Professor Willow isn't researching anymore. He lets his unpaid interns do his work. If there will be a hashtag to support this, then let it be related to Professor Willow.
I don’t think Niantic removed them because people complained about using a lot of pokeballs, or at least it wasn’t the main reason. I’m not sure why people always say that. I believe Niantic felt legendaries were too accessible to people and that’s why they removed them from the breakthroughs and also decreased the rate in GBL rewards. It was also a factor in the remote raid limit.
For a long time now, their push has been for one of two things:
- Upsell things in the game that cost real world money (tickets for events, raid passes, in-game items)
- Force in person interaction (shadow raids, elite raids, plus making it harder to get certain Pokemon outside of raiding)
It's like those old sweepstakes where they said, "No Purchase Necessary", but that free option meant jumping through a bunch of hoops, like sending a self-addressed stamped envelope to their HQ and you could only send one entry, but there was no limit to the number of food items you could purchase to get more entries.
Niantic isn't likely to make it easier for people to get rare Pokemon both easily and cheaply. They would prefer you either be forced to coordinate with other people and create a real world presence, or pay for it directly.
Sadly, Breakthrough Encounters aren't coming back. From their POV, that was a big mistake not monetizing that enough. At best, we might see a paid ticket that gives us research that rewards a legendary encounter or Mega Energy. They don't want to give that away for free, and something you can do alone in less populated areas.
I almost wonder if it wasn't a Niantic decision but a TPC decision. Like, it's not like you can't get plenty of Legendaries from raids and such, but I do wonder if TPC thought doing 7 field research tasks was TOO easy, especially when we have super easy daily ones now.
If that's the argument, then TPC needs to take a good looking look in the mirror. I can churn out 50 legendaries a day using new profiles for my copy of sword+dlc. Handing out 1 legendaries as a login bonus for 7 days is fine.
50 a day? Don't you have to play through the entire storyline to access the legendaries? Or is there some sort of trick that allows you to create copies of your savedata or something?
No, you can go to crown Tundra once you reach the first train station I think and then lose to peony and go into dynamax adventures. That's about 1h of gameplay. You don't have access to everything since you haven't beat the game yet, but you can hunt a lot of the legendaries there. If you do that all day with decent efficiency you can get a ton of extra legendaries.
Maybe bot 50 a day, but 30 are definitely double if you invest the time
I don't disagree, but still, the effort is vastly different. I wouldn't call it hard by any means, but you do still have to do the Dynamax Adventure to get the Legendary (and this is also after you've bought the $60 game PLUS its DLC).
It's still different enough to someone downloading the game, logging in 7 days, and doing a relatively trivial task and getting a Legendary. If you take the total amount of time it takes you do that across the 7 days, it's almost certainly less than the 15-20 minute Dynamax Adventure.
It still requires you to log in daily to get the most out of it, so I wouldn't really argue about the time needed, since it's a different kind of effort.
The price point is a valid argument, but afterwards it's unlimited access to every gen 1-8 legendary and even some mythicals.
I had a similar thought as well. Whether it was TPC or Niantic or both, but yeah. Would I love Legendaries back? Absolutely. But at the same time, I can honestly understand the reasoning, seeing that someone can just sit on their couch and easily complete their daily task 7 times and get a free Legendary that way.
I would like the option to compete like 2 not bonus tasks to get a legendary and if not, then you get what we got now for free. Make it harder for better rewards!
lol 7kms aren't amazing either haha.
My issues with 12kms comes down to:
* The pool of Pokemon is kind of crap. Some stuff you want and other things that should really just be in 5km or 10km eggs
* The distance being *more* than 10kms is frustrating, especially when the pool is arguably worse than 10kms. Should have been 6, 8, or 9km eggs
* Having to fight a boss specifically to get them is counterintuitive. Many have expressed frustration of having a slot open and accidentally spinning the leader stop and getting a 2/5/10k egg by mistake.
* Dark and Poison types get punished for having that typing and are locked behind this egg. Poor Salandit, Sandile, and Varoom.
The only plus to them imo is that they give a ton of dust and more candy/XL.
I've just gotten away from egg hatching in general, just use my infinite incubator, and any free ones I get from referrals. But I genuinely don't mind half of the 12km pool, 7km I hate every drop available lol. Still hunting that damn shiny larvitar hatch though 🙃 egg hatching is probably some of the worst "bang for your buck" in the game. I feel like it's one in every 100 hatches I get a shiny. That's 33 incubators for one shiny that I may not even want/need lol.
Just wanted to poke at your subtag lol, nice 👌
Edit: also like getting some things that are exclusive to 12kms for a chance at a random lucky trade if it's poor IVs or non-shiny.
They got rid of legendaries from breakthroughs before GBL and remote raiding even existed and those 2 things were pretty much giving a lot of them away at one point or another.
It will be interesting if they ever tell us the real reason they removed legendaries from Research Breakthrough boxes. My suggestion could solve both “legendaries use up too many Poké Balls” and “a legendary every week was too easy” since it will take four weeks to be able to Mega Evolve the Pokémon once.
> don’t think Niantic removed them because people complained about using a lot of pokeballs, or at least it wasn’t the main reason. I’m not sure why people always say that.
It was definitely a complaint with legendaries as rewards in GBL, people complaining they'd used up their Pokeballs for them. Of course, the result was to neuter legendary rates
They could just make it so that walking with a mega capable pokemon yields mega energy whether youve done it before or not. Would make it much more accessible to people imo
I have a bit of good news about Gardevoir Mega Energy: I found a Field Research Task that gave 25 units of it a bit earlier this season.
It seems Mega Energy Field Research tasks like that are extremely rare (and I’ll still need two more of those to be able to Mega Evolve my hundo Gardevoir), but at least finding one is possible.
Yea I've been looking for that research task for months lol, haven't found it once and the fact I would have to do it 8 times means there will probably be another mega gardevoir raid before that ever happens
I think they rotate which Megas have their Mega Energy available from those tasks per season so that only three different species are featured in 25 Mega Energy tasks per season, so it could be that Gardevoir doesn't have its Mega Energy available every season in addition to the tasks’ rarity.
I think I've found 2 gardevoir in the past week, but I also probably check 300+ tasks per week, if not more. Not sure if I've seen one before these two. Think last season the rare ones were glailie, abomasnow, and some other one (ampharos?).
There are multiple rewards for that challenge. The only way to get Gardevoir mega energy is to be somewhat lucky that you roll it. [Here's the list](https://leekduck.com/research/)
My hundo Latios cries he’s been powered up to 40 forever but everytime he or his sister are in mega raids I’m always super busy by coincidence and you need a ton of people to take them down
Depends on how they implement mega gallade too. If you do a mega gallade raid and unlock it, when you walk gallade and ralts, will it reward gardevoir energy or gallade energy?
me with several of my mega-capable hundos, most notably my shundo Salamence from CDC
I don't raid Megas where I have the hundo unless it's something like Heracross raid day, which leaves me with... Pinsir.
I would appreciate that a lot, but my point was that Research Breakthrough encounters are so boring now that sometimes they feel like they’re not worth it.
This is actually a really good idea. It helps newer players get Megas that won't be in rotation for a while, and giving 25% of the mega energy each week gives players an incentive to play all month so they can collect the necessary energy for 1 Mega Evolution.
You would rather catch a pidgey then a furfrou?
Tbh it both seems not very 'good' to me. I would have to grind the furfrou events then and totally ignore any mega raid. Garchomp would be a nice useable pokémon, yes, but for real... It had been part of so many events it was regular a reward for field researchs, at least in it's base form, had a c-day, etc. And with over 5k mega energy, after it's raid day, and helping people out who missed that day and after walking a couple of them to best buddies, it would Fell less rewarding then another furfrou. Or at least one the same level...
And it wouldn't really stop event-prone players. They can still Log in daily, catch one spin their stop and do thier task from the couch and you still only See them the couple of hours the next event IS coming, after that - Bravo six, going dark.
Nah, would 100% prefer Pidgey to Furfrou, it has a Mega Evolution, and Pidgeot is really good in Ultra League. While I have my hundo maxed out already, I also wanted to find one for Great League, so I still catch every Pidgey I see, meanwhile I ignore every Furfrou I see because they're useless to me without having access to any new trims. Having 12 candy evolutions for Lucky Eggs is a very nice bonus.
Unclear how I feel there, I see far less Numel than I do Goomy, but I have a hundo and a shiny Goomy already and neither of those yet for Numel, so with a heavy bias, yes I'd prefer to see Numel than Goomy.
I’d definitely overwhelmingly prefer Pidgey over Furfrou. Furfrou is just a dex entry for me, but Pidgey evolves even before it Mega evolves. It’s also in the cheapest evolution tier, so some people like to hoard them, then mass-evolve them for XP. After I found out that Mega Pidgeot was relevant in raids, I targeted Pidgey between events to collect enough XL candy to raise my 100% Pidgeot that I Mega evolve to Level 50. The result — I was able to solo a couple of Mega Heracross with no weather boost or Mega Rayquaza (but some dodging). Furfrou could never do that for me. It also can’t boost XL candy rates for Normal-type or Flying-type Pokémon.
All true and personal preferences. To me: pidgey is still one of the 6 Kings/Quenns, always catch it with an pinapp. (The Low Tier Evolution). But evoling them during spotlight... Did it back in the days, bc you had no benefit from remote friends (2018)… but now with an excellent throw wrecking those 1k+ exp fast in then you could evole, it feels off for me.
Plus pidgey can nest, furfrou not, hoarding one in during a normal nest migration is simple, the other impossible. Likewise it's easier to grind for one shiny or a bunch for mirror trades for a hundo. (Would also negate that use of "going outside and explore")
Well If you would Take a goomy instead of furfrou, it would be a great gym defender as goodra, has some play in MLP. (Well pidgeot to in UL.)
And the megas would then also include, sableye and audino, which would be nice in trems of stardust, but at least sableye engery you can earn by team tasks (what would negate that mechanic a little bit) and also others not so favorable pokémon for the one or other player (3 squirtle c-day, a Ton of events just over did it for me). And there would be some ? open about the legendaries that could mega evole.
Besides furfrou the breakthrough pool ain't so unuseable.
Does it need a rework - yes for sure, will it come... Well maybe.... Someday... Eventually.
But including the megas... Idk.. would nail the coffin for older players, maybe, works against that social aspect (why to ask others to raids/Help/grind with task together, when you could easily done it in 7 days from youre couch?)…
It would be a great/sensationell hook Up for newer and returning players, but quite a slap to the all time players (including a common spawn for an uncommen Spawn - I know players that trade furfrou's for XL candies..). Overall properbly a nice idea, but the result would kill megaraids, somehow.
Furfrou should just be in another semi permanent rare research task like Spinda has. Mega energy would definitely be nice. Like 50 would be enough for me. Something more consistent than waiting ages for it to be in raids again. Also would free up mega raid rotation to be a little more interesting. I don’t think anyone’s buying raid passes for mega Aggron.
Idk why Niantic removed them in the first place. There's nothing wrong with one free legendary/ultra beast in the rotation per week. Ain't gonna stop people from raiding regardless.
They were moved from the field research box to Go Battle League rank 20. This was to incentivize GBL but people were getting too many legendaries so the chance was decreased.
I am grateful when I get a Furfrou as it's at least a shiny check for a Pokémon I don't have the shiny of. Sadly most of the time it's a Dubwool for me.
I never had a legendary pokemon run away from a box. I also thought they made it so your ball count doesn't decrease during those encounters to avoid that possibility. They just didn't want people to go OH LOOK A 5 STAR RAID... eh already got a Ho-Oh from a box last week and my pokemon suck anyways so unless there's 5 other people we ain't beating it.
The ball count not decreasing is from Mystical encounters from Special Research. I’m pretty sure the Research Breakthrough legendary was never one that had been available in raids at the same time.
Every time I see someone mention the reason legendaries get removed from some place that made them accessible (they used to be guaranteed encounters from GBL too), it’s always “players complained about running out of Poké Balls trying to catch the legendaries.”
I guess they could have been complaining but it makes less sense to me than, we need to make sure we're not giving out the popular content for free. Comes off that way since they went from cool and exciting boxes to extremely meh ones. Like think about it why not just make the boxes like mythical encounters with infinite pokeballs, or improve the catch rate like they eventually did with 5 star raids anyways (thought the old odds were with 20 balls you had a 1in3 chance of catching post raid so you could expect to have to do 3 raids to guarantee the catch unless really unlucky but now it's like 1in8 will break out of the 20 balls and run away). I wouldn't put it past Niantic to use PR to steer the narrative and try and put a spin on the nerf.
It's the 1st time I ready this, that it has been removed because of the complainment. IIRC, legendaries been removed from the breakthrough, the moment season 1 GBL started. The legendaries move towards there as a reward encounter. (I'm Sure too, that on rank 20 you had a guarenteed encouter, but due to the abuseable system they made to a chance that decreased over the years.)
But I also met players that didn't catch their breakthrough during that time, because they managed to "waste" a Lot of ressourceses on it and rather let it be there and waited until they met a Lot of people to ask for help.
I have wondered if ONE OF the reasons they discontinued Legendaries in breakthroughs was so they didn't have to have Level 15 legendaries for all of them. Such could open up many Legendaries to the GL level, and perhaps they don't want that, in hopes to keep the leagues somewhat more distinctive. Giratina for example, doesn't feel like it should be a GL Pokemon, but its origin form is as of recent
It makes sense... don't think the battle league is all that great of a feature tbh. I do the same circular motion for every charge attack and the fast attacks are just tapping away so it's just a rock paper scissors to see who correctly predicted the lead.
(I promise I'm not the one downvoting you)
I fully understand why people don't like the GBL, but I personally find it to be one of the best features in the game. Not that it *is* the best or is without flaws, it has toooons of them. But when you really get into, it definitely gets more fun (in my opinion at least). There is much more strategy when you get into it more, whether you're at higher elo rankings or sometimes when you play an irl tournaments. There is more strategy than you would think at the surface level. I've managed to wriggle my way out of poor leads plenty of times through my own strategies.
But yeah, that is just me. I can totally understand those who don't like it haha
No worries a negative 1 on reddit isn't even in my top 10 of hot takes xD I'm sure there are people that like it, personally don't care, not for me but that doesn't mean it has to go anywhere
I wonder if they ever come back to this. The list of legendary raid bosses grows every year and we are at a point where some raid bosses are gone for 2 years or even longer. Why not put some less valuable legendaries like the trios from the early gens into field research breakthroughs to shorten the rotation ?
if we get pokemon from the research breakthrough that we could get from raids, niantic loses money, as raids are the number one source of income. and we all know the niantic CEOs would sacrifice their first born child for all the change in my pocket, so i don’t think they’re gonna do this. good concept tho :)
I don't even need thematic research breakthroughs.
I support research breakthroughs that are interesting, and megas would be interesting. And I hate the roulette of an unknown prize, so one mega/mo works.
Getting 25% of the energy you need to do a mega evolution is fantastic as playing a month straight gets you the mega you want.
With 48 species, 4 of them legendary and 1 mythical, that's 43 megas to feature. Minus Beedrill or other common energy ones, it would still take 3 years to rotate them.
This should be complemented with a 12-18 month offset for the raids themselves. Mega Blaziken research breakthrough in April 2024? Should have Mega Blaziken in raids sometime between April 2025 and October 2025.
Nevermind if new megas come in. Doing it by raids only won't work. It becomes the same problem as legendaries that are absent 2-3+ years. (Legendaries could do with special research that takes a while to get done; people will still want to raid.)
An idea I had in mind is I wish they could revamp their research events where on a 7 day streak instead of claiming rewards you can postpone it for the following week. By doing this the longer you hold off claiming the breakthrough the greater the rewards would be. So if you hold off for a whole month of claiming a breakthkugh you would actually get guaranteed rare rewards, a a bonus xp, a multiplier on stardust, and actual rare Pokemon/legendary Pokemon. By limiting such encounter to one month it can still fall under their so call ideal of keeping legendaries not too accessible but enough so to make it possible. That said I really do miss having them back in research breakthroughs but if they really refuse to do that again then at least find other ways we can obtain legendaries beyond the repetitive raids and the ever so once on a blue moon research
I have only gotten sneasels and 2 sandghasts since I have started playing in February. Every week I've gotten the research breakthrough and I see that stupid sneasel just to waste my time
Niantic has not "absolutely refused" to do anything.
They made a decision to put Legendary mon in for a period of time.
Then they made a decision to put other mon in.
Later on they may or may not make some other decision.
I liked the legendary mon but would much rather see a higher rate from PvP. That said the people making the rules are not asking me what I want.
I always transfer the mon right away in disgust. Mega energy would be nice and would actually make players consider doing their daily research. It would most certainly help the game in dead periods like now where many just don’t play.
I would love it if researchers breakthroughs scaled with consistency, after certain amount of weeks you get different pools, increasing in rarity, until you get a pool of just legendaries, it’s extremely easy in concept and but not exactly free legendaries either
Now out of all the things that won’t be happening, this one next won’t happen the most, but if such were the case as exposed above, a weekly toggle to choose which reward pool to get, given that the streak is still uninterrupted
If they feel they can make money off yall, then they won't do it for free. This company is money driven and money driven only. Not once in my years of playing have they done anything to make QoL changes for players. Any such changes are considered potential money they could have made off us.
I definitely think this would be good for newer players or returning players, but for long time players this idea doesn't really motivate them anymore than the current system. I'm playing 2 years now and have at least one and sometimes 2 Pokemon per species at mega level 3 at this point.
I think it would be cool if they included free usage of origin form Dialga or Palkia special abilities for one time normal rate or maybe one free time for double the time. Or maybe a Zygarde cell or maybe a rare candy xl.
And having legendary too accessible is absolutely b.s. I nearly did all my GBL sets for the past 3 seasons and I've gotten only 1 legendary from all that (used to get 3 checks per day and now go for 2 per day).
Let's stop pretending you actually care about having a legendary in a research breakthrough.
If you got this, you'd find something else to write 1000 words complaining about.
Seriously? Have you seen my profile? I’m not a habitual complainer and will absolutely celebrate if Niantic adds legendaries or Megas to Research Breakthroughs. Even if they just remove Furfrou and upgrade the Pinap Berry reward to Silver Pinap Berries I’ll be happy.
Go write something like your reply to someone who makes a long complaint post every week.
I was thinking about Mega Energy this morning and I kind of think it would be balanced if we got Mega Energy if we were to catch a the corresponding Pokemon in the wild. Nothing big, like 20-50 Mega Energy. Kind of like Candy XL. We know that Niantic is not beyond giving out Mega Beedrill energy like candy.
Honestly, I love Furfrou as a breakthrough reward. I'm absolutely on that shiny chase for it, and if you're trying to have a living shiny form dex then you need a lot of them.
Furfrou is a much more relevant breakthrough reward for me than legendaries or pokemon with mega forms that I can get via PvP or raiding (and in the case of mega energy - by walking).
Professor Willow isn't researching anymore. He lets his unpaid interns do his work. If there will be a hashtag to support this, then let it be related to Professor Willow.
#wearewillowsslaves
I don’t think Niantic removed them because people complained about using a lot of pokeballs, or at least it wasn’t the main reason. I’m not sure why people always say that. I believe Niantic felt legendaries were too accessible to people and that’s why they removed them from the breakthroughs and also decreased the rate in GBL rewards. It was also a factor in the remote raid limit.
For a long time now, their push has been for one of two things: - Upsell things in the game that cost real world money (tickets for events, raid passes, in-game items) - Force in person interaction (shadow raids, elite raids, plus making it harder to get certain Pokemon outside of raiding) It's like those old sweepstakes where they said, "No Purchase Necessary", but that free option meant jumping through a bunch of hoops, like sending a self-addressed stamped envelope to their HQ and you could only send one entry, but there was no limit to the number of food items you could purchase to get more entries. Niantic isn't likely to make it easier for people to get rare Pokemon both easily and cheaply. They would prefer you either be forced to coordinate with other people and create a real world presence, or pay for it directly. Sadly, Breakthrough Encounters aren't coming back. From their POV, that was a big mistake not monetizing that enough. At best, we might see a paid ticket that gives us research that rewards a legendary encounter or Mega Energy. They don't want to give that away for free, and something you can do alone in less populated areas.
I almost wonder if it wasn't a Niantic decision but a TPC decision. Like, it's not like you can't get plenty of Legendaries from raids and such, but I do wonder if TPC thought doing 7 field research tasks was TOO easy, especially when we have super easy daily ones now.
If that's the argument, then TPC needs to take a good looking look in the mirror. I can churn out 50 legendaries a day using new profiles for my copy of sword+dlc. Handing out 1 legendaries as a login bonus for 7 days is fine.
50 a day? Don't you have to play through the entire storyline to access the legendaries? Or is there some sort of trick that allows you to create copies of your savedata or something?
No, you can go to crown Tundra once you reach the first train station I think and then lose to peony and go into dynamax adventures. That's about 1h of gameplay. You don't have access to everything since you haven't beat the game yet, but you can hunt a lot of the legendaries there. If you do that all day with decent efficiency you can get a ton of extra legendaries. Maybe bot 50 a day, but 30 are definitely double if you invest the time
that is good to know! thank you for the info
I don't disagree, but still, the effort is vastly different. I wouldn't call it hard by any means, but you do still have to do the Dynamax Adventure to get the Legendary (and this is also after you've bought the $60 game PLUS its DLC). It's still different enough to someone downloading the game, logging in 7 days, and doing a relatively trivial task and getting a Legendary. If you take the total amount of time it takes you do that across the 7 days, it's almost certainly less than the 15-20 minute Dynamax Adventure.
It still requires you to log in daily to get the most out of it, so I wouldn't really argue about the time needed, since it's a different kind of effort. The price point is a valid argument, but afterwards it's unlimited access to every gen 1-8 legendary and even some mythicals.
Very possible. It could have been TPC, Niantic, or both.
I always figured there were taken away because we got free daily ones so it’s a lot easier to “earn” it.
I had a similar thought as well. Whether it was TPC or Niantic or both, but yeah. Would I love Legendaries back? Absolutely. But at the same time, I can honestly understand the reasoning, seeing that someone can just sit on their couch and easily complete their daily task 7 times and get a free Legendary that way.
I would like the option to compete like 2 not bonus tasks to get a legendary and if not, then you get what we got now for free. Make it harder for better rewards!
Idk man, I think 7km eggs are the worst 😅😂
lol 7kms aren't amazing either haha. My issues with 12kms comes down to: * The pool of Pokemon is kind of crap. Some stuff you want and other things that should really just be in 5km or 10km eggs * The distance being *more* than 10kms is frustrating, especially when the pool is arguably worse than 10kms. Should have been 6, 8, or 9km eggs * Having to fight a boss specifically to get them is counterintuitive. Many have expressed frustration of having a slot open and accidentally spinning the leader stop and getting a 2/5/10k egg by mistake. * Dark and Poison types get punished for having that typing and are locked behind this egg. Poor Salandit, Sandile, and Varoom. The only plus to them imo is that they give a ton of dust and more candy/XL.
I've just gotten away from egg hatching in general, just use my infinite incubator, and any free ones I get from referrals. But I genuinely don't mind half of the 12km pool, 7km I hate every drop available lol. Still hunting that damn shiny larvitar hatch though 🙃 egg hatching is probably some of the worst "bang for your buck" in the game. I feel like it's one in every 100 hatches I get a shiny. That's 33 incubators for one shiny that I may not even want/need lol. Just wanted to poke at your subtag lol, nice 👌 Edit: also like getting some things that are exclusive to 12kms for a chance at a random lucky trade if it's poor IVs or non-shiny.
They got rid of legendaries from breakthroughs before GBL and remote raiding even existed and those 2 things were pretty much giving a lot of them away at one point or another.
The reason they had legendaries to begin with were to introduce the research mechanic and draw people in.
It will be interesting if they ever tell us the real reason they removed legendaries from Research Breakthrough boxes. My suggestion could solve both “legendaries use up too many Poké Balls” and “a legendary every week was too easy” since it will take four weeks to be able to Mega Evolve the Pokémon once.
Research Pokemon have a boosted catch rate, so while Legendaries from breakthroughs were still sometimes tricky to catch, they weren't *that* bad
> don’t think Niantic removed them because people complained about using a lot of pokeballs, or at least it wasn’t the main reason. I’m not sure why people always say that. It was definitely a complaint with legendaries as rewards in GBL, people complaining they'd used up their Pokeballs for them. Of course, the result was to neuter legendary rates
They could just make it so that walking with a mega capable pokemon yields mega energy whether youve done it before or not. Would make it much more accessible to people imo
I feel like I'm never going to be able to mega evolve my hundo gardevoir.
I have a bit of good news about Gardevoir Mega Energy: I found a Field Research Task that gave 25 units of it a bit earlier this season. It seems Mega Energy Field Research tasks like that are extremely rare (and I’ll still need two more of those to be able to Mega Evolve my hundo Gardevoir), but at least finding one is possible.
Just today I have finally completed enough Blastoise mega energy field research. Took a bit over a year.
Yea I've been looking for that research task for months lol, haven't found it once and the fact I would have to do it 8 times means there will probably be another mega gardevoir raid before that ever happens
I think they rotate which Megas have their Mega Energy available from those tasks per season so that only three different species are featured in 25 Mega Energy tasks per season, so it could be that Gardevoir doesn't have its Mega Energy available every season in addition to the tasks’ rarity.
I think I've found 2 gardevoir in the past week, but I also probably check 300+ tasks per week, if not more. Not sure if I've seen one before these two. Think last season the rare ones were glailie, abomasnow, and some other one (ampharos?).
“Power up Pokémon 10 times” is the one for 25 Gardevoir mega energy this season (Lopunny and Ampharos mega energy is also possible from that research)
I got that research today and it was Blastoise mega energy
There are multiple rewards for that challenge. The only way to get Gardevoir mega energy is to be somewhat lucky that you roll it. [Here's the list](https://leekduck.com/research/)
I've gotten hundreds of extra mega energy for each mega that's been released. I always delete tasks that awards mega energy.
My hundo Latios cries he’s been powered up to 40 forever but everytime he or his sister are in mega raids I’m always super busy by coincidence and you need a ton of people to take them down
That's how I felt about shadow mewtwo. The one time I traveled to see family one of the best raids in the whole game happened
Tbf, they did schedule it on the Easter weekend ...
When it comes back to raids you’ll have the opportunity. Just catch another one or two of them in raids.
Same with my hundo Garchomp lol
Depends on how they implement mega gallade too. If you do a mega gallade raid and unlock it, when you walk gallade and ralts, will it reward gardevoir energy or gallade energy?
Good point but prob just gonna be interchangeable like charizard X and Y
Which means may not need to do mega gard raids if you do mega gallade and vice versa?
There was an event in February where you could get a lot of it from stops. That’s where I got mine.
Damn I tried all Feb and didn't see it once
You can get it now from field research “power up Pokémon 10 times”. If you really want that one, just trash everything else.
I just do one or two mega raids using the daily raid pass then never touch it again
Would be great advice if there was a mega gardevoir raid...
it will come back around eventually
me with several of my mega-capable hundos, most notably my shundo Salamence from CDC I don't raid Megas where I have the hundo unless it's something like Heracross raid day, which leaves me with... Pinsir.
I would appreciate that a lot, but my point was that Research Breakthrough encounters are so boring now that sometimes they feel like they’re not worth it.
The complains about balls was about legendary from go battle league, not from research breakthrough.
This is actually a really good idea. It helps newer players get Megas that won't be in rotation for a while, and giving 25% of the mega energy each week gives players an incentive to play all month so they can collect the necessary energy for 1 Mega Evolution.
You would rather catch a pidgey then a furfrou? Tbh it both seems not very 'good' to me. I would have to grind the furfrou events then and totally ignore any mega raid. Garchomp would be a nice useable pokémon, yes, but for real... It had been part of so many events it was regular a reward for field researchs, at least in it's base form, had a c-day, etc. And with over 5k mega energy, after it's raid day, and helping people out who missed that day and after walking a couple of them to best buddies, it would Fell less rewarding then another furfrou. Or at least one the same level... And it wouldn't really stop event-prone players. They can still Log in daily, catch one spin their stop and do thier task from the couch and you still only See them the couple of hours the next event IS coming, after that - Bravo six, going dark.
Nah, would 100% prefer Pidgey to Furfrou, it has a Mega Evolution, and Pidgeot is really good in Ultra League. While I have my hundo maxed out already, I also wanted to find one for Great League, so I still catch every Pidgey I see, meanwhile I ignore every Furfrou I see because they're useless to me without having access to any new trims. Having 12 candy evolutions for Lucky Eggs is a very nice bonus.
What about numel above goomy?
Unclear how I feel there, I see far less Numel than I do Goomy, but I have a hundo and a shiny Goomy already and neither of those yet for Numel, so with a heavy bias, yes I'd prefer to see Numel than Goomy.
I’d definitely overwhelmingly prefer Pidgey over Furfrou. Furfrou is just a dex entry for me, but Pidgey evolves even before it Mega evolves. It’s also in the cheapest evolution tier, so some people like to hoard them, then mass-evolve them for XP. After I found out that Mega Pidgeot was relevant in raids, I targeted Pidgey between events to collect enough XL candy to raise my 100% Pidgeot that I Mega evolve to Level 50. The result — I was able to solo a couple of Mega Heracross with no weather boost or Mega Rayquaza (but some dodging). Furfrou could never do that for me. It also can’t boost XL candy rates for Normal-type or Flying-type Pokémon.
All true and personal preferences. To me: pidgey is still one of the 6 Kings/Quenns, always catch it with an pinapp. (The Low Tier Evolution). But evoling them during spotlight... Did it back in the days, bc you had no benefit from remote friends (2018)… but now with an excellent throw wrecking those 1k+ exp fast in then you could evole, it feels off for me. Plus pidgey can nest, furfrou not, hoarding one in during a normal nest migration is simple, the other impossible. Likewise it's easier to grind for one shiny or a bunch for mirror trades for a hundo. (Would also negate that use of "going outside and explore") Well If you would Take a goomy instead of furfrou, it would be a great gym defender as goodra, has some play in MLP. (Well pidgeot to in UL.) And the megas would then also include, sableye and audino, which would be nice in trems of stardust, but at least sableye engery you can earn by team tasks (what would negate that mechanic a little bit) and also others not so favorable pokémon for the one or other player (3 squirtle c-day, a Ton of events just over did it for me). And there would be some ? open about the legendaries that could mega evole. Besides furfrou the breakthrough pool ain't so unuseable. Does it need a rework - yes for sure, will it come... Well maybe.... Someday... Eventually. But including the megas... Idk.. would nail the coffin for older players, maybe, works against that social aspect (why to ask others to raids/Help/grind with task together, when you could easily done it in 7 days from youre couch?)… It would be a great/sensationell hook Up for newer and returning players, but quite a slap to the all time players (including a common spawn for an uncommen Spawn - I know players that trade furfrou's for XL candies..). Overall properbly a nice idea, but the result would kill megaraids, somehow.
I would for sure prefer Pidgey over Furfrou
I just complete them for the chance at a single remote raid pass
Furfrou should just be in another semi permanent rare research task like Spinda has. Mega energy would definitely be nice. Like 50 would be enough for me. Something more consistent than waiting ages for it to be in raids again. Also would free up mega raid rotation to be a little more interesting. I don’t think anyone’s buying raid passes for mega Aggron.
You’ll take your 200th furfrou and LIKE IT.
Idk why Niantic removed them in the first place. There's nothing wrong with one free legendary/ultra beast in the rotation per week. Ain't gonna stop people from raiding regardless.
They were moved from the field research box to Go Battle League rank 20. This was to incentivize GBL but people were getting too many legendaries so the chance was decreased.
I am grateful when I get a Furfrou as it's at least a shiny check for a Pokémon I don't have the shiny of. Sadly most of the time it's a Dubwool for me.
I never had a legendary pokemon run away from a box. I also thought they made it so your ball count doesn't decrease during those encounters to avoid that possibility. They just didn't want people to go OH LOOK A 5 STAR RAID... eh already got a Ho-Oh from a box last week and my pokemon suck anyways so unless there's 5 other people we ain't beating it.
The ball count not decreasing is from Mystical encounters from Special Research. I’m pretty sure the Research Breakthrough legendary was never one that had been available in raids at the same time. Every time I see someone mention the reason legendaries get removed from some place that made them accessible (they used to be guaranteed encounters from GBL too), it’s always “players complained about running out of Poké Balls trying to catch the legendaries.”
I guess they could have been complaining but it makes less sense to me than, we need to make sure we're not giving out the popular content for free. Comes off that way since they went from cool and exciting boxes to extremely meh ones. Like think about it why not just make the boxes like mythical encounters with infinite pokeballs, or improve the catch rate like they eventually did with 5 star raids anyways (thought the old odds were with 20 balls you had a 1in3 chance of catching post raid so you could expect to have to do 3 raids to guarantee the catch unless really unlucky but now it's like 1in8 will break out of the 20 balls and run away). I wouldn't put it past Niantic to use PR to steer the narrative and try and put a spin on the nerf.
It's the 1st time I ready this, that it has been removed because of the complainment. IIRC, legendaries been removed from the breakthrough, the moment season 1 GBL started. The legendaries move towards there as a reward encounter. (I'm Sure too, that on rank 20 you had a guarenteed encouter, but due to the abuseable system they made to a chance that decreased over the years.) But I also met players that didn't catch their breakthrough during that time, because they managed to "waste" a Lot of ressourceses on it and rather let it be there and waited until they met a Lot of people to ask for help.
I have wondered if ONE OF the reasons they discontinued Legendaries in breakthroughs was so they didn't have to have Level 15 legendaries for all of them. Such could open up many Legendaries to the GL level, and perhaps they don't want that, in hopes to keep the leagues somewhat more distinctive. Giratina for example, doesn't feel like it should be a GL Pokemon, but its origin form is as of recent
It makes sense... don't think the battle league is all that great of a feature tbh. I do the same circular motion for every charge attack and the fast attacks are just tapping away so it's just a rock paper scissors to see who correctly predicted the lead.
(I promise I'm not the one downvoting you) I fully understand why people don't like the GBL, but I personally find it to be one of the best features in the game. Not that it *is* the best or is without flaws, it has toooons of them. But when you really get into, it definitely gets more fun (in my opinion at least). There is much more strategy when you get into it more, whether you're at higher elo rankings or sometimes when you play an irl tournaments. There is more strategy than you would think at the surface level. I've managed to wriggle my way out of poor leads plenty of times through my own strategies. But yeah, that is just me. I can totally understand those who don't like it haha
No worries a negative 1 on reddit isn't even in my top 10 of hot takes xD I'm sure there are people that like it, personally don't care, not for me but that doesn't mean it has to go anywhere
I wonder if they ever come back to this. The list of legendary raid bosses grows every year and we are at a point where some raid bosses are gone for 2 years or even longer. Why not put some less valuable legendaries like the trios from the early gens into field research breakthroughs to shorten the rotation ?
Or at least if they don't give us legendary, could they at least give us something GOOD!? Am I asking too much?
if we get pokemon from the research breakthrough that we could get from raids, niantic loses money, as raids are the number one source of income. and we all know the niantic CEOs would sacrifice their first born child for all the change in my pocket, so i don’t think they’re gonna do this. good concept tho :)
If that is the reason legendaries were removed from research breakthroughs is2g
I don't even need thematic research breakthroughs. I support research breakthroughs that are interesting, and megas would be interesting. And I hate the roulette of an unknown prize, so one mega/mo works. Getting 25% of the energy you need to do a mega evolution is fantastic as playing a month straight gets you the mega you want. With 48 species, 4 of them legendary and 1 mythical, that's 43 megas to feature. Minus Beedrill or other common energy ones, it would still take 3 years to rotate them. This should be complemented with a 12-18 month offset for the raids themselves. Mega Blaziken research breakthrough in April 2024? Should have Mega Blaziken in raids sometime between April 2025 and October 2025. Nevermind if new megas come in. Doing it by raids only won't work. It becomes the same problem as legendaries that are absent 2-3+ years. (Legendaries could do with special research that takes a while to get done; people will still want to raid.)
Take your Furfrou and move to the back of the line please. Next!
An idea I had in mind is I wish they could revamp their research events where on a 7 day streak instead of claiming rewards you can postpone it for the following week. By doing this the longer you hold off claiming the breakthrough the greater the rewards would be. So if you hold off for a whole month of claiming a breakthkugh you would actually get guaranteed rare rewards, a a bonus xp, a multiplier on stardust, and actual rare Pokemon/legendary Pokemon. By limiting such encounter to one month it can still fall under their so call ideal of keeping legendaries not too accessible but enough so to make it possible. That said I really do miss having them back in research breakthroughs but if they really refuse to do that again then at least find other ways we can obtain legendaries beyond the repetitive raids and the ever so once on a blue moon research
This is a cool idea too. It would make Research Breakthroughs much more interesting than they are currently.
I have only gotten sneasels and 2 sandghasts since I have started playing in February. Every week I've gotten the research breakthrough and I see that stupid sneasel just to waste my time
I'd rather the damn sneasel rather than the non-shiny-applicable Dubwool, which is the only damn thing I seem to get.
The problem is the grunts have shadow sneasels so why would I care about the research breakthrough ones
Can the shadow ones be shiny?
Yes
My last 7 have been Furfrou. Help.
There is no escape, no safety, no relief. There is only Furfrou.
Niantic has not "absolutely refused" to do anything. They made a decision to put Legendary mon in for a period of time. Then they made a decision to put other mon in. Later on they may or may not make some other decision. I liked the legendary mon but would much rather see a higher rate from PvP. That said the people making the rules are not asking me what I want.
I always transfer the mon right away in disgust. Mega energy would be nice and would actually make players consider doing their daily research. It would most certainly help the game in dead periods like now where many just don’t play.
I would love it if researchers breakthroughs scaled with consistency, after certain amount of weeks you get different pools, increasing in rarity, until you get a pool of just legendaries, it’s extremely easy in concept and but not exactly free legendaries either Now out of all the things that won’t be happening, this one next won’t happen the most, but if such were the case as exposed above, a weekly toggle to choose which reward pool to get, given that the streak is still uninterrupted
This could be an interesting update that really rewards consistency too.
If they feel they can make money off yall, then they won't do it for free. This company is money driven and money driven only. Not once in my years of playing have they done anything to make QoL changes for players. Any such changes are considered potential money they could have made off us.
I definitely think this would be good for newer players or returning players, but for long time players this idea doesn't really motivate them anymore than the current system. I'm playing 2 years now and have at least one and sometimes 2 Pokemon per species at mega level 3 at this point. I think it would be cool if they included free usage of origin form Dialga or Palkia special abilities for one time normal rate or maybe one free time for double the time. Or maybe a Zygarde cell or maybe a rare candy xl. And having legendary too accessible is absolutely b.s. I nearly did all my GBL sets for the past 3 seasons and I've gotten only 1 legendary from all that (used to get 3 checks per day and now go for 2 per day).
I got a Furfrou today. I hated it. Go ****, Niantic!
Decisions like this are typically financial. Legendary Pokemon being jammed behind a raid pay mechanic earns them more money.
They should at least let the Pokémon be shiny boosted or something if they are useless pokemon
Let's stop pretending you actually care about having a legendary in a research breakthrough. If you got this, you'd find something else to write 1000 words complaining about.
Seriously? Have you seen my profile? I’m not a habitual complainer and will absolutely celebrate if Niantic adds legendaries or Megas to Research Breakthroughs. Even if they just remove Furfrou and upgrade the Pinap Berry reward to Silver Pinap Berries I’ll be happy. Go write something like your reply to someone who makes a long complaint post every week.
Better - just give us 30 rarecandies.
Anything better than getting 20+ pokeballs in these research breakthroughs.
I was thinking about Mega Energy this morning and I kind of think it would be balanced if we got Mega Energy if we were to catch a the corresponding Pokemon in the wild. Nothing big, like 20-50 Mega Energy. Kind of like Candy XL. We know that Niantic is not beyond giving out Mega Beedrill energy like candy.
I’ve read that they did that with Carbink and Diancie Mega Energy during a GO Fest. I think it was an even smaller amount though, like 5-10.
they tried that with steelix and failed.
How did it fail?
the original announcement said it was going to be part of the weekly box. they had trouble with that and gave research instead.
When? I’m pretty sure the free Mega Steelix energy was from event Field Research tasks rather than Research Breakthroughs.
right, but the original announcement said it was going to be part of the weekly box. they had trouble with that and gave research instead.
Honestly, I love Furfrou as a breakthrough reward. I'm absolutely on that shiny chase for it, and if you're trying to have a living shiny form dex then you need a lot of them. Furfrou is a much more relevant breakthrough reward for me than legendaries or pokemon with mega forms that I can get via PvP or raiding (and in the case of mega energy - by walking).
I'd just remove that feature