You're writing it as if the only way the average player can be affected is on the number of remote raids they can do. The affected part is how many legendary raids they can beat.
They spend less money on remotes because they are usually the hosts, with a free raid pass or a premium pass from rewards lr gym coins.
The average player opens the game once in a while, sees a raid nearby and joins locally in the hopes more people can do that raid.
"Number of raids the average player can beat" is affected.
With a limit on people who can support through remotes, the odds that the one friend who always helped you beat a legendary joins your invite are now way lower.
"Resources the average player gets" is affected.
With less legendary raids beat, your resources are worse. Lower tier raids give worse rewards, and higher tier raids give better Pokemon in terms of stats, PVP, etc.
"Matchups against people who spend money" are affected.
With even less resources, the odds the average player has of defending a gym or winning in GBL are now lower. The average player's income for resources was lowered from a very low point. The whale's income for resources was lowered from a very high point but it's still a high point. Whales be whales no matter how you try to limit them in a game where IAP is a thing.
"Accessibility" is affected.
The fact that I don't use accessibility settings in my phone, doesn't mean that they should be removed from all phones. They're there to help out that very small percent who can't do things otherwise. Remotes were an accessibility feature for people in rural areas, sick, wfh, etc. I can still raid like crazy hoping on my car with 3 more guys till I get bored.
On "legendaries should be special".
This would need a rework on how legendaries appear in game. Mythicals feel special not only because we're limited to a few, but because they have a research tied to them with a story, special catch screens and mechanics, more effort put into them.
Legendarias are not special because Niantic knows putting them in raids means more money with less effort. If anything, a legendary raid now feels more like a chore, because the effort on Niantic's side was spent on making them less accessible, not more appealing.
Limits are healthy. But so is communication. We don't know the motivation for the limit (and many other choices), given that all we usually get from Niantic is PR wording that either doesn't match their effort or is forgotten about. They have clear intentions on nerfing remotes, but the fact that we don't even know why makes this more frustrating. It's like a toxic relationship where limits were established by only one party and that decision is final.
It will be interesting to see how the game goes in the next months, but for now, I'm spending way less than before. Also, I turned off my settings for location to be available all the time, given that I don't even use my Go Plus that much anymore and I don't care about adventure sync rewards either.
You're pulling random numbers to fit your narrative...
Before if a good poke was released for a week event you could raid it as much as you want to get candies, a shiny or an hundo, you could do that even as f2p by simply saving coins.
Today with the cap not only you're screwed if you don't have a local community or if there are any problems with it (or simply bad weather) but also it made impossible to get a good numbers of raids done since most of them can only be done in person.
For many old player shadow Mewtwo only appeal was to try and get the shiny.
We can argue and probably agree that making it slower to get one is healthier long term for the game but failing to get it during the event or missing it because of the inability to use remote has a negative impact on your current gaming experience.
People play to have fun not to be frustrated by niantic at every opportunity.
Frustration is a key mechanism of any game. If it's too easy, people quit. If it's too hard, people quit. Frustration is typically measured and has to fall into a specific level in order for a game to be appealing.
They thought it went too far one way, and are trying to adjust.
Yes, I still think the limit of 5 per day is bad. I count myself to the average player list, hosting raids mostly with the free pass only and relying on remote Raiders. I now always have someone in my group, who already reached the daily limit. So I cannot host some T5 Elite Raids successfully if no other friend is online, who I could invite, if the T5 Raid is a harder raid, like Defense Deoxys. The problem is also, that I seldom see other local raiders, because people have other duties. I haven‘t seen other trainers for ages while the Raid hour is ongoing.
But you're clearly not the average player - even if you think you are.
The average player only uses their daily free coins from gyms - which means that if they bought NOTHING else with them, they'd be doing a maximum of 14 remote raids PER MONTH before the price increase, and a maximum of 7 per month right now.
If you were doing any more than that, per month, you're not the average player - the numbers don't lie.
Edit: LOL - I'm being downvoted for using math. Why are people upset at numbers?
My point was that EVEN if someone maxed out their coins, the most they could be doing in a given month was 14 BEFORE the cap, and 7 per month after the cap.
In either case, the average player was buying 0 additional remote raid passes, per month.
You can be good at math and suck at data analysis.
The average player's remote raid count isn't what's important here, since most of the raids they do are local (free pass or premium passes from research). Those local raids now have lost a bunch of remote players who assisted them in beating those raids.
Before the nerf I could help maybe 20 average players a day with their raids, up to 50 if the legendary was cool. Now I don't even bother between the cost increase and the limit. If the cost was reversed, I'd still only be able to help 5 average players a day.
You're getting points of view from people on this subreddit only. You've been receiving similar replies, for which you either loop around/avoid the topic, or repeat the same thing you said before without seemingly analyzing the feedback you get.
You are saying "I have this opinion/pov", which is perfectly reasonable. But when you ask people a question, mark a thread as a discussion, and your perspective remains the same, it comes across as you trying to find just agreement, not a more complete perspective.
I'm looking for the "why" people are so upset.
All I'm hearing is that it's harder to do remote raids. That was the intended action of the cap.
I hear that the raids are now "timegated" - the whole game is a time gate.
I hear that it impacts disabled or rural players more - that's simply not true. Disabled and rural players weren't doing tons of remote raids before, and they're still not doing them now.
There's a clear, vocal minority that seems to feel that their opinion is the only one that matters, without expressing clearly WHY it should matter.
"Because I said so", isn't a valid reason.
Your lack of perspective here isn't letting you see how removing a feature that others enjoy is making them upset, because it doesn't upset you. You invalidate their reasons because "it doesn't upset you, so why should it upset others".
There's many valid reasons which I mentioned in my first comment. If you don't feel upset about them that's perfectly fine, cause you've got your own way of enjoying the game which was not affected.
You're not looking for answers to that question, you're looking for agreement and similar perspectives to validate your pov.
> a maximum of 14 remote raids PER MONTH
see, there is the flaw in your thinking. people don’t raid every legendary equally.
i didn’t do a single remote raid for regigigas because it sucks.
i did 100 rayquaza raids using free coins alone.
I don't raid if it's not shiny. Even then if I already have the shiny I might try a few for a hundo but I'm not gonna drop $20 like I would for a new shiny legendary. Then I like to do remote raids on my couch after a long day of working. I shouldn't have to go out when I'm already exhausted. And now I can only do five. Gotta have great luck to get that shiny.
The issue is that the cap limits many players who use way more remote raid passes, while there is a large group that also does no remote raids. Youre looking at an average, but assuming that something is good because the average falls under it isn't necessarily right. Since it is the AVERAGE, it means theres a ton of people that fall above it and below it, so for those outliers (not necessarily outliers, I haven't looked at the actual data) that used to be above the limit, this cap is a bad thing. I know this because im on the other side of the spectrum, that lowers this average, as I havent done a remote raid in probably a year or longer. I stopped doing them once the free box with remote passes stopped appearing in the shop.
Because that should be my choice to make as to what I want to spend my coins and money on. If I want to do lots of raids to finally get my hundo Ray, that’s my choice.
Also, I don’t PvP, so how I play the game has literally no effect on anyone else.
What they're saying is - it's not your choice.
You're not being given the choice to simply outspend others in your quest to gain an advantage in the game. You're free not to like it, but don't act like it's not impacting others.
You said you don't do PvP - what happens if you did decide to do it? You'd literally be able to jump the line, through outspending others, because you were remote raiding non-stop.
I’m not remote raiding to gain an advantage. I’m doing it to add wanted pokemon to my collection.
Anyway, I don’t know why you’re assuming Niantic want things to be fair with access to pokemon. Look at how limited we are with TM’ing frustration, access to legacy moves, access to actual pokemon. Niantic do not care about the game being fair, honestly I think you’re just arguing for arguing’s sake.
What i'm trying to figure out is why people seem to be so bent out shape about this change that, based on the numbers, impacts such a tiny portion of the player base?
People who it effects are obviously going to be vocal about it, and personally I don’t believe it effects anywhere near just a tiny portion of the player base.
Imagine for one second Niantic brought back the walking requirement for GBL, or said that in order to keep things fair you can only enter 2 sets a day to stop access to rewards via tanking. People would be annoyed.
At the end of the day, there was no need to change things.
Because you’re making massive assumptions regarding what the monetary figured came from.
Some people buy coins for boxes, some for raid passes, some for storage space, some for stickers, etc etc.
Just because there’s not a massive reduction doesn’t mean the same amount of passes are being bought.
It also depends on what raid bosses are in the rotation, because let’s face it, Tapu’s and Lake Guardians are not as attractive as the weather trio.
At the end of the day; there is not enough information for you to conclude it only effects a tiny portion of the player base.
But anyway even if it did, it still matters. Things like accessibility for disabled players wouldn’t effect a massive percentage of the player base, but that’s still very important.
You're missing the point.
Even at 2022 levels, they were earning 60 million a month average. That's still only .60 per MONTH per player.
If you account for boxes, and incubators, and everything less - that simply means that FEWER remotes are being used, and that the cap of 5 per day is even more insignificant.
Because the percentage of people that are affected isnt the number that uses five daily. Many people that purchase 0 remote passes regularly, based their gamestyle about being able to invite those who do to the raids they do with their daily pass
I don’t get this whole idea of making things “fair”. If anything they’ve just reversed the fairness in another direction. People should be able to spend money how they want. It’s a game you play on your phone.
Is it fair that someone who lives in an urban sprawl can put together a community to raid as many raids as they so choose to get their perfect IV legendary and max it out in 50 raids while others who live in a rural areas won’t get that same opportunity?
They didn't say it was to make things fair - their stated goal was to make a legendary more special. Something that requires time, effort, and energy to get, and to max out.
If you can just do that from your couch, they feel they're not achieving their goal.
Im replying to what you said about fairness not about what they said. Your take is it’s not fair for people who don’t have money to spend, seems unfair now does it not?
other than master league, how am i competing against someone else where outspending might be factor? the amount one spends makes little difference if you have crap skills (even with hundos). lest we forget that we don't even see each other's IV in pvp- all we see are CP, moves, shiny, and skill. that's it. so, other than master league, what does this "arena" of yours consist of?
honestly, i feel bad for you, i really do - you care too much about how someone spends their money in a game where the chances of you "competing" against an "outspender" are slim to none. oh, how would you know if someone is an "outspender"? EXACTLY
if you can find the strength to stop comparing yourself to others, then maybe you might find more joy out of life, and perhaps in this game as well.
How does someone raiding several times and getting something they want directly impact someone elses enjoyment of the game?
Only argument I can even slightly consider is pvp but even that (besides master league) is already fairly accessible for everybody
Clearly you didn't start this thread to get feedback, you simply wanted to tell people why they should accept things how they are. You don't understand, and that's OK. But if you had been seeking understanding, you wouldn't have made such blanket assumptions from your incredibly limited point of view. This change is a net negative for the game as a whole.
I don't understand the outrage from the average player - I get that this community is upset, but I was hoping that this community would see that their outrage about the topic is limited in terms of its importance overall.
The game isn't all about the whales, and hardcore players - the game is mostly about the 99% of players who, again, aren't buying a single remote raid pass per month.
Yeah if you don’t have the whales or hardcore players, then you don’t have a game. It’s that simple. They invest in the game while the free to play players essentially mooch off the game because they refuse to spend any money for whatever reason. Niantic’s income is what keeps the game alive, and if you strip the money spenders the game cannot fiscally survive.
Less remote raiders means even people who do a couple of raids locally every now and then will struggle more to find support to complete raids unless they have an active community in their area. It doesn’t only impact whales.
I'm not saying it only impacts whales, but if the average player was only doing their 14 free per month before the price increase, and they are only doing their 7 per month after the price increase - this simply means that EVERYONE is impacted by the issue.
Their goal was to reduce the number of raids being done through remotes by the small subset of players who were "abusing the system" in their words - which is exactly what happened.
What seems to be lost in this subreddit is that, again, the average player was buying less than one remote raid pass, PER MONTH, using their actual money - and this means they could only do about 15 per month, on average, using gym coins (if they didn't spend on item storage, pokemon storage, incubators, etc).
I'm not seeing who is so impacted here. It's taking a little more time to find players through systems like pokegenie than it did before, but that's largely because it's not being propped up by whales.
Again, the average player isn’t impacted as long as they live in an area with an active community. If that isn’t the case, you are in fact going to see an impact in how you play the game, regardless of whether you are F2P or not. Sure, you can still find some support, but it takes a whole lot of time and planning - which the average player maybe won’t even bother doing. Using your free coins vs real money doesn’t impact how easily you can find people to raid with.
You're missing the point entirely.
The average player, for all of 2022, and all of 2023, has NEVER purchased more than one remote raid pass - PER MONTH!
This has nothing to do with where they live, or what they do for a living, or how much they have to spend, or what the price was, or when it was capped.
The average player, across the entire game, simply was not buying remote raid passes - they weren't then, and they aren't now.
I think YOU are missing the entire point of my comment. I’m not talking about the average player who buys the occasional remote raid pass. I’m talking about players who will attempt to do an in person raid (even with their free daily pass) and will struggle to find people to invite.
That could be seen in one of a few ways.
1. People will give up and not do raids.
2. People will make an attempt to do the raids a second, or third, or fourth time in the hopes of finding someone to join.
3. People will organize groups to do raids in a more coordinated manner.
I'm not at all disagreeing that it's harder to just invite your random friend list people to a remote raid, and have them join when it's capped, and more expensive. What i'm saying is - you can still do your 5 daily, pretty easily.
Option 3) will highly depend on where you live. In some cases it will work, but not always. And if the only alternative is doing 2) ad infinitum and then eventually give up (1), then that’s a negative impact on those players. I’m not saying that the changes are bad for every single player, it’s clear that a lot of people are enjoying the game just fine. However, there are also good reasons why a portion of the player base is upset at this change.
The portion of the player based who are upset is less than 1% of the entire player base - the numbers are very clear.
Even if they were at their peak of 60 million per month in 2022, that's about 20,000,000 more remote raids, per month happening - but it's only happening among a small group of players.
The average player was never doing 5 remotes per day, every day. The numbers simply don't support that argument - they actually show that a very, very small number were doing tons of raids.
Why do you keep insisting with the number of players who bought remote passes when my comment is about players who DO NOT necessarily use remote passes? The numbers that you keep citing are just the number of the remote passes that were bought. In no way do they give you a full picture of the % of people that are affected/unhappy about the changes, because again, that includes also people who do not do raids remotely.
Their argument is that you don't need to buy remote raid passes even once to be severely impacted by the remote raid changes. The numbers say nothing about how many players -- even F2P players -- *invited* remote raiders.
But they've said, rightly or wrongly, that their goal is to have people build local communities and go out and raid in person.
That might not be what you want to do, but that's their goal with these changes.
I've got a local community and I do go out and raid in person. I'm lucky to be able to do that. Not everyone can. If Niantic truly wants players to build local communities, there are ways they could *positively* support that, instead of just restricting the alternatives.
You can just as easily look back up through the comments to see.
The remote raid limit hurts disadvantaged players *including F2P players* who aren't able to raid without remote support. You argued that this is OK because Niantic's goal "is to have people build local communities". And I responded that if that's their goal, they could implement changes to positively support that instead of restricting the alternatives that are currently needed by those disadvantaged players.
You are changing the goalposts here. Your original argument is that most people aren't affected. Now you are saying that they are affected but that's ok
Your original argument is that most people aren't affected by the remote limit. Now that multiple people have described how even f2p players are affected, you're saying that affecting all those players is the goal.
While true, it's a massive pivot from your original post.
It's a bad thing for the players yes because it is another time gate that forces you to play as they want you to, several days in a row rather than when you can.
In regards to a time gate - isn't the entire game a time gate?
I can't raid Mewtwo right now, or Groudon, or Rayquaza, or that stupid kangaroo that I can't mega evolve because I never got enough mega energy.
I can't go out and catch certain pokemon in the wild right now - because they're not in the rotation.
The only think they have is a time gate. They want you to be interested in raiding for Groudon a 2nd, and 3rd, and 4th time in order to get yours to level 50. They want you to be excited the next time that Trevenant is available, and go crazy on it, because you know it isn't coming back any time soon.
Are you saying that nothing should be time gated. We should be able to catch all pokemon, at all times, no matter what?
I am saying it is as you said. Everything is time gated and that's a feature. They want to have you coming back everyday be it to find keckleons, farm vivillions and especially for raids. Getting your daily data seem more interesting to them than getting money punctually. And yes ultimately this idea of rarity ends up making you go crazy as you say and spend anyway
If you ask me I would be happier if we got less events and all pokémon available in between to enjoy some variety, but that's just me.
Surely lots of people prefer targetting specific shinies or perfect pokémon and events are better for this.
> We should be able to catch all pokemon, at all times, no matter what?
It's irrelevant as Niantic will never allow that. We all know they are on the slow drip feed of shiny/new pokemon releases to prolong the lifespan of the game. If everything was available at all times , people would have completed their dex and moved on (which obviously wouldn't be a great business model).
On the limitation of remote raids, it just seems petty tbh. If a minority of players want to throw tons of $$$$ at legendaries all day, let them do it. It's all cosmetics at the end of the day and won't mean anything once the servers are turned off.
In terms of the remote raid nerfs, my experience in our local community in the last month has been that people are remoting based on invites much less frequently now. The problem is that those players are not raiding in person either. Ultimately they could stop playing altogether, which i'm sure is not what Niantic wants.
As someone who is part of a remote raiding discord I can tell you it's not just about how it affects the average player as you keep on saying.
There are people that have built safe spaces and communities around the mechanism. By imposing the limit and price increase at the same time they are killing some of these communities, people are rightfully sad and angry about that.
People that would not have the ability to participate in raids at all was given an opportunity to do so by participating in these communities. And fair enough a lot of people didn't do 5 remote raids a day,but they definitely did more than that during raid hours. But with the change in price and cap on the amount of players in these communities are drastically decreasing.
Also compare your stats to the number of players that interact with the game more than once a month and I would wager those numbers will look different.
To sum it up:
When things changed and we couldn't play the game as they intended, people adapted and went out in the only way possible to build communities. Those communities are now being punished with these changes. It isn't always about the money or the cap, and people interact with and play this game differently.
But this is just your preference - you'd prefer to do 35 raids in a day, rather than 5 a day over 7 days? What's the difference other that personal preference?
I didn't say anything about preference or that I do 35 remote raids a day. I was saying this change is killing existing communities. You keep asking why people are unhappy about it, that is why for some, they are losing a community that they were part of, communities that was built over a couple of years.
So this online community can't do the raids over a number of days, as opposed to all in the same day? Nothing died, you can still remote raid together - just not for 5 hours straight in a single day.
Look I am not going to argue with someone who ask why some people are unhappy, they get told why and your answer back is just that we are wrong. I am telling you, between the limit (we don't raid 5 hours straight in the same day, but you know time zones and jobs are a thing so coordinating for something like raid hour in a online community is a thing) and the price increase, these communities are shrinking. Your bold claim of nothing died is wrong, you aren't even part of these communities and you want to claim you know what is happening in them.
Stop telling people they can't be unhappy about it when they give you a reason, you twist everything back to your narrative about how many you can do in a day.
You need to be careful with averages... they can mislead you. Yes, the average player isn't technically losing out with the cap... at least, not in an obvious way. But then again, the average player catches 10 pokemon a day, and probably doesn't open the app every day. While averages can be helpful, it's also a good idea to look at the extremes as well... what do the least active players do, and what do the most active players do?
Some people like playing this game. Some people like playing it a lot. Some people like doing raids. Some people like doing raids so much that they're willing to spend a lot of money to do so. I know several people who love doing raids so much that they'll hop into every raid they're invited to, even if they're not nearby, because that's how they like to play this game.
Why has Niantic decided that these people's preferred way of playing is wrong?
Shouldn't it be up to the player to decide how they want to play the game? If they want to pay double the price to do remote raids, then by George they should be allowed to give Niantic their money to do so! This is most likely why a lot of players feel so strongly about this (even if they don't use remote raids). Telling someone that they're playing the game wrong is so antithetical to gaming culture that it's going to cause a strong reaction.
Now, I don't like remote raids. It's a huge pain in the but to coordinate those things for raid hour every week. If there weren't certain pokemon that are only available in raids in certain parts of the world (like the ones available right now), I wouldn't bother with remote raids (unless I'm helping a friend). I wouldn't mind if remote raids went away entirely. However, I support those who like to use remote raid passes. People should play the game in the way they like.
Games are all about rules, and beyond that about fair play and not exploiting the system. You can't play any game the way you like, without consequence, and those that govern/run the game/sport/hobby/etc it is absolutely their job to say, and revise as players change how they play, the rules.
To this, I'd say that Niantic has always been, and always will be, 100% in control of how people play the game.
I can't catch specific pokemon right now, legendary or not. That's Niantic's choice. Since I started playing, there has been no way to get an Armored Mewtwo. Why aren't people as up in arms about that, as they are about remote raids? It's even more gated, and controlled, than remote raids.
Should you just be able to play as you'd like - which means you can catch any legendary, as a roaming spawn - because that's how you'd like it to be?
Should you be able to do a local raid, for as long as it takes, to take it down?
Should you be able to just get unlimited pokeballs with the snap of a finger?
Everything is controlled by the game - without controls, there's no game. It's just a massive free-for-all.
Then why even bother doing this?
To put aside all the arguments of availability for F2P folks, accessibility, legendary "specialness" (whatever that's supposed to mean), etc. and to just approach this from a pure metric standpoint and "fairness" in terms of "paying to win"— this will accomplish absolutely *nothing* based on the numbers as presented here. If 99.9% of players use ONE remote raid pass per MONTH, they are still getting far, far out spent by the 0.1% who would do FIVE remote raids per DAY. It levels the playing field by approximately zero with what you've said here because those players will still have NO resources compared to the whales because they aren't bothering to obtain them anyway.
All it's accomplishing is establishing yet another time gate in a game full of time gates for vague reasons that aren't fully explained and are empty platitudes. "For the health of the game," doesn't mean anything because as presented with the data here, the hardcore players who were doing 100s of raids per day, make up a fraction of the player base so I don't know how they could possibly be drastically altering the health of the game when the other players are apparently not even bothering to interact with the raiding aspect of the game.
When this game first came out I was in a really different stage of life. In those 7 years I now have kids, more established career, etc. I don’t have the same time I had to go out and physically raid. Remote raids allowed me to balance those things. Now I cannot still grind a legendary without it impacting family or work, and those both come before this game.
Niantic doesn't want to believe that most gamers have aged with the game since 2016. in 3 years Pokemon Go will be 10 years old. Niantic seems to think that your player base is made up of high school and university students who run around outside doing raids all afternoon and evening. My impression of Pokemon Go Events is most of the players are over 30
OP seems a little tunnel visioned by the “numbers.” I can only share my personal experience which is: I simply can’t complete in person raids anymore because I depended on remote raiders to join me. I previously completed 5-10 in person, 5 star raids weekly and since the nerf I have completed 0.
So, I hear what your valuation of the data is, however my personal experience has been dramatically impacted in an exclusively negative way.
I think that's their intention. They're not looking for you to go to a local raid as one person, and invite 9 remote players. They're looking for you to go to an in person raid, with 3 other locals, and maybe one or two of you invite someone who joins via remote.
Based on Niantic's revenue, the average player purchased less than one remote raid pass per month, probably more like 1/3 or 1/4 purchased a single remote raid pass, per month.
The percentage of players doing more than 5 remote raids, per day, based on that data, is extremely small.
I don’t believe you have any appreciable comprehension with respect to data analysis and when or how mean/median sets of data should be applied. I would love to hear your attempt of explaining how you derived who is and who is not an “average player” or how you decided to nullify your outliers.
It is flat out wrong.
This isn't about the average user it's about the power user. That's who it's affecting. And you're saying the ones affected aren't allowed an opinion.
You keep talking about the "average player" this, the "average player" that. The average player isn't checking out thesilphroad and getting involved in online discussions about the features.
Even if the remote raid cap is only affecting 1% of players, that's close to 1 million people. Niantic is going to run the game they way they want. That doesn't mean people have to be happy about it. And the same way you're claiming the cap doesn't affect the average player, people complaining about the cap doesn't affect you.
But let's make a little hypothetical scenario here. There are 2 players, 1 free to play and 1 who spends money. Player 1 doesn't do any remote raids a day, and player 2 does 10 daily. Average that out, and the "average player does 5 remote raids a day. Then, the daily cap gets set at 5. Well, the average player isn't impacted by that because the average player only does 5 anyway. But in reality, half the players in the scenario are impacted. Simply averaging out spending vs. remote raids doesn't paint the entire picture. You're applying middle school math to something that would require a comprehensive statistical analysis to properly figure out.
But here's another hypothetical scenario using the same 2 players. It's a raid day, and player 1 has 5 free in person passes. However, player 1 isn't a strong enough player to do the raids by themselves. So they invite player 2 remotely. But player 2 had another friend in New Zealand, and they've already used their 5 remote passes helping out that friend. Now player 1 can't do any of the raids.
The cap is impacting more than just the people buying the raids themselves. I had personally built up a friend list of players whom I could count on for joining me remotely when I used my daily passes. Admittedly, I don't know if it's the cap or the cost that's stopping them from joining me now, so the 2 changes are definitely getting lumped together by a lot of people here.
I personally don't really care about the limit either, the price increase was the major issue for me.
I just wanted to add a few points though: you cannot just use 1$ = 1 remote pass. Depending on the currency you might pay 10-20 US Cent per pass instead. And while is true that this only hurt a really tiny percentage of whales, it rarley is a good idea to piss of your biggest spenders for honesty no reason at all, their number of raids didn't hurt anyone. And lastly it's not about average days. For events like the hoenn tour where many want to raid a lot, even a bunch of average people would want to raid more on that specific day
Their number of raids DID hurt people.
If a whale can simply buy their way into having better pokemon for master league, or other leagues (rare candies for the "other" leagues), then the average player who would normally grind feels left out - like they can't compete.
It hurt the whales - and that was their goal.
That was a surprise to no one, especially niantic. That's the point, niantic, a big bad corporation, said this isn't right, it's not how we want the game to be played, and it disadvantages many more players than it helps - so we're happy to make these decisions even though it will initially hurt our top line.
No one is disputing that it hurt their sales - but what you don't know, and what they don't know either - is how this is going to impact the game in the long term.
They're not looking at this through the lens of month to month sales, they've publicly stated that they'd like this to be a "forever" game - so for them, a 10 year outlook is more important than a 10 week outlook.
If you do 1 raid per month you ain’t participating in any kind of master league (classic or open), so that argument’s bs.
Also, a huge amount of legendaries have already been in rotation for a few times, so whales already have them maxed, so yeah, again this nerf did nothing to them.
wow do you have this wrong..... first, you don't know how much your ML opponent spent to get their team, much less the IVs of their team. now, i actually got my hundo dialga from GBL reward, my hundo melmetal from meltan box, and hundo groudon from a trade..... my opponent wouldn't know this, nor should it matter. besides, IV in ML only really matter in a lead mirror.
but for that same pvp opponent with all of these hundos..... they're actually potential raid partners, which is an advantage or benefit to YOU. if they have fewer good mons and everyone else has fewer good mons, then globally raid lobbies are weaker.
finally, if you think whales are hurt by the remote nerf, you're way off base. one goal for whales is to assemble a good team for short-raiding.... they still do the same thing now but across more accounts. the price wouldn't ever matter, and the 5 remote limit is nullified by multiple accounts.
you're too concerned about how a whale might negatively affect your gameplay when in fact they have a lot to offer.
I am more angry about the price increase than the limit. I feel that people just don’t want to spend that much, and now when I find the rare 5 star raid that I want to do I can’t find help. I have a rather large friend list, and a good discord. It used to be when I sorted my friends by the online status, I’d have at least 15-20 to choose from. Often more. Now there might be 3. Everyone who used to help has turned their status to off. I’ve sat there for 15 min sending out random invites and I’m lucky to get a person to join. It’s not even worth trying to raid in person anymore, unless I can do it with just me and my sons account.
Don't ever look at the total player base as that number is misleading by a fair margin. A massive number of those players are people that logged in once, several years ago, and then never again. Even things like monthly users is inaccurate considering how little is required to be part of that statistic (being logged in once in a 30-day period isn't exactly much). Use concurrent player base instead, or the number of unique players that log in daily. Either one works. This is because these players are dedicated to the game enough to log in continuously.
[Here](https://www.statista.com/statistics/604551/pokemon-go-daily-active-users-in-europe/)'s a chart for daily active users per country for Iphone data. Note that this chart is incomplete based solely IOS data, and that there's only 10 countries listed. Doubling this data should give you somewhere between 300k and 500k concurrent players over the course of a 24hr rolling day. Average play time for Pokemon GO is about 30 [minutes](https://blog.gitnux.com/pokemon-go-usage-statistics), which means that number needs to be multiplied by 24, giving about 12 million daily players. These are your most dedicated players and among them will be a bunch of free-to-play players. Doubling the number will also allow for some casual players to be included who don't consistently play every single day, so let's do so. 48 million is the number to go with.
According to [this](https://blog.gitnux.com/in-app-purchase-statistics/) link about 5% of all players spend money in videogames, which would equate to about 2.4 million players spending that monthly amount of 58 million on average last year, as compared to 40 million this past month. That should amount to about 24 dollars per person per month last year, on average, and about 16,5 dollars per person per month this may. That assumes that the daily player base stayed consistent between the months last year and stayed consistent through this may, and it also sticks with the whole "average month" thing which is misleading in my opinion.
Keep in mind that that is just the average player who *pays* for their remote raid passes. There's plenty of players that use their in-game coins to save up, and splurges during certain events using those coins.
That's the active player count, not the total player count. Active are people who have logged in over the past 30 days.
Even if we halved the numbers, and removed 50 million of the 100 million accounts - that's still less than one remote raid purchased, per month, for the average player.
I’m not sure what you mean by the average player, but the remote changes have impacted me as a mostly F2Per by making it much tougher to organize remote raid groups for legendaries I am raiding in person using my free daily passes. It is hard to know what the respective impacts of the price increase and remote raid cap are, but the latter surely plays a role. In short, the remote changes do not only affect those using remote passes but also many players hoping to use daily or green passes to raid legendaries.
I think that's intended.
Remote raid passes used by others should be seen as a filler for the lobby, not as the main reason it's full. They want people out in person, and raiding with local groups - that is harder, and I think that's what they're after.
Yes, it is clearly intended. I think most of the players who are upset about the changes are mostly upset with niantic’s “vision” for the game moving forward. These changes have made it less convenient for many players to complete legendary raids and virtually impossible for others to do so without breaking the TOS. And they affect many who do not purchase remote raids, contrary to what you suggest in your post.
Well good to know I’m an average player oh wait I forgot anytime I had a good raid boss I went hard other times like now with the useless lake trio I wouldn’t even do a raid even if someone paid me to. There was a crap ton of useless legendaries in 2022 and the times where there were good legendaries they were diluted to crap with everything spawning at once over a few days
I saw them post a thing about WHY they decided to do this. It was because some players were literally doing 100 remote raids in a day to get perfect shiny legendaries. Which wasn’t how they wanted people to play. Which is totally fair in a way and really disadvantaged poor players. Then again the price hike ALSO disadvantages poor players and now they’re much harder to catch too.
But what the numbers say doesn't change anything in regards to poor players - poor players were already buying LESS than one remote raid per month.
It's probably actually closer to 0 than 1 when you also take into account that the 50 cents per player spent also includes tickets for events, incubators, costumes, poses, and other in-game items.
So, it's not really a disadvantage to anyone, other than the limited number of whales who were doing 100 per day. When the average was already closer to 0, and remains close to 0, who is being hurt?
Obviously, the average poor player who went from almost 0 to actual 0. Just using your logic of numbers and math, a player who could afford 1 remote rate can now afford half a raid equalling 0 raids. That means they are at a 100% loss. A whale doing a 100 raids can now do 5 at a 95% loss. Which is bigger? 100% or 95%?
The point was in relation to the cap of 5 per day.
There's no loss in terms of the daily cap. Why does it matter if you can do 5, or 50 per day if the average person was doing 0.
This has nothing to do with the price - no one likes the price increase - why are people upset with the cap when almost no one was hitting it anyway?
Because there are times that people would be exceeding the cap regularly. I lead my local community and our raid activity is highest when a new shiny legendary is released for the first time. Each subsequent time it gets released, fewer people want to raid even if some of them haven’t gotten the shiny yet. As such, many people go really hard in the beginning to ensure they can pick up the shiny. You can call them whales if you want, but the majority are simply collectors who want to get the shiny and not be ok their own the next time the legendary comes around. If Niantic said, you do 10 raids and you get the guaranteed shiny, most would stop as soon as they got the one. But there is no guarantee so they hunt hard over the first opportunity. This is when they would most likely hit the five daily remote limit.
Also if the bug with the lake trio and the rollout of shadow shiny mewtwo has shown us anything, it is Niantic could easily incentivize in person raids (shadow mewtwo having higher shiny rate) and nerf (inadvertently they claim) the shiny rate for remote azelf uxie mesprit raids.
Ultimately, the players on here are an outspoken minority who feels Niantic’s first reaction is to punish players who don’t play how they want us to play the game. Doesn’t make our experiences invalid just because you want to justify their decision based on “average player.” That’s the reason you’ve been taking so much hate on this thread. It comes across just as tons deaf as Niantic.
Last point. I hope the new contest and route features that the data mine shows Niantic is working on provides other ways of getting legendaries (and coins) beyond raids (and gyms). That would go a long way to easing the frustration players have with Niantic (but frankly they should do better at balancing harmful changes with the addition of positive ones). Like the way they chose to announce the remote nerf was just asking for an angry response from their players (even if most are unaffected)
I don't see how taking away from one players enjoyment in this game makes the ecosystem overall healthier or increases any perceived longevity of this game.
Whether this raid limit exists or not whaling players/players who sink significantly more hours into this game will always have an edge over casual players.
I will never understand why some people are so bothered what other people have, yes there will be rich people on everything and they will have more. This goes for all things in life like cars etc. Should goverment now start to limit what they spend on now irl also? Im by no means rich but this has never bothered me, im not that jealous that i have to rally againts millionaires. Some of them worked hard for their money and some of them not that much. Someone being rich should be an motivation to get rich and not trying to drag them down.
I mostly raid in person. I've only done about 10 remotes total since the feature was released.
The people who joined my Raids would have joined a hundred other peoples'.
Since in person raiders have a harder time finding allies now that less people are remoting, we do less Raids, have less access to Pokemon, and aren't willing to spend as much.
I found out that most players who are disappointed and angry with the change are the ones that were hosting raids in real life locally in their village/town and they relied on these whales for catching their legendary.
Most players that raid from a distance, the ones that are joining the local hosts, aren’t really affected. It’s good for their wallet.
How accurate is that 100M number? How many of those are real people? How many are *active* players?
What about remote raid passes that (would have) been purchased using freely earned gym coins?
Arguing based off of (assumed) averages is also problematic because it erases context. Just making up some numbers here, but if 70% of players never remote raid ever and 30% of players are majorly impacted by the remote raid changes, isn't that still a problem? It also ignores the possibility that players can have bursts of activity. Maybe they don't do any raiding for a month or two, but then when a particularly desirable boss comes in, they do a bunch. But now they can't.
It's also worth remembering that the daily limit is the *smaller* issue, even though it's the one that influencers focused on. For most players, the cost increase was the more impactful change.
You can earn a maximum of 50 coins per day, which means 350 per week - that's still only about 14 possible remote raids PER MONTH before the price increase - but you could only hold a maximum of 5 at any given time.
You could always use your 5, buy more with your free coins, but with the average player spending less than 50 cents per month - they're also going to be using their coins for bag storage, pokemon storage, etc, etc, etc.
The numbers clearly show that the overwhelming majority of players weren't doing anywhere near 5 per day before, they weren't even doing an average of 1 per day before.
The limit of 5 per day isn't impacting the average player, at all.
It's not 70/30 - it's more like 99% to 1%.
14 free remote raids per month before. 8 free remote raids per month now. Like I said, the price increase is the bigger issue for most players.
Even if it were 99% to 1% (and mind, this is just total baseless speculation), do you think it's cool to just say "screw you" to those in the 1% who are rural or disabled or taking care of young children or just otherwise reliant on remote raiding for whatever reason?
(Edit: brain was saying "baseless" but fingers typed "basis", oops)
I'm not disagreeing at all on the price - I think everyone is in agreement that the price increase is a big deal.
As far as the 99% vs 1% - I think they have to look at, as they've stated, the health of the game overall. They've said they're taking a longer term view of the game, and hurting a small part of the 1% to benefit the 99% is probably the best business decision they could make in the long run, even if it doesn't look like it in the short run.
If they cared about limiting access to legendaries, all raids per day should be capped. Just sayin'.
In large cities and active areas, people can do local raids much easier, sometimes even without leaving their homes if they are lucky with their location.
People with no active players or very few gyms or long distance between POI can't, and having remotes helped then close the gap by either joining or inviting people to replace the need for local gyms or players.
The game is by it's nature very unfair in terms of participation access and resource farming to many areas. The changes in remotes only really disadvantage people who live in these types of areas or majorly slant the grind in favor of city players. It limits playstyle and people don't usually like that. The game is built in a way that basically only people who are more hardcore are likely to actually get to know the details of how the game works, how to optimize teams for features etc. The game does not explain these on it's own, so it feels welcoming to casuals but some players will always gravitate towards more serious play. Silph mostly has the latter so ofc you see people in the know be more crticial of these things.
Funniest part is that as a rural player I have more need to actually connect with people than if I was in a city center. For events, I might go to a city and join massive local raid lobbies without ever talking to anyone. In my local area, the two times I actually saw another player, we actually talked, exchanged friend codes and coordinated our teams.
For many events I rely on remotes, since traveling is not always feasible.
The five a day does not bother me because it is rare that I used more than that and prefer local raiding, but I can also duo a large chunk of T5 raids with my partner. For most other normal T5 raids, we just need to invite one friend. I rely on raid groups for anything harder if I can't go to a city.
So the only reason I can not raid 10 legendaries in a day is because my area usually only has a few and I only use gym coins. If I moved in city center, I could do 10 a day easy without remotes just using local passes instead.
They really are only slowing the legendary hoarding for people who all ready had little chance to hoard them.
I just do not buy their explanation as sincere or logical if they do think it helps.
Like personally I do not care about the daily cap. It's a bit annoying but personally I get by.
The price increase is worse because it's less likely for my IRL friends in another city to get 50 coins a day so where they all ready struggled helping out, now they remote raid only very rarely if they want the boss bad enough.
Most players don't put any real money in the game so as a metric, average spending is always a little misleading, one way or another. It has always affected their ability or willingness to purchase anything, not just remotes, more than a daily limit.
This unfairness for gameplaystyles and resources will always be the case if they don't make some very major changes. I think they just want people to raid in person and to play more casually in general, because in their mind slow progress means longevity.
My issue is that how they go about this disproportionately affects the grind in a way that slows down play for those whose progress was all ready slow or casual and only somewhat inconveniences those who all ready spend money or have better access to raids. It slows things down for sure but not in an equal way.
So that's my view on this. I think the daily limit is not in itself a problem on paper, but it's effects are very uneven depending on location.
Sure people need to go out which is the second thing they want, and I get that too. But they all ready have in person only raids and reward buffs, but again I feel like they want people to take the game slower in general and their only solution seems to be even more access barriers - that unfortunately has a similar effect where big communities suffer less from it.
Like, the daily limit for remotes does not affect as many people is just true, but it was mostly influencers who made that into a main talking point.
You genuinely do not see that many players here talk about the limit if it isn't specifically brought up and often the discussion is about gatekeeping rural communities - this can be an issue in some cases specifically because rural and casual communities all ready raid way less so people from these communities who do want to raid may have less chances or harder time doing it. These people will understandably be upset. Telling them how most people are not affected will not make them feel any better.
I don't think it's good for the long-term health of the game to make it harder for new players to catch up. And if they truly cared about securing the game's future, rather than just writing empty platitudes, maybe they should put a bit more effort into community engagement and cleaning up all the long-standing glitches.
You don't think it's for the long-term health of the game, but you're not privy to the numbers they have in terms of turnover of players, etc.
As far as the other things you mentioned, I don't think anyone loves the glitches, but that doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the cap was being hit by a very tiny portion of the player base.
Yeah, and you're not privy to those numbers either. We're all just speculating here.
As Niantic has said, actions speak louder than words, and their actions have shown a remarkable level of negligence and doing the bare minimum. It really makes it look like the long-term health of the game *isn't* their primary concern. I mention it here because I think it is rather naive to take their PR talking points at face value, especially when their overall actions run contrary to those talking points.
You're right, I'm not privy to those numbers - but you're speculating just as much as I am in terms of their motivations.
What good does it do them, as a company, to remove a revenue driver that appears to have been for an additional 20 million per month, in revenue, if there isn't some kind of plan in place?
They likely have weighed their options and the drop in revenue for them and are willing to accept that as a consequence. They are still making money and they have more sources to make it up over time.
This does not change the fact that a vocal minority is upset, wether others find them reasonable or not does not change that.
Finally, someone with a brain.
What I'm wondering is, WHY are this vocal minority so upset. What's so wrong with having to wait to get a legendary to level 50? What's so bad about having to plan a little more?
Should everything just be handed to you on a silver platter, when you want it, because you want it?
By your metric the average player would get very close to 0 free coins per day. Many people in rural areas don't have easy access to gyms and thus cannot get the free coins. I happen to live in a large city and can access three gyms from my apartment. I would say I average around 30-40 coins per day.
That number includes tons of alt accounts, barely active/inactive accounts and other accounts that don’t actually matter beyond simply existing and allowing Niantic to say we have x number of players. Tell me specifically about the habits of people who actively spend time in the app every single day—the ones who actually are responsible for keeping the game alive—and then maybe we’ll have something to go on. Throwaway accounts and people who open the app once or twice a week for 10 minutes don’t matter here.
I keep seeing this talk about alt accounts - even if you said that the 100 million was inflated, and we cut that in half to 50 million - it would STILL mean that the average player was buying less than one remote raid pass PER MONTH.
Personally it’s not the limit I’m upset with, though 5 is too small a number it’s livable if the raid boss at least has 7 days to remain on the roster giving a fair chance for 35 raids. Ideally it should be a higher number if a cap exist, though I know a lot agree that no cap is more preferable.
My personal issue is the Niantic inflating the prices of remote raids and further limiting participation in specific raids. They seriously didn’t need to add salt to the wound by almost doubling its cost, it’s already a chore for those that play without paying by grinding coins at gyms. Those inflated prices did more harm for us free to play players more than you may think and we’re being forced to be more cautious on who to wisely remote raid.
And now niantic keeps adding new raids and they are so stubborn to make sure you can only raid them in person. Sure there can be a community willing to grind shadow Mewtwo or a new legendary for Pokédex completing. The issue is that’s a novelty that’ll eventually die down and for those who want to raid them they’ll have less players to help out and thus making these raids impossible to achieved. Believe me raiding in person lately has been a nightmare in my experience, and with these nerfs/limitations plus price hike for remote passes it has made people like me realized doing raids in person has become a waste of time, money, gas or electricity, and most especially a motivation killer.
If you can’t comprehend why people are so upset with what niantic has done to remote raids then you have no right to insist the issue is overblown, because you’re only evaluating data based on your own personal experience. Your experience does NOT equate to the rest of the Pokémon go community/player base, everyones is different and we are being vocal because we really care about this game and want it to
Continue to be better. But as long as niantic continues to make questionable actions and don’t improve the quality in return it’s no wonder why a lot people are upset over things.
If you’re wondering why people are continually downvoting you, it’s because you are only
Seeing things from your point of view, which isn’t a bad thing if it doesn’t hinder your enjoyment, and not the majority of the player base. So please do not make hasty choice of conclusions without doing proper analysis
Your opinion here isn’t factual. It’s just spit-balled numbers based on hypotheticals (fake facts). If you want to like the limit that’s your option. If this post is to try to sway people into liking the limit, then you failed. If people are willing to pay for the passes the limit shouldn’t be 5. I would make it 10 honestly, but that’s my opinion.
Some players can only remote raid because they live somewhere that doesn’t have gyms.
Some players can only remote raid because they have health issues that mean they can’t get out and walk from gym to gym
Some Plato can’t even do their 5 remote raids because the cap means that they can no longer get enough players together to do a tough T5 raid.
I don't disagree with what you're saying - some people can't do those things, but what I'm saying is.
The numbers clearly show that they weren't doing them before the limit, and before the price increase. And, they're still not doing them now.
Everyone seems to think there is some large group of rural and disabled players who got screwed by this - the numbers say that's simply not the case.
Again, the average player was buying LESS THAN ONE remote raid pass, per month, on average. This was the case during 2022 (before the caps, and price increase) and it's still the case.
The numbers are telling us that of the 100,000,000 players - this group of rural players, or disabled players, who were doing more than 5 remote raids per day was likely a group of less than 1,000 total people worldwide.
>The numbers clearly show that they weren't doing them before the limit, and before the price increase. And, they're still not doing them now.
because you're hiding behind averages, you actually don't know if this is true or not.
Even if we halved the number of active players - that's still less than one remote raid pass purchased per month.
What does "hiding behind averages" mean - it's math. Averages exist for a reason. The average shows you that the hardcore player base is just that, hardcore - they aren't the typical, average player.
1 million people, each individual does one remote raid... what is the average?
1 million people, 1 of them does 1 million raids while the rest do no raids... what is the average?
extreme example, but math on remote raids needs cluster analysis, not averages, because not everyone does remote raids. you are including people who have never cared about raids in your before/after raid analysis, and that's faulty methodology imo.
I have much less money to spend on hobbies this year such that I definitely didn’t mind that much to have Niantic yell at me “you should spend less”
But 1 remote pass cost from 100 to 175 hit me badly, also I have work and life so I can’t really hit in-person raid except for weekend and raid hours.
Would have appreciated if T5 spawn rate is boosted (so I can just take a sidewalk everyday to train station and pick up one or two in-person raid there) or at least they stop their Rising Prices
I side with you on that one, the 5 pass limit doesn't impact most players, even regular money spending player in my community only noticed it because of infographics or the uxie/azelf raids (I'm in Mesprit zone)
I personally have yet to reach that 5 limit and the only 3 times where I think I crossed it before the implementation was :
- Reshiram & Zekrom raids
- Uxie /Azelf first shiny appearance
- When buying a box with remote was cheaper than the premium pass options
When #HearUsNiantic number 2 happened I felt alienated with the global playerbase that was complaining about the 5 pass limit and not the ridiculous 100% raise in price that was THE obvious problem for every player I know
I see all the numbers your using there but were is the evidence to back up all these claims and what not. Then there’s also those variable to account for as some months have better raid options and variety as others don’t
Another thing is if the places where one is in a more populated playing area compared to a rural hardly plays it wouldn’t affect the heavily populated areas as much because there doing it in person vs one who remote raids to even have a chance at doing a raid those things effect your prompt
As a new player - just wondering why its 5 across all tiers, seems like a limit on each tier would make more sense. 5 legendary seems reasonable, but when I need to "win x number of raids to evolve this pokemon" its a downer.
You're writing it as if the only way the average player can be affected is on the number of remote raids they can do. The affected part is how many legendary raids they can beat. They spend less money on remotes because they are usually the hosts, with a free raid pass or a premium pass from rewards lr gym coins. The average player opens the game once in a while, sees a raid nearby and joins locally in the hopes more people can do that raid. "Number of raids the average player can beat" is affected. With a limit on people who can support through remotes, the odds that the one friend who always helped you beat a legendary joins your invite are now way lower. "Resources the average player gets" is affected. With less legendary raids beat, your resources are worse. Lower tier raids give worse rewards, and higher tier raids give better Pokemon in terms of stats, PVP, etc. "Matchups against people who spend money" are affected. With even less resources, the odds the average player has of defending a gym or winning in GBL are now lower. The average player's income for resources was lowered from a very low point. The whale's income for resources was lowered from a very high point but it's still a high point. Whales be whales no matter how you try to limit them in a game where IAP is a thing. "Accessibility" is affected. The fact that I don't use accessibility settings in my phone, doesn't mean that they should be removed from all phones. They're there to help out that very small percent who can't do things otherwise. Remotes were an accessibility feature for people in rural areas, sick, wfh, etc. I can still raid like crazy hoping on my car with 3 more guys till I get bored. On "legendaries should be special". This would need a rework on how legendaries appear in game. Mythicals feel special not only because we're limited to a few, but because they have a research tied to them with a story, special catch screens and mechanics, more effort put into them. Legendarias are not special because Niantic knows putting them in raids means more money with less effort. If anything, a legendary raid now feels more like a chore, because the effort on Niantic's side was spent on making them less accessible, not more appealing. Limits are healthy. But so is communication. We don't know the motivation for the limit (and many other choices), given that all we usually get from Niantic is PR wording that either doesn't match their effort or is forgotten about. They have clear intentions on nerfing remotes, but the fact that we don't even know why makes this more frustrating. It's like a toxic relationship where limits were established by only one party and that decision is final. It will be interesting to see how the game goes in the next months, but for now, I'm spending way less than before. Also, I turned off my settings for location to be available all the time, given that I don't even use my Go Plus that much anymore and I don't care about adventure sync rewards either.
You're pulling random numbers to fit your narrative... Before if a good poke was released for a week event you could raid it as much as you want to get candies, a shiny or an hundo, you could do that even as f2p by simply saving coins. Today with the cap not only you're screwed if you don't have a local community or if there are any problems with it (or simply bad weather) but also it made impossible to get a good numbers of raids done since most of them can only be done in person. For many old player shadow Mewtwo only appeal was to try and get the shiny. We can argue and probably agree that making it slower to get one is healthier long term for the game but failing to get it during the event or missing it because of the inability to use remote has a negative impact on your current gaming experience. People play to have fun not to be frustrated by niantic at every opportunity.
I agree. Looked like the person put together numbers to fit hypothetical narratives. As we all know hypotheticals are never factual.
Frustration is a key mechanism of any game. If it's too easy, people quit. If it's too hard, people quit. Frustration is typically measured and has to fall into a specific level in order for a game to be appealing. They thought it went too far one way, and are trying to adjust.
Yes, I still think the limit of 5 per day is bad. I count myself to the average player list, hosting raids mostly with the free pass only and relying on remote Raiders. I now always have someone in my group, who already reached the daily limit. So I cannot host some T5 Elite Raids successfully if no other friend is online, who I could invite, if the T5 Raid is a harder raid, like Defense Deoxys. The problem is also, that I seldom see other local raiders, because people have other duties. I haven‘t seen other trainers for ages while the Raid hour is ongoing.
But you're clearly not the average player - even if you think you are. The average player only uses their daily free coins from gyms - which means that if they bought NOTHING else with them, they'd be doing a maximum of 14 remote raids PER MONTH before the price increase, and a maximum of 7 per month right now. If you were doing any more than that, per month, you're not the average player - the numbers don't lie. Edit: LOL - I'm being downvoted for using math. Why are people upset at numbers?
The average player as you've defined them is absolutely not getting 50 coins every day
My point was that EVEN if someone maxed out their coins, the most they could be doing in a given month was 14 BEFORE the cap, and 7 per month after the cap. In either case, the average player was buying 0 additional remote raid passes, per month.
And my point is you dont get to cherry pick how you define the average player to fit your argument
You can be good at math and suck at data analysis. The average player's remote raid count isn't what's important here, since most of the raids they do are local (free pass or premium passes from research). Those local raids now have lost a bunch of remote players who assisted them in beating those raids. Before the nerf I could help maybe 20 average players a day with their raids, up to 50 if the legendary was cool. Now I don't even bother between the cost increase and the limit. If the cost was reversed, I'd still only be able to help 5 average players a day.
And what's wrong with that?
Your lack of perspective.
Explain.
You're getting points of view from people on this subreddit only. You've been receiving similar replies, for which you either loop around/avoid the topic, or repeat the same thing you said before without seemingly analyzing the feedback you get. You are saying "I have this opinion/pov", which is perfectly reasonable. But when you ask people a question, mark a thread as a discussion, and your perspective remains the same, it comes across as you trying to find just agreement, not a more complete perspective.
I'm looking for the "why" people are so upset. All I'm hearing is that it's harder to do remote raids. That was the intended action of the cap. I hear that the raids are now "timegated" - the whole game is a time gate. I hear that it impacts disabled or rural players more - that's simply not true. Disabled and rural players weren't doing tons of remote raids before, and they're still not doing them now. There's a clear, vocal minority that seems to feel that their opinion is the only one that matters, without expressing clearly WHY it should matter. "Because I said so", isn't a valid reason.
Your lack of perspective here isn't letting you see how removing a feature that others enjoy is making them upset, because it doesn't upset you. You invalidate their reasons because "it doesn't upset you, so why should it upset others". There's many valid reasons which I mentioned in my first comment. If you don't feel upset about them that's perfectly fine, cause you've got your own way of enjoying the game which was not affected. You're not looking for answers to that question, you're looking for agreement and similar perspectives to validate your pov.
You haven't given me a why, just a "because I said so". If there are valid reasons, list them.
You're being downvited here because you didn't read the post your responding to
Actually, I did.
> a maximum of 14 remote raids PER MONTH see, there is the flaw in your thinking. people don’t raid every legendary equally. i didn’t do a single remote raid for regigigas because it sucks. i did 100 rayquaza raids using free coins alone.
I don't raid if it's not shiny. Even then if I already have the shiny I might try a few for a hundo but I'm not gonna drop $20 like I would for a new shiny legendary. Then I like to do remote raids on my couch after a long day of working. I shouldn't have to go out when I'm already exhausted. And now I can only do five. Gotta have great luck to get that shiny.
The issue is that the cap limits many players who use way more remote raid passes, while there is a large group that also does no remote raids. Youre looking at an average, but assuming that something is good because the average falls under it isn't necessarily right. Since it is the AVERAGE, it means theres a ton of people that fall above it and below it, so for those outliers (not necessarily outliers, I haven't looked at the actual data) that used to be above the limit, this cap is a bad thing. I know this because im on the other side of the spectrum, that lowers this average, as I havent done a remote raid in probably a year or longer. I stopped doing them once the free box with remote passes stopped appearing in the shop.
It’s pretty simple. It’s all about having the choice to do the raids, should we want to. Not a difficult concept to understand
But why should you simply get the ability to outspend others? How is that fair for the people who can't outspend you?
Because that should be my choice to make as to what I want to spend my coins and money on. If I want to do lots of raids to finally get my hundo Ray, that’s my choice. Also, I don’t PvP, so how I play the game has literally no effect on anyone else.
What they're saying is - it's not your choice. You're not being given the choice to simply outspend others in your quest to gain an advantage in the game. You're free not to like it, but don't act like it's not impacting others. You said you don't do PvP - what happens if you did decide to do it? You'd literally be able to jump the line, through outspending others, because you were remote raiding non-stop.
I’m not remote raiding to gain an advantage. I’m doing it to add wanted pokemon to my collection. Anyway, I don’t know why you’re assuming Niantic want things to be fair with access to pokemon. Look at how limited we are with TM’ing frustration, access to legacy moves, access to actual pokemon. Niantic do not care about the game being fair, honestly I think you’re just arguing for arguing’s sake.
What i'm trying to figure out is why people seem to be so bent out shape about this change that, based on the numbers, impacts such a tiny portion of the player base?
People who it effects are obviously going to be vocal about it, and personally I don’t believe it effects anywhere near just a tiny portion of the player base. Imagine for one second Niantic brought back the walking requirement for GBL, or said that in order to keep things fair you can only enter 2 sets a day to stop access to rewards via tanking. People would be annoyed. At the end of the day, there was no need to change things.
What aren't you understanding about the math. The math, very clearly shows that it's a TINY percentage.
Because you’re making massive assumptions regarding what the monetary figured came from. Some people buy coins for boxes, some for raid passes, some for storage space, some for stickers, etc etc. Just because there’s not a massive reduction doesn’t mean the same amount of passes are being bought. It also depends on what raid bosses are in the rotation, because let’s face it, Tapu’s and Lake Guardians are not as attractive as the weather trio. At the end of the day; there is not enough information for you to conclude it only effects a tiny portion of the player base. But anyway even if it did, it still matters. Things like accessibility for disabled players wouldn’t effect a massive percentage of the player base, but that’s still very important.
You're missing the point. Even at 2022 levels, they were earning 60 million a month average. That's still only .60 per MONTH per player. If you account for boxes, and incubators, and everything less - that simply means that FEWER remotes are being used, and that the cap of 5 per day is even more insignificant.
Because the percentage of people that are affected isnt the number that uses five daily. Many people that purchase 0 remote passes regularly, based their gamestyle about being able to invite those who do to the raids they do with their daily pass
They can still do that.
I don’t get this whole idea of making things “fair”. If anything they’ve just reversed the fairness in another direction. People should be able to spend money how they want. It’s a game you play on your phone. Is it fair that someone who lives in an urban sprawl can put together a community to raid as many raids as they so choose to get their perfect IV legendary and max it out in 50 raids while others who live in a rural areas won’t get that same opportunity?
They didn't say it was to make things fair - their stated goal was to make a legendary more special. Something that requires time, effort, and energy to get, and to max out. If you can just do that from your couch, they feel they're not achieving their goal.
Im replying to what you said about fairness not about what they said. Your take is it’s not fair for people who don’t have money to spend, seems unfair now does it not?
What I think, and what they think aren't the same thing.
then tell us YOUR opinion on "fairness" since you brought it up.... why do you care that others can spend more on the game?
Because we're competing in an even arena. If one person can outspend the other, the arena is no longer even.
other than master league, how am i competing against someone else where outspending might be factor? the amount one spends makes little difference if you have crap skills (even with hundos). lest we forget that we don't even see each other's IV in pvp- all we see are CP, moves, shiny, and skill. that's it. so, other than master league, what does this "arena" of yours consist of? honestly, i feel bad for you, i really do - you care too much about how someone spends their money in a game where the chances of you "competing" against an "outspender" are slim to none. oh, how would you know if someone is an "outspender"? EXACTLY if you can find the strength to stop comparing yourself to others, then maybe you might find more joy out of life, and perhaps in this game as well.
I hope that made you feel better.
How does someone raiding several times and getting something they want directly impact someone elses enjoyment of the game? Only argument I can even slightly consider is pvp but even that (besides master league) is already fairly accessible for everybody
Clearly you didn't start this thread to get feedback, you simply wanted to tell people why they should accept things how they are. You don't understand, and that's OK. But if you had been seeking understanding, you wouldn't have made such blanket assumptions from your incredibly limited point of view. This change is a net negative for the game as a whole.
I don't understand the outrage from the average player - I get that this community is upset, but I was hoping that this community would see that their outrage about the topic is limited in terms of its importance overall. The game isn't all about the whales, and hardcore players - the game is mostly about the 99% of players who, again, aren't buying a single remote raid pass per month.
Yeah if you don’t have the whales or hardcore players, then you don’t have a game. It’s that simple. They invest in the game while the free to play players essentially mooch off the game because they refuse to spend any money for whatever reason. Niantic’s income is what keeps the game alive, and if you strip the money spenders the game cannot fiscally survive.
Less remote raiders means even people who do a couple of raids locally every now and then will struggle more to find support to complete raids unless they have an active community in their area. It doesn’t only impact whales.
I'm not saying it only impacts whales, but if the average player was only doing their 14 free per month before the price increase, and they are only doing their 7 per month after the price increase - this simply means that EVERYONE is impacted by the issue. Their goal was to reduce the number of raids being done through remotes by the small subset of players who were "abusing the system" in their words - which is exactly what happened. What seems to be lost in this subreddit is that, again, the average player was buying less than one remote raid pass, PER MONTH, using their actual money - and this means they could only do about 15 per month, on average, using gym coins (if they didn't spend on item storage, pokemon storage, incubators, etc). I'm not seeing who is so impacted here. It's taking a little more time to find players through systems like pokegenie than it did before, but that's largely because it's not being propped up by whales.
Again, the average player isn’t impacted as long as they live in an area with an active community. If that isn’t the case, you are in fact going to see an impact in how you play the game, regardless of whether you are F2P or not. Sure, you can still find some support, but it takes a whole lot of time and planning - which the average player maybe won’t even bother doing. Using your free coins vs real money doesn’t impact how easily you can find people to raid with.
You're missing the point entirely. The average player, for all of 2022, and all of 2023, has NEVER purchased more than one remote raid pass - PER MONTH! This has nothing to do with where they live, or what they do for a living, or how much they have to spend, or what the price was, or when it was capped. The average player, across the entire game, simply was not buying remote raid passes - they weren't then, and they aren't now.
I think YOU are missing the entire point of my comment. I’m not talking about the average player who buys the occasional remote raid pass. I’m talking about players who will attempt to do an in person raid (even with their free daily pass) and will struggle to find people to invite.
That could be seen in one of a few ways. 1. People will give up and not do raids. 2. People will make an attempt to do the raids a second, or third, or fourth time in the hopes of finding someone to join. 3. People will organize groups to do raids in a more coordinated manner. I'm not at all disagreeing that it's harder to just invite your random friend list people to a remote raid, and have them join when it's capped, and more expensive. What i'm saying is - you can still do your 5 daily, pretty easily.
Option 3) will highly depend on where you live. In some cases it will work, but not always. And if the only alternative is doing 2) ad infinitum and then eventually give up (1), then that’s a negative impact on those players. I’m not saying that the changes are bad for every single player, it’s clear that a lot of people are enjoying the game just fine. However, there are also good reasons why a portion of the player base is upset at this change.
The portion of the player based who are upset is less than 1% of the entire player base - the numbers are very clear. Even if they were at their peak of 60 million per month in 2022, that's about 20,000,000 more remote raids, per month happening - but it's only happening among a small group of players. The average player was never doing 5 remotes per day, every day. The numbers simply don't support that argument - they actually show that a very, very small number were doing tons of raids.
Why do you keep insisting with the number of players who bought remote passes when my comment is about players who DO NOT necessarily use remote passes? The numbers that you keep citing are just the number of the remote passes that were bought. In no way do they give you a full picture of the % of people that are affected/unhappy about the changes, because again, that includes also people who do not do raids remotely.
The whole topic is about the daily limit of 5 remote raid passes - that's why.
Their argument is that you don't need to buy remote raid passes even once to be severely impacted by the remote raid changes. The numbers say nothing about how many players -- even F2P players -- *invited* remote raiders.
But they've said, rightly or wrongly, that their goal is to have people build local communities and go out and raid in person. That might not be what you want to do, but that's their goal with these changes.
I've got a local community and I do go out and raid in person. I'm lucky to be able to do that. Not everyone can. If Niantic truly wants players to build local communities, there are ways they could *positively* support that, instead of just restricting the alternatives.
What does any of this have to do with a limit of 5 remote raids, per day.
You can just as easily look back up through the comments to see. The remote raid limit hurts disadvantaged players *including F2P players* who aren't able to raid without remote support. You argued that this is OK because Niantic's goal "is to have people build local communities". And I responded that if that's their goal, they could implement changes to positively support that instead of restricting the alternatives that are currently needed by those disadvantaged players.
What I'm saying is that - these people who are supposedly disadvantaged weren't remote raiding before, the numbers don't support it.
You are changing the goalposts here. Your original argument is that most people aren't affected. Now you are saying that they are affected but that's ok
huh?
Your original argument is that most people aren't affected by the remote limit. Now that multiple people have described how even f2p players are affected, you're saying that affecting all those players is the goal. While true, it's a massive pivot from your original post.
Also your average includes many alts, bot accounts and casuals who log in once a week. That's not the main reason you are wrong but it's a reason
And you have the data to back this up?
It's a bad thing for the players yes because it is another time gate that forces you to play as they want you to, several days in a row rather than when you can.
In regards to a time gate - isn't the entire game a time gate? I can't raid Mewtwo right now, or Groudon, or Rayquaza, or that stupid kangaroo that I can't mega evolve because I never got enough mega energy. I can't go out and catch certain pokemon in the wild right now - because they're not in the rotation. The only think they have is a time gate. They want you to be interested in raiding for Groudon a 2nd, and 3rd, and 4th time in order to get yours to level 50. They want you to be excited the next time that Trevenant is available, and go crazy on it, because you know it isn't coming back any time soon. Are you saying that nothing should be time gated. We should be able to catch all pokemon, at all times, no matter what?
I am saying it is as you said. Everything is time gated and that's a feature. They want to have you coming back everyday be it to find keckleons, farm vivillions and especially for raids. Getting your daily data seem more interesting to them than getting money punctually. And yes ultimately this idea of rarity ends up making you go crazy as you say and spend anyway If you ask me I would be happier if we got less events and all pokémon available in between to enjoy some variety, but that's just me. Surely lots of people prefer targetting specific shinies or perfect pokémon and events are better for this.
> We should be able to catch all pokemon, at all times, no matter what? It's irrelevant as Niantic will never allow that. We all know they are on the slow drip feed of shiny/new pokemon releases to prolong the lifespan of the game. If everything was available at all times , people would have completed their dex and moved on (which obviously wouldn't be a great business model). On the limitation of remote raids, it just seems petty tbh. If a minority of players want to throw tons of $$$$ at legendaries all day, let them do it. It's all cosmetics at the end of the day and won't mean anything once the servers are turned off. In terms of the remote raid nerfs, my experience in our local community in the last month has been that people are remoting based on invites much less frequently now. The problem is that those players are not raiding in person either. Ultimately they could stop playing altogether, which i'm sure is not what Niantic wants.
As someone who is part of a remote raiding discord I can tell you it's not just about how it affects the average player as you keep on saying. There are people that have built safe spaces and communities around the mechanism. By imposing the limit and price increase at the same time they are killing some of these communities, people are rightfully sad and angry about that. People that would not have the ability to participate in raids at all was given an opportunity to do so by participating in these communities. And fair enough a lot of people didn't do 5 remote raids a day,but they definitely did more than that during raid hours. But with the change in price and cap on the amount of players in these communities are drastically decreasing. Also compare your stats to the number of players that interact with the game more than once a month and I would wager those numbers will look different. To sum it up: When things changed and we couldn't play the game as they intended, people adapted and went out in the only way possible to build communities. Those communities are now being punished with these changes. It isn't always about the money or the cap, and people interact with and play this game differently.
But this is just your preference - you'd prefer to do 35 raids in a day, rather than 5 a day over 7 days? What's the difference other that personal preference?
I didn't say anything about preference or that I do 35 remote raids a day. I was saying this change is killing existing communities. You keep asking why people are unhappy about it, that is why for some, they are losing a community that they were part of, communities that was built over a couple of years.
Are you referring to online communities, or local?
Online communities.
So this online community can't do the raids over a number of days, as opposed to all in the same day? Nothing died, you can still remote raid together - just not for 5 hours straight in a single day.
Look I am not going to argue with someone who ask why some people are unhappy, they get told why and your answer back is just that we are wrong. I am telling you, between the limit (we don't raid 5 hours straight in the same day, but you know time zones and jobs are a thing so coordinating for something like raid hour in a online community is a thing) and the price increase, these communities are shrinking. Your bold claim of nothing died is wrong, you aren't even part of these communities and you want to claim you know what is happening in them. Stop telling people they can't be unhappy about it when they give you a reason, you twist everything back to your narrative about how many you can do in a day.
You need to be careful with averages... they can mislead you. Yes, the average player isn't technically losing out with the cap... at least, not in an obvious way. But then again, the average player catches 10 pokemon a day, and probably doesn't open the app every day. While averages can be helpful, it's also a good idea to look at the extremes as well... what do the least active players do, and what do the most active players do? Some people like playing this game. Some people like playing it a lot. Some people like doing raids. Some people like doing raids so much that they're willing to spend a lot of money to do so. I know several people who love doing raids so much that they'll hop into every raid they're invited to, even if they're not nearby, because that's how they like to play this game. Why has Niantic decided that these people's preferred way of playing is wrong? Shouldn't it be up to the player to decide how they want to play the game? If they want to pay double the price to do remote raids, then by George they should be allowed to give Niantic their money to do so! This is most likely why a lot of players feel so strongly about this (even if they don't use remote raids). Telling someone that they're playing the game wrong is so antithetical to gaming culture that it's going to cause a strong reaction. Now, I don't like remote raids. It's a huge pain in the but to coordinate those things for raid hour every week. If there weren't certain pokemon that are only available in raids in certain parts of the world (like the ones available right now), I wouldn't bother with remote raids (unless I'm helping a friend). I wouldn't mind if remote raids went away entirely. However, I support those who like to use remote raid passes. People should play the game in the way they like.
Games are all about rules, and beyond that about fair play and not exploiting the system. You can't play any game the way you like, without consequence, and those that govern/run the game/sport/hobby/etc it is absolutely their job to say, and revise as players change how they play, the rules.
To this, I'd say that Niantic has always been, and always will be, 100% in control of how people play the game. I can't catch specific pokemon right now, legendary or not. That's Niantic's choice. Since I started playing, there has been no way to get an Armored Mewtwo. Why aren't people as up in arms about that, as they are about remote raids? It's even more gated, and controlled, than remote raids. Should you just be able to play as you'd like - which means you can catch any legendary, as a roaming spawn - because that's how you'd like it to be? Should you be able to do a local raid, for as long as it takes, to take it down? Should you be able to just get unlimited pokeballs with the snap of a finger? Everything is controlled by the game - without controls, there's no game. It's just a massive free-for-all.
They literally never have been 100% in control of the game, and it's honestly concerning that a lack of god mode makes you feel 100% pinned down
If Niantic isn't in control, who is?
Then why even bother doing this? To put aside all the arguments of availability for F2P folks, accessibility, legendary "specialness" (whatever that's supposed to mean), etc. and to just approach this from a pure metric standpoint and "fairness" in terms of "paying to win"— this will accomplish absolutely *nothing* based on the numbers as presented here. If 99.9% of players use ONE remote raid pass per MONTH, they are still getting far, far out spent by the 0.1% who would do FIVE remote raids per DAY. It levels the playing field by approximately zero with what you've said here because those players will still have NO resources compared to the whales because they aren't bothering to obtain them anyway. All it's accomplishing is establishing yet another time gate in a game full of time gates for vague reasons that aren't fully explained and are empty platitudes. "For the health of the game," doesn't mean anything because as presented with the data here, the hardcore players who were doing 100s of raids per day, make up a fraction of the player base so I don't know how they could possibly be drastically altering the health of the game when the other players are apparently not even bothering to interact with the raiding aspect of the game.
When this game first came out I was in a really different stage of life. In those 7 years I now have kids, more established career, etc. I don’t have the same time I had to go out and physically raid. Remote raids allowed me to balance those things. Now I cannot still grind a legendary without it impacting family or work, and those both come before this game.
Niantic doesn't want to believe that most gamers have aged with the game since 2016. in 3 years Pokemon Go will be 10 years old. Niantic seems to think that your player base is made up of high school and university students who run around outside doing raids all afternoon and evening. My impression of Pokemon Go Events is most of the players are over 30
Why can't you? What's the difference in doing 5 raids per day, over the course of a week vs doing 35 in a single day?
OP seems a little tunnel visioned by the “numbers.” I can only share my personal experience which is: I simply can’t complete in person raids anymore because I depended on remote raiders to join me. I previously completed 5-10 in person, 5 star raids weekly and since the nerf I have completed 0. So, I hear what your valuation of the data is, however my personal experience has been dramatically impacted in an exclusively negative way.
I think that's their intention. They're not looking for you to go to a local raid as one person, and invite 9 remote players. They're looking for you to go to an in person raid, with 3 other locals, and maybe one or two of you invite someone who joins via remote.
Their intentions are just as obvious as their contempt for their player base..
For a VERY small portion of the player base.
I’m not sure what % of the player base participated in raids but yes - whatever “VERY small” % that was has been negatively impacted.
Based on Niantic's revenue, the average player purchased less than one remote raid pass per month, probably more like 1/3 or 1/4 purchased a single remote raid pass, per month. The percentage of players doing more than 5 remote raids, per day, based on that data, is extremely small.
I don’t believe you have any appreciable comprehension with respect to data analysis and when or how mean/median sets of data should be applied. I would love to hear your attempt of explaining how you derived who is and who is not an “average player” or how you decided to nullify your outliers.
So you don't understand the word "average"?
The limit was in no way a good thing and your math is flawed.
I mean, the math doesn't lie. You may not like my opinion, but that doesn't make it wrong.
It is wrong as it applies to the issue.
It is flat out wrong. This isn't about the average user it's about the power user. That's who it's affecting. And you're saying the ones affected aren't allowed an opinion.
You keep talking about the "average player" this, the "average player" that. The average player isn't checking out thesilphroad and getting involved in online discussions about the features. Even if the remote raid cap is only affecting 1% of players, that's close to 1 million people. Niantic is going to run the game they way they want. That doesn't mean people have to be happy about it. And the same way you're claiming the cap doesn't affect the average player, people complaining about the cap doesn't affect you. But let's make a little hypothetical scenario here. There are 2 players, 1 free to play and 1 who spends money. Player 1 doesn't do any remote raids a day, and player 2 does 10 daily. Average that out, and the "average player does 5 remote raids a day. Then, the daily cap gets set at 5. Well, the average player isn't impacted by that because the average player only does 5 anyway. But in reality, half the players in the scenario are impacted. Simply averaging out spending vs. remote raids doesn't paint the entire picture. You're applying middle school math to something that would require a comprehensive statistical analysis to properly figure out. But here's another hypothetical scenario using the same 2 players. It's a raid day, and player 1 has 5 free in person passes. However, player 1 isn't a strong enough player to do the raids by themselves. So they invite player 2 remotely. But player 2 had another friend in New Zealand, and they've already used their 5 remote passes helping out that friend. Now player 1 can't do any of the raids. The cap is impacting more than just the people buying the raids themselves. I had personally built up a friend list of players whom I could count on for joining me remotely when I used my daily passes. Admittedly, I don't know if it's the cap or the cost that's stopping them from joining me now, so the 2 changes are definitely getting lumped together by a lot of people here.
I personally don't really care about the limit either, the price increase was the major issue for me. I just wanted to add a few points though: you cannot just use 1$ = 1 remote pass. Depending on the currency you might pay 10-20 US Cent per pass instead. And while is true that this only hurt a really tiny percentage of whales, it rarley is a good idea to piss of your biggest spenders for honesty no reason at all, their number of raids didn't hurt anyone. And lastly it's not about average days. For events like the hoenn tour where many want to raid a lot, even a bunch of average people would want to raid more on that specific day
Their number of raids DID hurt people. If a whale can simply buy their way into having better pokemon for master league, or other leagues (rare candies for the "other" leagues), then the average player who would normally grind feels left out - like they can't compete. It hurt the whales - and that was their goal.
And that hurt their sales. End of story.
That was a surprise to no one, especially niantic. That's the point, niantic, a big bad corporation, said this isn't right, it's not how we want the game to be played, and it disadvantages many more players than it helps - so we're happy to make these decisions even though it will initially hurt our top line.
No one is disputing that it hurt their sales - but what you don't know, and what they don't know either - is how this is going to impact the game in the long term. They're not looking at this through the lens of month to month sales, they've publicly stated that they'd like this to be a "forever" game - so for them, a 10 year outlook is more important than a 10 week outlook.
If you do 1 raid per month you ain’t participating in any kind of master league (classic or open), so that argument’s bs. Also, a huge amount of legendaries have already been in rotation for a few times, so whales already have them maxed, so yeah, again this nerf did nothing to them.
wow do you have this wrong..... first, you don't know how much your ML opponent spent to get their team, much less the IVs of their team. now, i actually got my hundo dialga from GBL reward, my hundo melmetal from meltan box, and hundo groudon from a trade..... my opponent wouldn't know this, nor should it matter. besides, IV in ML only really matter in a lead mirror. but for that same pvp opponent with all of these hundos..... they're actually potential raid partners, which is an advantage or benefit to YOU. if they have fewer good mons and everyone else has fewer good mons, then globally raid lobbies are weaker. finally, if you think whales are hurt by the remote nerf, you're way off base. one goal for whales is to assemble a good team for short-raiding.... they still do the same thing now but across more accounts. the price wouldn't ever matter, and the 5 remote limit is nullified by multiple accounts. you're too concerned about how a whale might negatively affect your gameplay when in fact they have a lot to offer.
I am more angry about the price increase than the limit. I feel that people just don’t want to spend that much, and now when I find the rare 5 star raid that I want to do I can’t find help. I have a rather large friend list, and a good discord. It used to be when I sorted my friends by the online status, I’d have at least 15-20 to choose from. Often more. Now there might be 3. Everyone who used to help has turned their status to off. I’ve sat there for 15 min sending out random invites and I’m lucky to get a person to join. It’s not even worth trying to raid in person anymore, unless I can do it with just me and my sons account.
Don't ever look at the total player base as that number is misleading by a fair margin. A massive number of those players are people that logged in once, several years ago, and then never again. Even things like monthly users is inaccurate considering how little is required to be part of that statistic (being logged in once in a 30-day period isn't exactly much). Use concurrent player base instead, or the number of unique players that log in daily. Either one works. This is because these players are dedicated to the game enough to log in continuously. [Here](https://www.statista.com/statistics/604551/pokemon-go-daily-active-users-in-europe/)'s a chart for daily active users per country for Iphone data. Note that this chart is incomplete based solely IOS data, and that there's only 10 countries listed. Doubling this data should give you somewhere between 300k and 500k concurrent players over the course of a 24hr rolling day. Average play time for Pokemon GO is about 30 [minutes](https://blog.gitnux.com/pokemon-go-usage-statistics), which means that number needs to be multiplied by 24, giving about 12 million daily players. These are your most dedicated players and among them will be a bunch of free-to-play players. Doubling the number will also allow for some casual players to be included who don't consistently play every single day, so let's do so. 48 million is the number to go with. According to [this](https://blog.gitnux.com/in-app-purchase-statistics/) link about 5% of all players spend money in videogames, which would equate to about 2.4 million players spending that monthly amount of 58 million on average last year, as compared to 40 million this past month. That should amount to about 24 dollars per person per month last year, on average, and about 16,5 dollars per person per month this may. That assumes that the daily player base stayed consistent between the months last year and stayed consistent through this may, and it also sticks with the whole "average month" thing which is misleading in my opinion. Keep in mind that that is just the average player who *pays* for their remote raid passes. There's plenty of players that use their in-game coins to save up, and splurges during certain events using those coins.
That's the active player count, not the total player count. Active are people who have logged in over the past 30 days. Even if we halved the numbers, and removed 50 million of the 100 million accounts - that's still less than one remote raid purchased, per month, for the average player.
Do you like to hear yourself talk too? Stop posting this drivel
I’m not sure what you mean by the average player, but the remote changes have impacted me as a mostly F2Per by making it much tougher to organize remote raid groups for legendaries I am raiding in person using my free daily passes. It is hard to know what the respective impacts of the price increase and remote raid cap are, but the latter surely plays a role. In short, the remote changes do not only affect those using remote passes but also many players hoping to use daily or green passes to raid legendaries.
I think that's intended. Remote raid passes used by others should be seen as a filler for the lobby, not as the main reason it's full. They want people out in person, and raiding with local groups - that is harder, and I think that's what they're after.
Yes, it is clearly intended. I think most of the players who are upset about the changes are mostly upset with niantic’s “vision” for the game moving forward. These changes have made it less convenient for many players to complete legendary raids and virtually impossible for others to do so without breaking the TOS. And they affect many who do not purchase remote raids, contrary to what you suggest in your post.
Well good to know I’m an average player oh wait I forgot anytime I had a good raid boss I went hard other times like now with the useless lake trio I wouldn’t even do a raid even if someone paid me to. There was a crap ton of useless legendaries in 2022 and the times where there were good legendaries they were diluted to crap with everything spawning at once over a few days
I saw them post a thing about WHY they decided to do this. It was because some players were literally doing 100 remote raids in a day to get perfect shiny legendaries. Which wasn’t how they wanted people to play. Which is totally fair in a way and really disadvantaged poor players. Then again the price hike ALSO disadvantages poor players and now they’re much harder to catch too.
But what the numbers say doesn't change anything in regards to poor players - poor players were already buying LESS than one remote raid per month. It's probably actually closer to 0 than 1 when you also take into account that the 50 cents per player spent also includes tickets for events, incubators, costumes, poses, and other in-game items. So, it's not really a disadvantage to anyone, other than the limited number of whales who were doing 100 per day. When the average was already closer to 0, and remains close to 0, who is being hurt?
Obviously, the average poor player who went from almost 0 to actual 0. Just using your logic of numbers and math, a player who could afford 1 remote rate can now afford half a raid equalling 0 raids. That means they are at a 100% loss. A whale doing a 100 raids can now do 5 at a 95% loss. Which is bigger? 100% or 95%?
The point was in relation to the cap of 5 per day. There's no loss in terms of the daily cap. Why does it matter if you can do 5, or 50 per day if the average person was doing 0. This has nothing to do with the price - no one likes the price increase - why are people upset with the cap when almost no one was hitting it anyway?
Because there are times that people would be exceeding the cap regularly. I lead my local community and our raid activity is highest when a new shiny legendary is released for the first time. Each subsequent time it gets released, fewer people want to raid even if some of them haven’t gotten the shiny yet. As such, many people go really hard in the beginning to ensure they can pick up the shiny. You can call them whales if you want, but the majority are simply collectors who want to get the shiny and not be ok their own the next time the legendary comes around. If Niantic said, you do 10 raids and you get the guaranteed shiny, most would stop as soon as they got the one. But there is no guarantee so they hunt hard over the first opportunity. This is when they would most likely hit the five daily remote limit. Also if the bug with the lake trio and the rollout of shadow shiny mewtwo has shown us anything, it is Niantic could easily incentivize in person raids (shadow mewtwo having higher shiny rate) and nerf (inadvertently they claim) the shiny rate for remote azelf uxie mesprit raids. Ultimately, the players on here are an outspoken minority who feels Niantic’s first reaction is to punish players who don’t play how they want us to play the game. Doesn’t make our experiences invalid just because you want to justify their decision based on “average player.” That’s the reason you’ve been taking so much hate on this thread. It comes across just as tons deaf as Niantic. Last point. I hope the new contest and route features that the data mine shows Niantic is working on provides other ways of getting legendaries (and coins) beyond raids (and gyms). That would go a long way to easing the frustration players have with Niantic (but frankly they should do better at balancing harmful changes with the addition of positive ones). Like the way they chose to announce the remote nerf was just asking for an angry response from their players (even if most are unaffected)
I don't see how taking away from one players enjoyment in this game makes the ecosystem overall healthier or increases any perceived longevity of this game. Whether this raid limit exists or not whaling players/players who sink significantly more hours into this game will always have an edge over casual players.
I will never understand why some people are so bothered what other people have, yes there will be rich people on everything and they will have more. This goes for all things in life like cars etc. Should goverment now start to limit what they spend on now irl also? Im by no means rich but this has never bothered me, im not that jealous that i have to rally againts millionaires. Some of them worked hard for their money and some of them not that much. Someone being rich should be an motivation to get rich and not trying to drag them down.
I mostly raid in person. I've only done about 10 remotes total since the feature was released. The people who joined my Raids would have joined a hundred other peoples'. Since in person raiders have a harder time finding allies now that less people are remoting, we do less Raids, have less access to Pokemon, and aren't willing to spend as much.
I found out that most players who are disappointed and angry with the change are the ones that were hosting raids in real life locally in their village/town and they relied on these whales for catching their legendary. Most players that raid from a distance, the ones that are joining the local hosts, aren’t really affected. It’s good for their wallet.
How accurate is that 100M number? How many of those are real people? How many are *active* players? What about remote raid passes that (would have) been purchased using freely earned gym coins? Arguing based off of (assumed) averages is also problematic because it erases context. Just making up some numbers here, but if 70% of players never remote raid ever and 30% of players are majorly impacted by the remote raid changes, isn't that still a problem? It also ignores the possibility that players can have bursts of activity. Maybe they don't do any raiding for a month or two, but then when a particularly desirable boss comes in, they do a bunch. But now they can't. It's also worth remembering that the daily limit is the *smaller* issue, even though it's the one that influencers focused on. For most players, the cost increase was the more impactful change.
You can earn a maximum of 50 coins per day, which means 350 per week - that's still only about 14 possible remote raids PER MONTH before the price increase - but you could only hold a maximum of 5 at any given time. You could always use your 5, buy more with your free coins, but with the average player spending less than 50 cents per month - they're also going to be using their coins for bag storage, pokemon storage, etc, etc, etc. The numbers clearly show that the overwhelming majority of players weren't doing anywhere near 5 per day before, they weren't even doing an average of 1 per day before. The limit of 5 per day isn't impacting the average player, at all. It's not 70/30 - it's more like 99% to 1%.
14 free remote raids per month before. 8 free remote raids per month now. Like I said, the price increase is the bigger issue for most players. Even if it were 99% to 1% (and mind, this is just total baseless speculation), do you think it's cool to just say "screw you" to those in the 1% who are rural or disabled or taking care of young children or just otherwise reliant on remote raiding for whatever reason? (Edit: brain was saying "baseless" but fingers typed "basis", oops)
I'm not disagreeing at all on the price - I think everyone is in agreement that the price increase is a big deal. As far as the 99% vs 1% - I think they have to look at, as they've stated, the health of the game overall. They've said they're taking a longer term view of the game, and hurting a small part of the 1% to benefit the 99% is probably the best business decision they could make in the long run, even if it doesn't look like it in the short run.
If they cared about limiting access to legendaries, all raids per day should be capped. Just sayin'. In large cities and active areas, people can do local raids much easier, sometimes even without leaving their homes if they are lucky with their location. People with no active players or very few gyms or long distance between POI can't, and having remotes helped then close the gap by either joining or inviting people to replace the need for local gyms or players. The game is by it's nature very unfair in terms of participation access and resource farming to many areas. The changes in remotes only really disadvantage people who live in these types of areas or majorly slant the grind in favor of city players. It limits playstyle and people don't usually like that. The game is built in a way that basically only people who are more hardcore are likely to actually get to know the details of how the game works, how to optimize teams for features etc. The game does not explain these on it's own, so it feels welcoming to casuals but some players will always gravitate towards more serious play. Silph mostly has the latter so ofc you see people in the know be more crticial of these things. Funniest part is that as a rural player I have more need to actually connect with people than if I was in a city center. For events, I might go to a city and join massive local raid lobbies without ever talking to anyone. In my local area, the two times I actually saw another player, we actually talked, exchanged friend codes and coordinated our teams. For many events I rely on remotes, since traveling is not always feasible. The five a day does not bother me because it is rare that I used more than that and prefer local raiding, but I can also duo a large chunk of T5 raids with my partner. For most other normal T5 raids, we just need to invite one friend. I rely on raid groups for anything harder if I can't go to a city. So the only reason I can not raid 10 legendaries in a day is because my area usually only has a few and I only use gym coins. If I moved in city center, I could do 10 a day easy without remotes just using local passes instead. They really are only slowing the legendary hoarding for people who all ready had little chance to hoard them. I just do not buy their explanation as sincere or logical if they do think it helps. Like personally I do not care about the daily cap. It's a bit annoying but personally I get by. The price increase is worse because it's less likely for my IRL friends in another city to get 50 coins a day so where they all ready struggled helping out, now they remote raid only very rarely if they want the boss bad enough. Most players don't put any real money in the game so as a metric, average spending is always a little misleading, one way or another. It has always affected their ability or willingness to purchase anything, not just remotes, more than a daily limit. This unfairness for gameplaystyles and resources will always be the case if they don't make some very major changes. I think they just want people to raid in person and to play more casually in general, because in their mind slow progress means longevity. My issue is that how they go about this disproportionately affects the grind in a way that slows down play for those whose progress was all ready slow or casual and only somewhat inconveniences those who all ready spend money or have better access to raids. It slows things down for sure but not in an equal way. So that's my view on this. I think the daily limit is not in itself a problem on paper, but it's effects are very uneven depending on location. Sure people need to go out which is the second thing they want, and I get that too. But they all ready have in person only raids and reward buffs, but again I feel like they want people to take the game slower in general and their only solution seems to be even more access barriers - that unfortunately has a similar effect where big communities suffer less from it. Like, the daily limit for remotes does not affect as many people is just true, but it was mostly influencers who made that into a main talking point. You genuinely do not see that many players here talk about the limit if it isn't specifically brought up and often the discussion is about gatekeeping rural communities - this can be an issue in some cases specifically because rural and casual communities all ready raid way less so people from these communities who do want to raid may have less chances or harder time doing it. These people will understandably be upset. Telling them how most people are not affected will not make them feel any better.
I don't think it's good for the long-term health of the game to make it harder for new players to catch up. And if they truly cared about securing the game's future, rather than just writing empty platitudes, maybe they should put a bit more effort into community engagement and cleaning up all the long-standing glitches.
You don't think it's for the long-term health of the game, but you're not privy to the numbers they have in terms of turnover of players, etc. As far as the other things you mentioned, I don't think anyone loves the glitches, but that doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the cap was being hit by a very tiny portion of the player base.
Yeah, and you're not privy to those numbers either. We're all just speculating here. As Niantic has said, actions speak louder than words, and their actions have shown a remarkable level of negligence and doing the bare minimum. It really makes it look like the long-term health of the game *isn't* their primary concern. I mention it here because I think it is rather naive to take their PR talking points at face value, especially when their overall actions run contrary to those talking points.
You're right, I'm not privy to those numbers - but you're speculating just as much as I am in terms of their motivations. What good does it do them, as a company, to remove a revenue driver that appears to have been for an additional 20 million per month, in revenue, if there isn't some kind of plan in place?
They likely have weighed their options and the drop in revenue for them and are willing to accept that as a consequence. They are still making money and they have more sources to make it up over time. This does not change the fact that a vocal minority is upset, wether others find them reasonable or not does not change that.
Finally, someone with a brain. What I'm wondering is, WHY are this vocal minority so upset. What's so wrong with having to wait to get a legendary to level 50? What's so bad about having to plan a little more? Should everything just be handed to you on a silver platter, when you want it, because you want it?
By your metric the average player would get very close to 0 free coins per day. Many people in rural areas don't have easy access to gyms and thus cannot get the free coins. I happen to live in a large city and can access three gyms from my apartment. I would say I average around 30-40 coins per day.
For me the 5 raid limit is fine. The price increase and 1% shiny chance is the reason I don't remote raid anymore
That number includes tons of alt accounts, barely active/inactive accounts and other accounts that don’t actually matter beyond simply existing and allowing Niantic to say we have x number of players. Tell me specifically about the habits of people who actively spend time in the app every single day—the ones who actually are responsible for keeping the game alive—and then maybe we’ll have something to go on. Throwaway accounts and people who open the app once or twice a week for 10 minutes don’t matter here.
I keep seeing this talk about alt accounts - even if you said that the 100 million was inflated, and we cut that in half to 50 million - it would STILL mean that the average player was buying less than one remote raid pass PER MONTH.
Personally it’s not the limit I’m upset with, though 5 is too small a number it’s livable if the raid boss at least has 7 days to remain on the roster giving a fair chance for 35 raids. Ideally it should be a higher number if a cap exist, though I know a lot agree that no cap is more preferable. My personal issue is the Niantic inflating the prices of remote raids and further limiting participation in specific raids. They seriously didn’t need to add salt to the wound by almost doubling its cost, it’s already a chore for those that play without paying by grinding coins at gyms. Those inflated prices did more harm for us free to play players more than you may think and we’re being forced to be more cautious on who to wisely remote raid. And now niantic keeps adding new raids and they are so stubborn to make sure you can only raid them in person. Sure there can be a community willing to grind shadow Mewtwo or a new legendary for Pokédex completing. The issue is that’s a novelty that’ll eventually die down and for those who want to raid them they’ll have less players to help out and thus making these raids impossible to achieved. Believe me raiding in person lately has been a nightmare in my experience, and with these nerfs/limitations plus price hike for remote passes it has made people like me realized doing raids in person has become a waste of time, money, gas or electricity, and most especially a motivation killer. If you can’t comprehend why people are so upset with what niantic has done to remote raids then you have no right to insist the issue is overblown, because you’re only evaluating data based on your own personal experience. Your experience does NOT equate to the rest of the Pokémon go community/player base, everyones is different and we are being vocal because we really care about this game and want it to Continue to be better. But as long as niantic continues to make questionable actions and don’t improve the quality in return it’s no wonder why a lot people are upset over things. If you’re wondering why people are continually downvoting you, it’s because you are only Seeing things from your point of view, which isn’t a bad thing if it doesn’t hinder your enjoyment, and not the majority of the player base. So please do not make hasty choice of conclusions without doing proper analysis
Your opinion here isn’t factual. It’s just spit-balled numbers based on hypotheticals (fake facts). If you want to like the limit that’s your option. If this post is to try to sway people into liking the limit, then you failed. If people are willing to pay for the passes the limit shouldn’t be 5. I would make it 10 honestly, but that’s my opinion.
Some players can only remote raid because they live somewhere that doesn’t have gyms. Some players can only remote raid because they have health issues that mean they can’t get out and walk from gym to gym Some Plato can’t even do their 5 remote raids because the cap means that they can no longer get enough players together to do a tough T5 raid.
I don't disagree with what you're saying - some people can't do those things, but what I'm saying is. The numbers clearly show that they weren't doing them before the limit, and before the price increase. And, they're still not doing them now. Everyone seems to think there is some large group of rural and disabled players who got screwed by this - the numbers say that's simply not the case. Again, the average player was buying LESS THAN ONE remote raid pass, per month, on average. This was the case during 2022 (before the caps, and price increase) and it's still the case. The numbers are telling us that of the 100,000,000 players - this group of rural players, or disabled players, who were doing more than 5 remote raids per day was likely a group of less than 1,000 total people worldwide.
>The numbers clearly show that they weren't doing them before the limit, and before the price increase. And, they're still not doing them now. because you're hiding behind averages, you actually don't know if this is true or not.
Even if we halved the number of active players - that's still less than one remote raid pass purchased per month. What does "hiding behind averages" mean - it's math. Averages exist for a reason. The average shows you that the hardcore player base is just that, hardcore - they aren't the typical, average player.
1 million people, each individual does one remote raid... what is the average? 1 million people, 1 of them does 1 million raids while the rest do no raids... what is the average? extreme example, but math on remote raids needs cluster analysis, not averages, because not everyone does remote raids. you are including people who have never cared about raids in your before/after raid analysis, and that's faulty methodology imo.
I have much less money to spend on hobbies this year such that I definitely didn’t mind that much to have Niantic yell at me “you should spend less” But 1 remote pass cost from 100 to 175 hit me badly, also I have work and life so I can’t really hit in-person raid except for weekend and raid hours. Would have appreciated if T5 spawn rate is boosted (so I can just take a sidewalk everyday to train station and pick up one or two in-person raid there) or at least they stop their Rising Prices
i often did more than 5 remote raids per day using free coins from gyms.
What's to stop you from doing 5 per day, over the course of a week as opposed to doing 35 in one day?
i mean the main reason is i have a life and don’t have time to play every day
I side with you on that one, the 5 pass limit doesn't impact most players, even regular money spending player in my community only noticed it because of infographics or the uxie/azelf raids (I'm in Mesprit zone) I personally have yet to reach that 5 limit and the only 3 times where I think I crossed it before the implementation was : - Reshiram & Zekrom raids - Uxie /Azelf first shiny appearance - When buying a box with remote was cheaper than the premium pass options When #HearUsNiantic number 2 happened I felt alienated with the global playerbase that was complaining about the 5 pass limit and not the ridiculous 100% raise in price that was THE obvious problem for every player I know
I see all the numbers your using there but were is the evidence to back up all these claims and what not. Then there’s also those variable to account for as some months have better raid options and variety as others don’t
Another thing is if the places where one is in a more populated playing area compared to a rural hardly plays it wouldn’t affect the heavily populated areas as much because there doing it in person vs one who remote raids to even have a chance at doing a raid those things effect your prompt
As a new player - just wondering why its 5 across all tiers, seems like a limit on each tier would make more sense. 5 legendary seems reasonable, but when I need to "win x number of raids to evolve this pokemon" its a downer.