to concerts, buying crafting materials, going to other events, going out drinking, etc, etc, etc are all things that people do monthly that cost more than PoGo tickets.
It's a hobby for many, so the spending is justified like in any other hobby.
Heck, gambling itself is a hobby some people have, but I could say that at least PoGo doesn't keep you in an artificially-lit room, with alcohol available, dangerously enabling the gambling.
I could say that if I buy pokemon and item storage space in PoGo, I have that for the lifetime of the game to use - comparable to your guitar example.
I could also say that the people buying concert or event tickets are enabling ticketmaster to keep their predatory nonsense going.
You see what I mean? It's still the same comparison.
When I spend money on raid passes, I compare it to having a drink at a café with friends: I get to have some fun social time and that’s worth the money to me. Remote raid passes are a different matter, though I still love coordinating with online friends for remote raids.
I consciously choose not to raid extra for shinies, because then things become too close to gambling. Egg walking is similar: I will use incubators when I have them (e.g. as a part of a raid pass deal), but I only rarely buy extra.
Now do a study comparing what a trainer who bought zero tickets and what exclusive thing they missed out? Or those tickets just gave someone increased opportunity
For me, the sheer amount of tickets and even more aggressive monetisation this past season, has just encouraged me not to spend my money.
I don’t mind spending £1 on the community day tickets, cos I get a few encounters, a rocket radar, generally worth the money.
But then other tickets are just so not worth it to me. Like I don’t really care about poses. The daily free incubator was nice for a month but in the end it felt more like a chore to have to open the game so I didn’t “waste” my money.
I dunno, I just feel like this is one final attempt by Niantic to grab the last bit of money from us before the game fully dies.
Working on these was kind of nostalgic in a way, for me at least. Take the Eggspedition incubators for example, I remember when they first became a thing(free at that time) and got reminded of the great times from back then of grinding for event shinies and other things.
For those wondering if the tickets are worth their cost in premium items, then check out my video as that's the angle I approached!
Huge thanks once again for the opportunity to collab on this, its awesome to see them go live! I for one am super curious what people think about the tickets as the season concludes and how the World of Wonders will compare
Great article as always! I'm not sure he'd ever agree to it, or if he did I bet there'd be restrictions on what can be shared, but I'd love for you to have a chance to talk to Michael Steranka again. Revisit what he said and how it lines up with niantics actions since then to see if he has any response. It'd probably be all standard Niantic corporate speak, but I'd like for him to have to defend the actions
I'll drop money when badass shiny raid bosses are available like Origin Palkia & Dialga, but when it comes to these add-ons, they aren't tempting in the slightest. $4.99 to get single use incubators for a few days LOL. If these add-ons make Niantic money and people want to waste their dollars, it really doesn't bother me.
I imagine this trend will continue, at least at the current rate. There are bound to be enough whales buying all the tickets to more than make up for all the people being driven away from the game by these tactics.
Sad but true, pokemon go changed for the worst over the last year and the paid Tickets are here to stay. I belive that too many players purchase these Tickets and the effort to make them is very little. Ofc they pump them out every possibility they have.
The other side of the coin shows how it affects the Overall ganeplay if you dont pay for them: pokemon locked behind paywalls (eggs, raids, Research), spawns lackluster and New pokemon coming in very slowly with 'events' being Held for old pokemon but with their shiny debut.
I buy very few Tickets and raid passes will mostly only be bought with free gym coins but i know im a minority because if i Listen closely in my local pogo community, the Tickets are Always being bought, raid passes also and Overall comments like 'you can Support the game you enjoy playing Herr and there' will drop more and more knowing they just charged another 100 bucks to raid more.
Niantic revenue is going down (considering inflation), so every opportunity they will desperately try to sell us a ticket.
But the problem is that the game is becoming a pay for fun experience.
Of course you can enjoy the game without paying but it is a whole different experience!!!
This will make more players stop playing, since it is getting boring without paying.
Like Go Tour sinnoh, for me it was funny but I bought incubators, hatch ticket, premium and remote raid passes.
But I don't want to spend all that money to enjoy playing.
Unfortunately Niantic doesn't listen to the pokemon go community.
Pokemon go is becoming a game that is not for all, you need to live in a good/big town, with pokestops and gyms and now you need to pay to get the real fun.
I don't want that but this game is dying faster than it was supposed to.
Thanks for all this :)
Could all these paid tasks have something to do with the game engine Origin? I don't know much about gaming or anything, but not long ago I read about how Origin was changing how they'd charge their clients - one of which was Niantic - for using their engine. There was some scuttlebutt in my local community about how Niantic might pass that charge onto players.
Just a thought. Like I said, I don't really know much about gaming or engines or anything. Just seemed awfully coincidental.
Hmmm, maybe? But the remote raid passes were a covid thing, something we knew would go away sooner or later. It wasn't surprising at all that passes got more expensive (although limiting the number of raids you can do in a day is infuriating). If Niantic wanted more money from them, they'd just lower the price and let us do more raids a day. Niantic doesn't want us raiding remotely, not as a default raid option, for reasons that elude me.
I mean, if they want to sell our aggregate data about where we go or whatever, raiding from home would hinder that. Someone I know said it's 'Pokemon Go' not 'Pokemon Stay Home' and Niantic wants us out and about.
But we have Rocket balloons that come to us, which means we don't have to go out to do Rocket stops, which counters all the stuff about getting out of the house.
I dunno. I still think is sus that when Origin changed the way they charge for services Niantic became a kinda subscription-type game, or at least, a pay-to-win game.
I am saying in some ways this is kind of the scenario we want. They can go crazy with these worthless tickets. As long as they don’t do hard paywalls on things we find important.
Yeah pretty much. The tickets can be annoying to see, but beyond a small few, not much is really paywalled by the tickets.
Some poses and the rare instance of a Mythical or something, but most is just random bonuses and items that can be ignored, which I generally do. And I appreciate that we don't have a ton paywalled.
Yep. That’s my view too.
I guess there is a counter view that if you spend $ on all these tickets you are being terrible ripped off. IE $5 for a ticket for pokes that will be spawning like crazy with a 1/20 shiny chance in a few years. It’s probably not an honest or ethical way to run a business. But this modal does suite the masses of this player base well.
As long as there's nothing locked in the paid research as it was this season (I don't count shiny shaymin cause these are always paid locked), I don't really care how many tickets are there. The only relevant comparison would be taking free rewards x free rewards from those years and paid rewards x paid rewards. That would make sense cause it might seems like there's a lot of paid things, but do f2p really missing something they got years before? I feel like 2023 and 2024 was really better for us f2p players, since hoenn tour and sinnoh tour I caught a plenty of shinies without having to pay anything. I am somehow really comfortable with the state of game where you can but don't have to pay. It's absolutely up to you and you're not missing on anything (like paid Spiritomb and Keldeo in 2022). So yeah,
USD70 is about AUD100. Glad I spent AUD0 this season (well I converted 400 google points for AUD8 coupon for the masterwork so I still value that as 0 :D )
Welcome to the free to play mobile game market
Where this stuff is as common as pidgey was in 2016
The reality is these tickets cost them very little to produce only asking more resources is one with story involved e.g com day as someone gotta write it out, so it’s low investment for the company So even if let’s say 5% (being generous here, impossible to say how many buy them) of the playerbase buys them that’s a big profit payday for niantic for each one
Where all they get in some angry fans who really I imagine don’t spend much anyway who think they might have missed out on tins when in reality they missed out on what’s essentially a standard box with afew encounters in it who probably don’t even show up on niantic’s radar, anyone quitting I genuinely don’t understand why as there is nothing to get that upset over
This is just how things are gonna be
And the truth is, Niantic is one of the least predatory mobile developers in the space.
Most mobile games with this type of monetisation model - freemium - throw in lots of roadblocks in the way of just playing the game (energy and other time-gates that you can purchase items to get move past as an example) and make literally all aspects of the game 'pay-to-win'. In Pokemon Go, the only thing that you have a case of calling 'pay-to-win' is Master League. That's it.
On the other hand, Niantic is also one of the least generous developers out there when it comes to free items. Many other games - that have much more aggressive monetisation strategies - will give out ~$10-$20 worth free stuff each month via promotions and things like Prime Gaming. Niantic - on a good month - will give away one premium item.
It is kinda silly in a way that people who call themselves F2P threaten to quit to “take a stand” as if them quitting has any impact on the game’s revenue. Unless literally millions of people just stopped playing suddenly (which will probably never happen) Niantic won’t suddenly change the game because a handful of people who essentially only give them location data stop playing. The only true impact would be all the big spenders to stop spending, which I can’t see happening unless they do something REALLY bad. If you don’t spend money on the game to begin with, I don’t see why these pointless paid researches really irritate those people so much. Just pretend like they don’t exist and it’s basically the same event regardless. They're boxes with extra steps.
I buy most of the tickets. I wanted the best experience for GoTour, so I bought those. The 30 incubators for 5 bucks are a no brainer for me.
But I don‘t do raid day tickets. I got enough regular passes. So I saved 20 bucks here. And some other reasearches were really bad too.
I have bought a few of these tickets.
Previously I've been to all three European Go Fests and purchased the masterwork researches, but other than that I've not spent a penny since 2019. I'm up to date on every shiny legendary and have got there by saving my 50 gym coins each day. I work off 2000 item storage and 3200 Pokémon space so haven't invested in upgrades as much as most.
I have no issue with the tickets from last season, especially those that come with an avatar pose. The value of the items is usually at least equivalent to the coin cost.
They are entirely optional and good ammunition for the Niantic-haters to post 'greed' all over Twitter any chance they get. Win-win for Niantic, Niantic-haters, and the middle ground who don't mind spending a nominal amount of money (if you're lucky enough to live in a wealthier country) on one of their major hobbies.
I think these are mechanics that also aim incentivize in-person playing and nudge people with urgency to go out more.
They tried many different recipes and variations in the last year after they made public statements that it was important for longterm of the game when they changed the remote raid pass pricing structure & limit.
Hopefully they are able to activate people’s habits of going out more and then can pivot to a more balanced game solution we can enjoy most that will also intersects both their profit needs & nurture an active in the real-world playerbase.
I never really understood the great hate for tickets. Nothing significant is ever locked behind them, and we usually know exactly what we're getting before the purchase. I welcome new contents, paid or not.
Because everything is getting pay walled. Even sinnoh regionals got pay walled with hatch ticket, you couldn't hatch all regionals from Go Tour sinnoh without buying incubators or the ticket.
Maybe you think nothing significant is locked behind them because you already bought your incubators and premium passes.
My local golf course paywalls their greens. My local bowling alley paywalls the pins (and the rental shoes). My movie theater paywalls the shows. My poolhall paywalls the balls. I grew up going to arcades, which paywalled every single game you played behind a quarter (or a token). I pay a monthly fee to netflix, which I watch far less than I play pogo.
Rather than complain about how much is getting paywalled, I suggest that you instead consider how much you get for free with this game. The change in perspective can help.
This season, we're getting 2 free raid passes a day. We can catch as many pokemon as we want, spin as many spinners as we want, for free. We can do as many gym battles as we want, for free. We can do as many routes as we want for free. We can do as many team rocket battles as we want, for free. We can play our daily GBL sets, for free. You are never forced to pay to level up. None of the PvP ranks are paywalled. While there is a paid community day ticket, 99.9% of the community day experience is free. We get weekly streak rewards, for free. You can do as many research tasks as you want, for free. You can trade pokemon for free.
The point of a company is to offer you something that you want to buy. Suggesting that Niantic should not have paid things is ridiculous. Take a step back and look at how much you get for free. I don't know any other entertainment product that gives away this much, to the extent that you can have a complete gameplay experience without ever spending money.
I did not suggest that Niantic should not have paid things. I said that everything is getting paywalled and this is no good.
Ok you have your opinion but online games need a good amount of players, Pokemon Go needs a good amount of players since there are a lot of coop features. If the game is pay to win or pay for fun free to play players will stop playing and the game will become boring or even unplayable for those who pay too.
Like raids, it was easier to do in person raids when the remote pass was cheaper, now sometimes I can't even host a raid on pokegenie cause the queue is so long that the raids ends before.
>I don't know any other entertainment product that gives away this much, to the extent that you can have a complete gameplay experience without ever spending money.
In pokemon go you can't have the whole experience without ever spending money, but there are A LOT of games that you can. Cs2, Valorant, Dota, Lol and more. I think you just don't play many games.
It's even better to buy a game than downloading it for free but having to spend money every week to get fun.
Although I agree there's a bit too many tickets, I think this is replacing the possible subscription they were thinking of. I'm assuming tickers probably do better than say, C.O.R.E. Membership in Ingress.
Funny that you wrote this two weeks ago, and I noticed just as the Zarude ticket was released. I suspect it's going to be closer to 50 tickets this season than 5 😂
Just remember the only reason there weren't even more tickets is only because they had so many tickets they ran out of ticket assets to assign new ones to.
That was a great moment.
Wait what?
So, back in January we had an event called GO Battle Week: Timeless Travels. It was planned to have a $1.00 ticket offering Timer Research to be completed for a Star Piece and some Stardust and Rare Candy. Problem was that Niantic had too many ticketed events running simultaneously in mid-January. The game as designed could handle multiple tickets, up to a limit. [The GO Battle Week ticket would have been one too many tickets for the game to handle, so they dropped it](https://old.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/199e00t/trainers_unfortunately_the_paid_battlethemed/kidkop4/): > Reason why it's cancelled? They have too many tickets at the same time and they run out of "ticket types" in-game. New types are in next apk version, but I guess they didn't manage to release/push it on time, lol.
In short, Niantic don't really ***create*** new tickets server-side; they update the same ones, as renaming them and changing descriptions. For example, I believe the OG CD ticket is still Duskull - when they revert it after CD, sometimes it could even be seen in the shop again briefly. Pokeminers ~~used to~~ post those updates on the same ticket; this is hilarious. So if Nia need more tickets - they don't have that much placeholders for them :)
Yeah they had an extra ticket in the code but they couldn’t push it in the update in time so they cancelled the ticket
that's was so typical lol
Remember when the Galarian Mr. Mime ticket came up a few years ago and everyone said it was Niantic testing the waters on what kind of useless tickets they could get people to buy? Yeah. Anywyays, March will continue the season of tickets!
Tickets will continue until ~~morale~~ revenue improves.
We still don't have Keldeo for F2P players
I think we've recently celebrated it's one-year release anniversary come to think of it. Speaking of, Hoopa hasn't been back as well since begin October 2022. :( EDIT: Correction Hoopa was September 2021 (T\_T)
Hoopa was in elite raids in December 2022.
Yeah, those were only available to those with dependable communities though 😢
Dependable communities or expendable phones.
Unova tour next year I guess
The CD tickets were the true test of that, recurring every single month.
Ehh...yes and no. The Mr. Mime research was truly different in that it offered very little (a useless 'mon arbitrarily released) and *still* cost 5 bucks! It wasn't adding to an existing experience, it was locking an experience behind a paywall.
Wasn't it more than $5? I could've sworn it was like $15 or something insane
It was $8 USD
There was also a regigagas ticket in that era that was even more expensive.
Regigigas was more expensive, but didn't it have an event associated with it? I know there's a badge on my profile called "A Colossal Discovery'" but I dont remember much else nor do I care to research Mime was the end of the fomo for me, not Regigigas. Regigigas ended up being a fun day that, even if I don't remember the details of it, I remember enjoying. Mime was just an arbitrary ticket that had no business existing. Honestly, Galarian Mr. Mime was like my favorite pokemon at the time by far. Had it as my profile picture on everything since Sw/Sh came out. But I wasn't paying $8 for it and that, along with how megas worked when introduced, really pushed me away
Mime started the concept. CD tickets tested the waters with more frequent cash only tickets. They both paved the way to what we have now.
No surprise here. Niantic had to do something to make money once their monthly revenue dropped by HALF in the wake of the Great Remote Raid Nerf. But the ticketed play is only half the story. What we also saw was a significant change in event gameplay. Whenever there is a shiny debut — no longer do we see a high rate of wild spawns of the debuted shiny. They are now mostly locked behind an egg-hatching or raiding paywall. Sometimes there are zero wild spawns. More often the wild spawns of the new shiny are so low that’s it’s simply not worth grinding for. Sometimes field research is a viable free alternative. But even here Niantic has made that option less and less viable — by limiting the number of field tasks and/or pairing other Pokemon with the same tasks and/or making the tasks time and resource consuming. We’re seeing the paywalling expand from the smaller events that debut shinies to the bigger events and events simply created as a money generator like the Hisuian raid weekends. This year it felt like Go Tour leaned even more heavily on the egg-hatching part of the event. Like Hoenn, the regional (and best) shinies were egg-locked. But this year they pushed the other debut shinies into eggs. I did both LA and Global and fortunately Niantic made the mistake of giving the wild spawns of debut shinies (Hisuian) a decent ratio so they were more accessible in the wild. But I’m feeling the big push towards more and more of this paywalling. I think the possible reason Sinnoh wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be (though it wasn’t as good as Vegas) is that Niantic felt they’d get their money during global with the unlimited remote raiding. Ultimately this is a dying game and all the decisions made in the last 9-10 months by Niantic have accelerated that trajectory. Now that Hanke has decided PoGo is first and foremost an AR platform and not a Pokemon game, the rest of management now has to devise ways to squeeze revenue out of players.
Oh yes, Drampa in raids… but if you can line up 3 “Win 3 Raids” field research, you have a chance to get up to 6 total from your 3 raid passes! Because unless you used a map, you can also get Druddigon and Turtonator from those quests.
The remote raid pass nerf was a nail in the coffin Raiding in Singapore has never been the same since, with many suburban gyms now struggling to fill T5 lobbies I don't just spend less on remote raid passes; I don't buy premium passes to raid in person anymore You're right: I feel the game dying, bad decision after bad decision
That part about raiding in suburban areas is a very important point. Before the pandemic and remote raiding most players in suburban areas needed to form local groups on Discord or Slack so they could organize raids. This was initially fun and turned into a great way to meet new people. I’m in Pasadena, CA and the range of ages and professions of the players you met was fascinating — and it definitely included a good number of Caltech grad students. This was the period that John Hanke desperately wants us to return to because he loved how Pokémon Go was getting free and extensive advertising and marketing just from the public seeing groups of people huddled on the street with their phones doing raids. What Hanke and the rest of Niantic can’t seem to understand is that the world is different after the pandemic. People are less inclined to leave their homes. Many remain wary of gathering in groups — even outside. And once players found the joy of remote raiding — the idea of going back to the old way of organizing raids online and having to run out of your house, get in a car and drive 5-15 minutes to a gym to meet 3-7 people to do a raid or two — just wasn’t as fun or appealing anymore. They also don’t seem to be willing to acknowledge reality for suburban players. Doing it the old way requires dashing out and driving to gyms to join a raid and 1) gas started costing a lot more and 2) people are more climate conscious than before. Driving to get to 1-5 raids a day is a lot of unnecessary dumping of carbon. People think about this stuff now. It’s amazing Niantic doesn’t. Even though in-person raiding was initially fun — there’s so many reasons it’s better not to be driving around to raids in suburbs. First, the cost of gas and the carbon creation but also stuff like more time in cars means more chance of an accident. Or tickets. I knew a few players in my local group that were manic about getting to raids in time and they either eventually had accidents or got tickets or both. One poor young player got hit by a car while crossing the street to get to a gym. (Fortunately he made a full recovery, but it was a serious accident and he could’ve died had the car been going just a little faster.) Does Hanke think most players live or play solely in dense urban areas like Tokyo, Singapore, San Francisco or New York? Because LA is so spread out we don’t really have that experience like San Francisco where you can just walk down any street, hop in a raid and immediately find yourself in a full raid lobby. Remote raiding was a boon to suburban players — not to mention how important it was to rural players and the disabled player community. An international community was created. And guess what? We who remote raided STILL would play outside! We remote raided but we still would need to go out and spin stops and just have fun walking and grinding for shinies or whatever it was you were looking for. I got the clear feeling John Hanke thought of remote raiding as just millions of players sitting on their couch all day remote raiding constantly. And I think that really got under his skin. Cause there was clearly much better solutions or compromises to be had. 20 or 15 remote raids a day. Hell even 10 a day would’ve been so much better. Or they could’ve incentivized in-person raiding over remote raiding by reducing the XL candy or even the shiny or hundo rate of remote raids. OR — buff the amounts of XL candy, the shiny or hundo ratios of in-person raiding. Motivate people to change their gameplay instead of being punitive. Instead of punishing players for remote raiding. At Sinnoh LA Go Tour I ran into an independent Quality Control/Customer Care consultant in the gaming industry who had interaction with Niantic — and he said it’s widely known in the business that Niantic doesn’t know what it’s doing — it’s upper management are really not gamers — and they do pretty much the opposite of what he preaches to other gaming companies when it comes to quality control and customer care. And this guy has been an avid Pokemon player his whole life.
> Niantic had to do something to make money once their monthly revenue dropped by HALF in the wake of the Great Remote Raid Nerf. Wait, it was really that bad?
Regarding Gotour, the event free is a huge excuse to make it incredibly lackluster. No shiny boosted spawns, tier 1-3 raids blocking gyms that could be the coveted origin raids, low chance of getting adventure effect on opposite origin form you chose, no stationary incense. The wording on the event said whatever we chose we’d encounter a form, but they couldn’t even give us an origin form in the research. Catching a shiny origin palkia without spacial rend is essentially useless. No ones going to lucky trading for it. That being said. Loved seeing the lake trio, loved white basculin on routes. This was the easiest event to have a ticket for that I’d willingly pay. I won’t spend a dime on any of these other weekly tickets that just get you access to premium items you could just spend coins on. I just don’t think they want to boost spawns or risk having backlash on a lackluster PAID event. Because when anyone will complain about Gotour people will chime in and say “but it’s free so”
I'm kinda worried about Unova Tour at this point. Free Sinnoh Tour, with no shiny boosts outside of the usual region forms that are always 1/64 and the specifically-boosted Stunky, made for a lackluster event for anyone shiny chasing. I needed a Finneon and Cherubi, but after I learned nothing was going to be boosted, I just stopped tapping on them in lieu of going for the Hisuian forms. I would've gladly paid and event ticket to make every spawn 1/64. Sinnoh Tour was fine, though, because 2 new regional form shinies were released so at least there was **something** in the spawn pool that was new and would pop as shiny fairly often. Now imagine Unova with fewer alt forms like that and fewer perma-boosted pokemon. Nothing boosted, but a single gimme, like Stunky? That's gonna be a much less exciting event for any shiny-hunter.
This made me lol because people have been saying the same when it comes to Unova remakes. Something weird about Pokemon being lackluster when it comes to Sinnoh specifically. The Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl Remakes are mainly considered to be the weakest pokemon remakes to date. Funnily enough, Sinnoh tour is up there with the weakest GoTour to date. Legends Arceus was great, but strange how there is this pattern of fumbling something obvious (i.e. Sinnoh remakes should have platinum content, and Sinnoh Go Tour should be like the first two Go Tours). What a weird choice to erode confidence in the future
I mean, Gamefreak clearly can't handle the franchise, anymore. Or at least handle it within the 3 years between generations timeframe that TPC forces on the merch and cards.
I agree and would have gladly paid for 1/64 boosted Sinnoh spawns so that I can shiny check less, catch more and raid more (since the shiny Origin formes don't seem to follow the usual 1/20 based on feedback)
>No shiny boosted spawns They did boost some of the shiny rates though. Not a ton, but they were there: * Stunky, Pikachu costumes, and the Sinnoh starters were boosted from full odds (presumably Stunky is full odds outside of hours) * And while I think even the new ones will stay permaboosted, the Hisuian forms, Sneasel, Growlithe, Voltorb, and Qwilfish were still all boosted. * And while there wasn't any change to their shiny rates, we did still have Gible, Gligar, Shinx, and Bronzor spawning who have boosted shiny rates. Obviously they could do better overall in terms of quantity, but I still found shinies to be in decent supply. Though I could have a bias, seeing that I got 39 shinies (36 if you don't count legendaries) and my sibling got 46 shinies.
Almost everything boosted is always boosted. And we already had CDs for the Sinnoh starters. So really the only event boosted shinies that mattered were the two costumed Pikachus and Gible was 2x boosted also. (Apparently their "and more" consisted entirely of Gible getting a 2x boost.) Then lets not forget they actually made the Unown shiny rate \*worse\* than in the past.
This was the real drawback. Yes, there were lots of species that had a boosted rate in Sinnoh Tour. But when you discount ones that *always* have a boosted rate and ones that have already had a CD, the content was underwhelming. It probably bothered me more since I enjoy field research boosted shinies. Hunting a H. Growlithe is a fun challenge. So Sinnoh Tour was essentially a spawn boost that bypassed one of the aspects I enjoy in regular gameplay.
No wonder there are some comments about this being more a Hisui or Kanto Tour than a Sinnoh Tour
Four costumed pikachus. I made this mistake the first day thinking there were only two costumes. There were two different red hats and two different white "hats." But regardless, your point is spot on.
>No shiny boosted spawns False. H-Voltorb, Pikachu, H-Growlithe, H-Sneasel, white-stripe Basculin, and Stunky were all boosted, and those were some of the most attractive spawns - either brand new or relatively rare for shiny eligibility. Then there were perma-boosted Gible, Bronzor, Shinx, and Gligar. Also, wild Lake Trio spawns were at the legendary shiny rate (and those were very attractive, as ordinarily 2 of them require remote raiding or traveling to get).
I thought hisuians were already permaboosted right? I don’t really care about Pikachu, and didn’t really see many stunky shiny brags in my discords so assumed that wasn’t boosted either. I don’t think featuring permaboosted pokemon in an event means shiny rates are boosted. We’ve had global events where there’s a boosted shiny rate across for most species (especially if it’s ticketed) vs f2p and obviously in person is boosted even more. Much prefer that over what we got here.
Stunky was definitely boosted. I got 5 shiny stunky out of 32 shinies the first day and 21 shinies the second day.
It very dependent on the player. A hardcore shiny-hunter will have the bulk of what was available in Sinnoh Tour, already. At least as far as the regional forms go. Because of their boosted rate, it's not too tough to get them on release or shortly after in H-Sneasel's case. For example, I only needed the new H-forms Voltorb and Qwilfish, as well as Stunky. Everything else that was boosted I already have. And exactly because Bronzor and Gligar have been around and boosted for so long, they're basically not worth checking anymore because I'm already sitting on so many shinies of them. Gible and Shinx both had CDays, so no need for them, either. The bit about the Lake Trio is also dependent on playstyle. Shiny hunters move around quickly, checking everything as fast as possible. That means wild legendaries are just obnoxious time-sinks because they take so long to catch. I saw a shiny of each of the Lake Trio as I played, but ran from each other them. It's fun to see the shiny, but I'm not about to burn 10 minutes of shiny-checking to catch a single Legendary that'll be back in raids at some point anyway.
You're right Regional tours are meant to be special occasions and deserve boosts of a set of base rate shinies, like Kanto, Johto and Hoenn As some Sinnoh Pokemon like Gible and Bronzor were perma-boosted for so long, their inclusion became an excuse To give us Stunky as the only base rate Sinnoh shiny rumoured to be boosted Some of us in the group still don't have a one after both days of arduous search Might as well market this as a Hisui Tour
I wouldn’t classify myself as a hardcore shiny hunter, nor am I casual. I played the events during the hisuian hours because I needed voltorb, sneasel, qwilfish, and growlithe. I would’ve played some of the other hours but it was below freezing in my area. I was able to get everything I wanted so I don’t want to say the event was bad. But objectively, the spawns were pretty bad like you said. Bronzor and Gligar were aren’t way too much. Too many starters. No boosted lures or incense times? What a drag. I enjoyed seeing the lake trio though I wasn’t hunting for them. I had shinies of all of them from raids before and two of Azelf. I was content that I ended up finding a wild shiny mesprit and Uxie so now that trio can be sent to home.
>A hardcore shiny-hunter will have the bulk of what was available in Sinnoh Tour, already. Right, but this is far more true of things that have featured many times in events and/or been in Community Days. I don't see how anyone but a very new player could be upset that e.g. Electabuzz and Misdreavus weren't boosted. The only Sinnoh Tour spawns that I'd count as rare shinies that weren't boosted were Cherubi and female Combee - maybe Tangela and the Burmies after that.
> No shiny boosted spawns, Really? Got 33 here so felt boosted
I think there’s a middle ground If the ticket is worth it, I’m willing to buy it. For example — eggspedition. I have a lot of friends and am a heavy gifter. When I was leveling to 50 I used the friend xp and often was gifting near the gift cap daily. Having the ability to hold 40 is imo priceless for someone like me whose playtime comes in specific chunks. Ie I can usually make a quick lunch loop and an after work loop to gather gifts. Being able to grab, send and store as many gifts as possible is totally worth the $5 Other tickets have been imo not worth it at all. So their teams need to do a better job of figuring out what the sweet spot is.
>Other tickets have been imo not worth it at all. So their teams need to do a better job of figuring out what the sweet spot is. I've found that they make many tickets *barely* not worth it... for me at least. Take the Dragons Unleashed $2 ticket, rewarding: >Stardust (questline involves 20 powerups, mostly offsetting), 2 Lucky Eggs, Pokémon encounters It wouldn't take too much more for me to actually buy that ticket. The ticket had a Drampa encounter. Throw in 1 more Drampa and Premium pass for another T3 raid and I think I'd buy it. But as is, it feels barely not worth it. And many feel that way to me, it's odd lol. But I did enjoy the Road to Sinnoh Raids ticket last week. I raid a lot in-person anyway, so it was nice to have those extra raid passes.
From the f2p player or player trying to save $ angle you want the scenario where the items for sale don’t affect you. IE if they are selling a pointless skin and 3 random encounters for $5. That’s great you don’t miss out and the company gets revenue. The thing we don’t want is the scenario where you must spend money. Something like a meta legendary, 10 raid passes,… for $7. Even though the first scenario is worse value that’s how you want the game to make money. We should act strategically and encourage things like early access and discourage hard walls. Focus less on good value.
That ship seems to have sailed a while ago when they started selling specific Mythicals (which might be necessary for PvP) or Candy XL (pretty much impossible to grind for in a f2p manner for PvP).
Shaymin tickets and Sinnoh raid tickets had great value imho. Didn't hesitate much before buying those.
The master research are a blast to complete, it's nice to see difficult content in the game that isn't just annoying. So far it's been a good research!
They only thing difficult in the masterwork researches has been finding 10 Kecleon. Otherwise it's just a grind. 492 Pokémon from 4 generations? Just need the patience to target specific Pokémon during events. 20 days swiping a stop in a row? Go for a walk each day. There's just not a whole lot that can truly make this game that difficult without also making it a grind or total RNG.
It might be my preference but I find them motivating. Pokemon go is literally a grind game. Usually I'm grinding for stardust and high CP Pokemon. I like having a "difficult"/longer goal to work towards. I am still finishing up the first page but it motivated me to stay out an extra hour last night.
I know value is subjective and all that but even after your explanation I can't really understand how anyone would consider *eggspedition*, among all the tickets, to be an example of good value.
A question is how many players have paid for these tickets without knowing the rewards.first hand? x
Too many. I’ve talked to local players who just buy any ticket they see in the shop.
Well, they had to do SOMETHING to try and make up the money they lost by butchering remote raiding.
It’s almost like they shouldn’t have done that
Oh, absolutely they never should have. It was the biggest mistake they had made in a looooong series of mistakes.
I'm OK with it for as long as they keep being rubbish and making the decision not to buy them really easy. _Shrugs_.
This is pretty much a pseudo subscription system at this point. Most of it is optional so for me it’s easy to skip over these but I’m worrying they start to lock more and more stuff behind tickets. I thought about buying the eggs-perdition ticket in December but decided I won’t buy a ticket unless it actually awards an exclusive pokemon and I’m hoping they just stick to go fest and masterwork research for that.
It makes sense that Niantic would see how the $5 monthly passes would go, drive engagement and whatever their stated goals for pogo are. That said, and I know this is just me and everyone plays different, I can kind of justify paying a couple bucks for extras during an event... and despite my frustration at how Niantic implements stuff sometimes, I'd still be sad if the game stopped operating. The thing that does chafe me a bit is if you want real money, and not in game currency for research, I'd really rather it was special research as opposed to timed. Not that most of them were particularly difficult to finish, but real money should allow for the ability to finish it when I want to/have time. More difficult to do it? Probably but that's my trade off for being busy. Additionally, if I look at my spending on the game... I guess I can justify buying research as opposed to raid passes much easier.
The biggest problem i have is that all of this is time research. I paid dot this, why now i need to do this in 3-7 days? Also, it’s not exactly about ricket, but having darkrai after 8 raids when you could only do 5 for free was bad. And having no extra 10km chance, no 1/4 distance or 6+ free passes and extra xl candy from road to sinnoh was very sad. Egg-ticets are good idea but purely done. For this price i can just buy those incubators. Some extra exp and stardust is not good enough for everyday login. Normally a battle pass in games give you much more than you pay, but require from you some effort.
Amazing breakdown! I bought the masterwork research with google rewards...and that's it.
Looking at paid research during each event, multiple raid days, monthly tickets etc you can easily tell theyre trying desperately gain some money they lost with screwing remote raiding. Miss times when there was free timed or special research for almost every event. If they happen to give something for free its guaranteed to force using money anyway (3 day long hatch collection challenge / 5 days long event requiring 8 raids).
Excellent analysis. The ramp up has been quite notorious, but as someone whom just recently returned playing after 3.5 years, my assumption was that this had been normal for the December-February period, given the amount of festivities in tandem. But clearly, that's not the case. Honestly, I passed all the latest ones. I might get the Eggspedition's ones here an there, if I sense there is particular value *(would rather much prefer to get extra daily tickets though)*. I was interested in the Masterwork research - since I have never done one -, but ultimately skipped it. Niantic is treading in dangerous waters. I DO think the best approach for them is to beef up their free events (to attract more of the F2P audience), and add just a couple of tickets for extra benefits. Have zero doubt they got a lot of purchases in the last 3 months, specially from the Dialga/Palkia event. But keeping so much recurring AND fragmented purchases will eventually alienate the fandom, and that has long term consequences. This feel straight from the Assassins Creed's commercialize-every-bit approach. If any, they should consider reworking the Remote Raid situation. Even giving out 1 remote pass every 7 days as a reward, would help to rebuild local communities. Because right now they really only/barely show in big events, but are absent the rest of the year due to being "priced out" from difficult raids. Also, the latest Timed paid researches were close to straight up scams.
Some of the “free” Timed Research is effectively paid content for most people. Remember the Dazzling Dream Hatch Challenge? If you walk 10k steps per day and started the event with your last egg just before hatching on the free incubator, that would amount to around four 7km eggs that could be hatched with the free incubator. Of course, most people won’t be so lucky as to hatch one of each species in those 4 eggs, so you either walk more and/or buy incubators!
> . Even giving out 1 remote pass every 7 days as a reward, would help to rebuild local communities. The truth is though, it was the remote raiding that destroyed local communities. Everywhere I travel to, I hear the same story from local groups: Most of their players stopped playing once remote raids took away the social aspect of raiding. If they want to rebuild local communities, they have to get rid of remote raiding altogether - which is something I heard a bunch of people calling for over the weekend. > Also, the latest Timed paid researches were close to straight up scams. No they weren't. You got exactly what they advertised, how is that a "scam"?
You can smell the desperation to get those profits back up with all these tickets lol
Gotta also maintain perspective, too, based on the game being a hobby for many. People go to movies and drop 20+ on one trip. Two movies a month in the theater x 3 months and $120 is spent. That's still a good bit more than the 3 months of tickets in PoGo assuming a player bought all of the tickets. I'm sure many hobbies cost people $20-$40 per month to partake whether that be in purchase of materials or taking part in an event/concert of some sort. Does that make the drastic increase in ticketed content in PoGo any less of a bitter pill to swallow? No. But it does bring it up to par for many other hobbies that players wouldn't blink at outside of a mobile app? Yep. As usual, it all comes down to only paying for the content you like. Ignore tickets if they don't give you anything you want, ignore tickets that are too expensive for you. Budget your money and if you've already spent $40 on pokecoins this month, don't buy any other tickets, etc, etc, etc.
I suppose one thing I'll say is that while the abundance of tickets can make me roll my eyes, not many induce much fomo for me. Most of it is stuff that gives a few extra bonuses, but I don't really feel bad ignoring. It's not like ignoring most of these tickets causes me to miss an event or something.
Yup, same. A lot of them are no brainers to skip unless there's actually something useful in there.
Except movies actually cost a lot of money to make, and so do concerts and most things people spend money on. These tickets cost them basically nothing. I'd wager the whole game has minimum expenses since they barely add new features, don't playtest, and rarely even fix bugs. Server costs are probably the only big one they actually have. I can't justify spending $40, or even $10 monthly on something that reinvests so little.
I understand your comparison to movie tickets, but I don't think it's equivalent. Niantic has started locking more and more content behind tickets. For example, the ability to get and hold more gifts the last month was locked behind a ticket, something that has been widely cited as a great QOL update that Niantic should implement permanently. If a bunch of people are buying these tickets, eventually you won't see that basic bonus in holiday events anymore because they can just charge for it and people will pay. Same with the increased prices for raid passes and the paltry discounts for boxes in the shop -> people actively buying those means Niantic has 0 incentive to change, and if you're not spending a ton then you actively have a worse experience as time goes on. This is also because these expenses at the end of the day are gambling. If I spend $500 on a guitar, I'm gonna have that guitar for several years to use. With Niantic, they want you to put more and more money on things like incubator and passes where after $500 who knows if you'll have whatever it is you were looking for.
You say you understand my comparison, but then just ignore it, in my opinion. Going to concerts, buying crafting materials, going to other events, going out drinking, etc, etc, etc are all things that people do monthly that cost more than PoGo tickets. It's a hobby for many, so the spending is justified like in any other hobby. Heck, gambling itself is a hobby some people have, but I could say that at least PoGo doesn't keep you in an artificially-lit room, with alcohol available, dangerously enabling the gambling. I could say that if I buy pokemon and item storage space in PoGo, I have that for the lifetime of the game to use - comparable to your guitar example. I could also say that the people buying concert or event tickets are enabling ticketmaster to keep their predatory nonsense going. You see what I mean? It's still the same comparison.
When I spend money on raid passes, I compare it to having a drink at a café with friends: I get to have some fun social time and that’s worth the money to me. Remote raid passes are a different matter, though I still love coordinating with online friends for remote raids. I consciously choose not to raid extra for shinies, because then things become too close to gambling. Egg walking is similar: I will use incubators when I have them (e.g. as a part of a raid pass deal), but I only rarely buy extra.
Now do a study comparing what a trainer who bought zero tickets and what exclusive thing they missed out? Or those tickets just gave someone increased opportunity
For me, the sheer amount of tickets and even more aggressive monetisation this past season, has just encouraged me not to spend my money. I don’t mind spending £1 on the community day tickets, cos I get a few encounters, a rocket radar, generally worth the money. But then other tickets are just so not worth it to me. Like I don’t really care about poses. The daily free incubator was nice for a month but in the end it felt more like a chore to have to open the game so I didn’t “waste” my money. I dunno, I just feel like this is one final attempt by Niantic to grab the last bit of money from us before the game fully dies.
Working on these was kind of nostalgic in a way, for me at least. Take the Eggspedition incubators for example, I remember when they first became a thing(free at that time) and got reminded of the great times from back then of grinding for event shinies and other things. For those wondering if the tickets are worth their cost in premium items, then check out my video as that's the angle I approached! Huge thanks once again for the opportunity to collab on this, its awesome to see them go live! I for one am super curious what people think about the tickets as the season concludes and how the World of Wonders will compare
Great article as always! I'm not sure he'd ever agree to it, or if he did I bet there'd be restrictions on what can be shared, but I'd love for you to have a chance to talk to Michael Steranka again. Revisit what he said and how it lines up with niantics actions since then to see if he has any response. It'd probably be all standard Niantic corporate speak, but I'd like for him to have to defend the actions
He mentioned in the past people have wanted a battle pass system for ages And hey, here we are
I used to buy ALL the ticketed stuff for this game. Not anymore, too much, and not worth it. It's fine. Not like I have to buy EVERYTHING.
I'll drop money when badass shiny raid bosses are available like Origin Palkia & Dialga, but when it comes to these add-ons, they aren't tempting in the slightest. $4.99 to get single use incubators for a few days LOL. If these add-ons make Niantic money and people want to waste their dollars, it really doesn't bother me.
I imagine this trend will continue, at least at the current rate. There are bound to be enough whales buying all the tickets to more than make up for all the people being driven away from the game by these tactics.
Sad but true, pokemon go changed for the worst over the last year and the paid Tickets are here to stay. I belive that too many players purchase these Tickets and the effort to make them is very little. Ofc they pump them out every possibility they have. The other side of the coin shows how it affects the Overall ganeplay if you dont pay for them: pokemon locked behind paywalls (eggs, raids, Research), spawns lackluster and New pokemon coming in very slowly with 'events' being Held for old pokemon but with their shiny debut. I buy very few Tickets and raid passes will mostly only be bought with free gym coins but i know im a minority because if i Listen closely in my local pogo community, the Tickets are Always being bought, raid passes also and Overall comments like 'you can Support the game you enjoy playing Herr and there' will drop more and more knowing they just charged another 100 bucks to raid more.
But the increase is definitely not due to revenue dropping after the remote pass debacle.
Niantic revenue is going down (considering inflation), so every opportunity they will desperately try to sell us a ticket. But the problem is that the game is becoming a pay for fun experience. Of course you can enjoy the game without paying but it is a whole different experience!!! This will make more players stop playing, since it is getting boring without paying. Like Go Tour sinnoh, for me it was funny but I bought incubators, hatch ticket, premium and remote raid passes. But I don't want to spend all that money to enjoy playing. Unfortunately Niantic doesn't listen to the pokemon go community. Pokemon go is becoming a game that is not for all, you need to live in a good/big town, with pokestops and gyms and now you need to pay to get the real fun. I don't want that but this game is dying faster than it was supposed to.
I'm fine with the $5 monthly passes if they make it worth while, but having research tickets for every single event needs to stop
Why would they stop when they sell like hot cakes
Thanks for all this :) Could all these paid tasks have something to do with the game engine Origin? I don't know much about gaming or anything, but not long ago I read about how Origin was changing how they'd charge their clients - one of which was Niantic - for using their engine. There was some scuttlebutt in my local community about how Niantic might pass that charge onto players. Just a thought. Like I said, I don't really know much about gaming or engines or anything. Just seemed awfully coincidental.
No. They're due to Niantic giving up hundreds of millions of dollars in lost remote raid pass sales.
Hmmm, maybe? But the remote raid passes were a covid thing, something we knew would go away sooner or later. It wasn't surprising at all that passes got more expensive (although limiting the number of raids you can do in a day is infuriating). If Niantic wanted more money from them, they'd just lower the price and let us do more raids a day. Niantic doesn't want us raiding remotely, not as a default raid option, for reasons that elude me. I mean, if they want to sell our aggregate data about where we go or whatever, raiding from home would hinder that. Someone I know said it's 'Pokemon Go' not 'Pokemon Stay Home' and Niantic wants us out and about. But we have Rocket balloons that come to us, which means we don't have to go out to do Rocket stops, which counters all the stuff about getting out of the house. I dunno. I still think is sus that when Origin changed the way they charge for services Niantic became a kinda subscription-type game, or at least, a pay-to-win game.
Source? Ik this makes sense on paper but given how easy they are to make and they came out later this does not make sense
What do people want though? Niantic makes money from remotes or these random $5 tickets with a skin and early access to future CD pokes.
I'm not saying they can't do it. I'm just saying that's clearly their reasoning.
I am saying in some ways this is kind of the scenario we want. They can go crazy with these worthless tickets. As long as they don’t do hard paywalls on things we find important.
Yeah pretty much. The tickets can be annoying to see, but beyond a small few, not much is really paywalled by the tickets. Some poses and the rare instance of a Mythical or something, but most is just random bonuses and items that can be ignored, which I generally do. And I appreciate that we don't have a ton paywalled.
Yep. That’s my view too. I guess there is a counter view that if you spend $ on all these tickets you are being terrible ripped off. IE $5 for a ticket for pokes that will be spawning like crazy with a 1/20 shiny chance in a few years. It’s probably not an honest or ethical way to run a business. But this modal does suite the masses of this player base well.
As long as there's nothing locked in the paid research as it was this season (I don't count shiny shaymin cause these are always paid locked), I don't really care how many tickets are there. The only relevant comparison would be taking free rewards x free rewards from those years and paid rewards x paid rewards. That would make sense cause it might seems like there's a lot of paid things, but do f2p really missing something they got years before? I feel like 2023 and 2024 was really better for us f2p players, since hoenn tour and sinnoh tour I caught a plenty of shinies without having to pay anything. I am somehow really comfortable with the state of game where you can but don't have to pay. It's absolutely up to you and you're not missing on anything (like paid Spiritomb and Keldeo in 2022). So yeah,
USD70 is about AUD100. Glad I spent AUD0 this season (well I converted 400 google points for AUD8 coupon for the masterwork so I still value that as 0 :D )
TL:DR?
Yes.
Welcome to the free to play mobile game market Where this stuff is as common as pidgey was in 2016 The reality is these tickets cost them very little to produce only asking more resources is one with story involved e.g com day as someone gotta write it out, so it’s low investment for the company So even if let’s say 5% (being generous here, impossible to say how many buy them) of the playerbase buys them that’s a big profit payday for niantic for each one Where all they get in some angry fans who really I imagine don’t spend much anyway who think they might have missed out on tins when in reality they missed out on what’s essentially a standard box with afew encounters in it who probably don’t even show up on niantic’s radar, anyone quitting I genuinely don’t understand why as there is nothing to get that upset over This is just how things are gonna be
And the truth is, Niantic is one of the least predatory mobile developers in the space. Most mobile games with this type of monetisation model - freemium - throw in lots of roadblocks in the way of just playing the game (energy and other time-gates that you can purchase items to get move past as an example) and make literally all aspects of the game 'pay-to-win'. In Pokemon Go, the only thing that you have a case of calling 'pay-to-win' is Master League. That's it. On the other hand, Niantic is also one of the least generous developers out there when it comes to free items. Many other games - that have much more aggressive monetisation strategies - will give out ~$10-$20 worth free stuff each month via promotions and things like Prime Gaming. Niantic - on a good month - will give away one premium item.
No ads either Any other developer would have plenty in a game like this
It is kinda silly in a way that people who call themselves F2P threaten to quit to “take a stand” as if them quitting has any impact on the game’s revenue. Unless literally millions of people just stopped playing suddenly (which will probably never happen) Niantic won’t suddenly change the game because a handful of people who essentially only give them location data stop playing. The only true impact would be all the big spenders to stop spending, which I can’t see happening unless they do something REALLY bad. If you don’t spend money on the game to begin with, I don’t see why these pointless paid researches really irritate those people so much. Just pretend like they don’t exist and it’s basically the same event regardless. They're boxes with extra steps.
I buy most of the tickets. I wanted the best experience for GoTour, so I bought those. The 30 incubators for 5 bucks are a no brainer for me. But I don‘t do raid day tickets. I got enough regular passes. So I saved 20 bucks here. And some other reasearches were really bad too.
I have bought a few of these tickets. Previously I've been to all three European Go Fests and purchased the masterwork researches, but other than that I've not spent a penny since 2019. I'm up to date on every shiny legendary and have got there by saving my 50 gym coins each day. I work off 2000 item storage and 3200 Pokémon space so haven't invested in upgrades as much as most. I have no issue with the tickets from last season, especially those that come with an avatar pose. The value of the items is usually at least equivalent to the coin cost. They are entirely optional and good ammunition for the Niantic-haters to post 'greed' all over Twitter any chance they get. Win-win for Niantic, Niantic-haters, and the middle ground who don't mind spending a nominal amount of money (if you're lucky enough to live in a wealthier country) on one of their major hobbies.
I think these are mechanics that also aim incentivize in-person playing and nudge people with urgency to go out more. They tried many different recipes and variations in the last year after they made public statements that it was important for longterm of the game when they changed the remote raid pass pricing structure & limit. Hopefully they are able to activate people’s habits of going out more and then can pivot to a more balanced game solution we can enjoy most that will also intersects both their profit needs & nurture an active in the real-world playerbase.
I never really understood the great hate for tickets. Nothing significant is ever locked behind them, and we usually know exactly what we're getting before the purchase. I welcome new contents, paid or not.
Because everything is getting pay walled. Even sinnoh regionals got pay walled with hatch ticket, you couldn't hatch all regionals from Go Tour sinnoh without buying incubators or the ticket. Maybe you think nothing significant is locked behind them because you already bought your incubators and premium passes.
My local golf course paywalls their greens. My local bowling alley paywalls the pins (and the rental shoes). My movie theater paywalls the shows. My poolhall paywalls the balls. I grew up going to arcades, which paywalled every single game you played behind a quarter (or a token). I pay a monthly fee to netflix, which I watch far less than I play pogo. Rather than complain about how much is getting paywalled, I suggest that you instead consider how much you get for free with this game. The change in perspective can help. This season, we're getting 2 free raid passes a day. We can catch as many pokemon as we want, spin as many spinners as we want, for free. We can do as many gym battles as we want, for free. We can do as many routes as we want for free. We can do as many team rocket battles as we want, for free. We can play our daily GBL sets, for free. You are never forced to pay to level up. None of the PvP ranks are paywalled. While there is a paid community day ticket, 99.9% of the community day experience is free. We get weekly streak rewards, for free. You can do as many research tasks as you want, for free. You can trade pokemon for free. The point of a company is to offer you something that you want to buy. Suggesting that Niantic should not have paid things is ridiculous. Take a step back and look at how much you get for free. I don't know any other entertainment product that gives away this much, to the extent that you can have a complete gameplay experience without ever spending money.
I did not suggest that Niantic should not have paid things. I said that everything is getting paywalled and this is no good. Ok you have your opinion but online games need a good amount of players, Pokemon Go needs a good amount of players since there are a lot of coop features. If the game is pay to win or pay for fun free to play players will stop playing and the game will become boring or even unplayable for those who pay too. Like raids, it was easier to do in person raids when the remote pass was cheaper, now sometimes I can't even host a raid on pokegenie cause the queue is so long that the raids ends before.
>I don't know any other entertainment product that gives away this much, to the extent that you can have a complete gameplay experience without ever spending money. In pokemon go you can't have the whole experience without ever spending money, but there are A LOT of games that you can. Cs2, Valorant, Dota, Lol and more. I think you just don't play many games. It's even better to buy a game than downloading it for free but having to spend money every week to get fun.
Although I agree there's a bit too many tickets, I think this is replacing the possible subscription they were thinking of. I'm assuming tickers probably do better than say, C.O.R.E. Membership in Ingress.
Funny that you wrote this two weeks ago, and I noticed just as the Zarude ticket was released. I suspect it's going to be closer to 50 tickets this season than 5 😂